Becoming a Good Veterinarian

Important Factors

But this does not mean that you will get a chance only if you’re an A student. There are other factors which are important for getting into these colleges as well. These include extra activities and experience with animals. This also includes a solid background in math, science and biology. The good news is that this field has diversified in the past two decades and so it does not only cater to individuals of a particular status quo.

Length of Time

Four years of college and four additional years of veterinary medicine make up for the theoretical knowledge of a veterinarian. Residency credits or internships are not compulsory for this degree. But if you want to achieve specialty certification or advanced qualification, then you should probably take up these credits. A debate has raged over recent years of whether it is right to make foreign students take “additional veterinary medical residency credits”.

Completion of Vet School does not Mean Start of Practice

Just because you have finished vet school does not mean you have become eligible to be a veterinarian. There is a national level exam taken by the National Veterinary Medical Board. This is a very demanding exam and is similar to the Bar Exam taken in Law.

The ordeal is not over until you pass a state level board exam taken by the state in which you prefer to practice. The requirements of these exams are different in different states though there are some states that accept the scores made in other states. This enables you to practice in more than one state even though you might have given the exam in one state.

Advanced Courses

If you want to be a veterinarian or a trainer, you have to continue taking some courses for life. These courses include seminars or workshops for this field. These workshops and seminars are important because they maintain your individuality in the field. They help you to keep track of the new systems of ideas, techniques and discovered diseases and how to cope up with them.

One good idea to keep track of these new innovations is to subscribe to veterinary medicine journals that would improve your all-round knowledge of the discipline.

The veterinary field is similar to the human medical field only that it is more complex as compared to the human field because of the large number of species involved so choose this field only if you are an animal buff.