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March 9, 2006 NDSU Veterinary Technology Program Celebrates 30 Years Veterinarian Tom Colville was 28 when he and his wife, Joann, also a veterinarian, came to North Dakota State University to start a veterinary technology program. Now Colville is director of the program, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. “The students howl with laughter when they see pictures of me from the early days of the program,” Colville says. Students in the Veterinary Technology Program earn a bachelor of science degree and can enter the workplace in a variety of fields. Graduates may choose to work in a veterinary practice or go in other directions, such as technical research assistance, sales, veterinary practice management or animal-related business management. The program is accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association and is a part of the NDSU Department of Animal and Range Sciences. “When the program began, graduates were often a trained set of hands for veterinarians,” Colville says. “They did a lot of restraining of animals while the veterinarians carried out procedures. Now, veterinary technicians function as fully contributing members of the veterinary health-care team. They function as ‘veterinary nurses,’ but they have other skills not generally associated with nursing, such as taking radiographs, anesthetizing animals and performing clinical laboratory analyses on blood and other body fluids. Employers now expect them to have not only good manual skills, but good decision-making skills as well. They do most of the hands-on work with the clients and their animals. The veterinarians' main roles are to diagnose illnesses, prescribe medications and perform surgery.” Colville says many of the drugs, instruments and equipment the students routinely work with now did not exist in 1976. Veterinary medicine has grown in sophistication during the years and the Veterinary Technology Program has kept pace with the many changes. “Students regularly work with pulse oximeters, electrocardiographs and computerized instruments ranging from high-frequency X-ray machines to blood chemistry analyzers and cell counters,” Colville says. “As a part of our surgical nursing course, the students carry out sophisticated pain management protocols that include drugs which have only recently come on the market.” Most of the surgeries performed in the program are spays and neuters of animals that will be adopted out by the Fargo-Moorhead Humane Society. The Veterinary Technology Program has a cooperative relationship with the Humane Society that gives students different animals to work with in the Robinson Hall Veterinary Wellness Clinic, which provides considerable cost savings to the Humane Society. Under instructor supervision, veterinary technology students perform routine wellness services, such as parasite identification and elimination, disease testing and vaccinations. Fall semester enrollment in Pre-Veterinary Technology (first year of the program) and Veterinary Technology (professional part of the program) was 136 students. In the early days of the program, only a two-year degree was offered and there was a maximum of 40 students in the program. Now that a bachelor of science degree is offered, the number of enrolled students has risen considerably. “There is a significant shortage of veterinary technicians nationally,” Colville says. “Not enough graduates enter the field each year to keep up with the growing needs of veterinary clinics. There are 118 accredited veterinary technology programs in the U.S, but NDSU is one of only 16 that offer a bachelor of science degree.” The department surveys graduates each year to keep track of where they are and what they are doing. Most graduates go into jobs in veterinary clinics. Some migrate to other nontraditional veterinary technology-related positions. Based on the 2005 survey, a large percentage of the graduates have remained in North Dakota. Information about the Veterinary Technology Program is available on the Web at http://vettech.ndsu.nodak.edu/. ### Source: Tom
Colville, (701) 231-7530, thomas.colville@ndsu.edu |
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