Client Information

About your care team

As a teaching hospital, we provide comprehensive veterinary care to patients while educating our veterinary students, interns, and residents. Our students will play an integral role in the care of your pet, but a veterinarian will always be the one to treat your animal or perform surgery.

The team caring for your pet combines years of collective knowledge and expertise. Some are faculty with decades of experience, others are gaining specialized expertise early in their careers. Comprehensive care takes time, but you can feel confident that everyone caring for your pet is qualified. Some definitions:

• Faculty veterinarian: A Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) sees clinical patients at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Most of our faculty veterinarians are board-certified.
• Board-certified veterinary specialist: Specialists have completed an additional three to five years of training and have passed rigorous examinations to achieve certification, similar to their human medical counterparts. Specialists bring a deep understanding of their field, and a knowledge of unusual or uncommon conditions in large or small animals.
• Registered Veterinary Technician (RVT): RVTs are highly trained and experienced professionals who are certified with the state and registered with the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). They attend annual education courses to build and maintain their skills. They can also earn an additional specialized certification called a Veterinary Technician Specialty (VTS) in multiple areas such as critical care and surgery.
• Veterinary assistant: Veterinary assistants support and assist our medical teams with many aspects of client and patient care such as client communication and education, performing vitals, treatments, patient restraint, prescriptions, and also clerical duties. Veterinary assistants can obtain a certification that covers the fundamentals of veterinary medicine and animal care and handling.
• Resident: DVMs who have completed a qualified internship, residents spend three to four years training to be specialists and become board-certified.
• Intern: DVMs who are advancing their training through a one-year internship. Many of our interns go on to complete residency programs.
• Fourth-year student: The students on your care team are finishing their final year of veterinary school. Veterinarians can practice as soon as they graduate and pass appropriate licensing examinations. These students are in a similar role as interns in the human medical environment.