About the Program

This is a distributed learning modeled course that includes an extensive online curriculum/course to cover high-quality, high-volume surgical and enhancing their surgical experience at Penn via authentic learning experiences. Students will have to complete extensive online learning, assessments, and skills labs for this course.

This course is an introduction to High Quality High Volume (HQHV) surgery in the shelter environment and is based on the Association of Shelter Veterinarians veterinary medical care guidelines for spay-neuter programs. It is designed to prepare students to pursue “castration certification” via extracurricular participation. This elective can be taken any time, including the summer,after the spring semester of first year and grading is pass/fail.

Students perform surgery externally at shelters as early as their first year and represent Penn Vet regardless of whether they are in an official program or not. This type of surgery experience in the past was done with limited guidance or support – the students identified this and system with funding to do spay neuter surgery. This course capitalizes on this opportunity to enhance and embrace this within our curriculum. The program wishes to provide students with the university support, guidance, and instruction they need. It is an advantage if Penn Vet is able to direct students to a safe supported learning experience that enhances our schools curriculum. In the future, this can eventually be a pillar in our curriculum complementing student instruction. This program should take a well-structured extracurricular experience and intentionally transform it to an authentic educational program. This program also protects Penn Vet’s image in the shelter setting, guarding the relationships with our instructional partners.

IMPORTANT: NO student does abdominal surgery in this course.