Blog 20: Exit Interview

1. What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

My essential question is, how can a veterinarian and veterinary technician work together to best help an injured or sick animal? My first answer is they can work together to perform examinations, x-rays, and health tests. My second answer is by ensuring the animal goes home with the proper medication and fully recovers. My last answer is by communicating what they believe to be wrong with the animal and why. My best answer is my last answer, which is through communication. Communication is the foundation to a successful practice and without it the veterinarian and the technicians wouldn’t be able to fully help an animal. This allows the vet and vet tech to work together to figure out what is wrong with an animal and/or how to best treat/help it. By having a clear line of communication, the veterinary practice will benefit and thrive.

2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

I read articles and books and almost all mentioned the importance of communication, not only between the vet and vet tech but with the owners as well. I also thought back to the Animal Health Science class that I took for my first independent component and how the professor talked to us about why communication is important in a practice. She told us many stories of instances when the staff didn’t communicate effectively and it affected the practice.

3. What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

I had a hard time coming up with an essential question. To solve this, I wrote out different questions and tried to come up with potential answers for them. Once I came up with answers, I had to decide if I could find information on those answers to back up my essential question. It was a long process, but it was worth it in order to develop a good essential question.

4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

One source that really helped me was the book Vet Confidential: An Insider’s Guide to Protecting Your Pet’s Health by Louise Murray. This source I recently found. It addressed many aspects of each of my answers. I felt it gave me great examples of how my answers are used in the clinic and how they answer me essential question.  The second source is the book Vault Guide to Veterinary and Animal Careers by Liz Stewart. This book outlined what the job of a vet and vet tech are and talked about the current trends in the veterinary field. It was helpful in giving background information on the field and giving a general idea of what it’s about.