Vet medicine work experience

Hi Ayesha,
I think this will be well more than enough experience, although I'm a Y13 going into medicine and not veterinary medicine, I've found that it's not about how long the work experience is for, but more about how much you learn; as long as the placement is longer than a week, it should be enough for a paragraph in your personal statement or something to talk about in any interviews. A student on a 1 week WP being proactive and asking questions about specific treatments they see will learn a lot more than say a 3-week student just watching quietly.

Hi, so I’m currently in year 12 and am thinking of applying to veterinary medicine. I’ve only managed to find 2 confirmed weeks at a vet small animal clinic and don’t have any experience in a large animal clinic as there are none around my area. Is this a major problem? Would 2 weeks be enough?
Thank you

Hi, if you check the work experience requirements for each university (google UCAS D100 and all courses should come up) you will see that more experience than this is required and would very likely not result in an interview/offer.

When I applied applicants all consistently had 10+ weeks experience and many closer to 20.
Whilst some of this must be undertaken within veterinary practices arguably a more important area is the animal husbandry side. Seeing how animal enterprises operate gives a great breadth of understanding to the challenges a veterinary surgeon must deal with. Similarly for the pre-clinical aspect of your degree 12 weeks of animal husbandry placement must be undertaken before clinical placements can begin.

You ideally need atleast 2-3 weeks in a small animal practice, similar in a large
Experience with horses, small animals (dogs/cats but small furries will count too), lambing, dairy work and a pig placement if possible.
Bonus points for an abattoir/government veterinary lab.

Whilst you can easily meet the minimum work experience requirements a stand out applicant will have gone beyond this - not only is it box ticking but during an interview gives you far more to talk about.
The application rate far exceeds the places available so you have got to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Hi thanks for the reply, I do have more work experience but I was just wondering about the clinical side to it.
Currently I have:
9 weeks in a small animal rescue
1 week poultry/ children farm
3 weeks equine

I plan on getting:
2/3 weeks vet clinic (small only unfortunately)
3 weeks kennels
2 weeks lambing/ dairy farm

I have looked for a large animal clinic however the closest one to me is 2 hours away and It’s just not feasible, will it be a major deal breaker if I don’t get any large clinic experience?
Thanks 😊

Hi! I am a first year vet student in the UK and the work experience you've listed is more than plenty! As long as you look up the requirements for each uni you are thinking about applying to. I had no LA vet experience in my profile so I wouldn't worry too much

Thank you so much, what work experience did you get? 😊