Clinical training is centered upon specialty training in laboratory animal medicine through 1-3 month rotations. Rotations include clinical medicine, pathology, rodent health monitoring, anesthesia, biosafety, facilities, and regulatory medicine.
Residents also attend two weekly one-hour seminars that cover a variety of laboratory animal medicine, pathology, and experimental research topics as well as comparative pathology rounds. Additional areas of interest, such as facility design and management, gnotobiotics, and fish medicine are covered and can be explored further, depending upon the interest of the resident.
The training ratio is usually 1 senior clinical veterinarian and 1 pathologist responsible for working with 2 residents at any given time. Mice and rats are the predominate species, followed by rabbits, pigs, fish, dogs, birds, ferrets, and sheep, among other less traditional models. Exposure to non-human primates is through a month rotation during clinical training at the WaNPRC.
In accordance with the guidelines of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine training, 200 hours of instruction in the classroom; see courses. Additional University of Washington classes based on the resident’s research interest may be taken.