Small-Animal Rotating Internship

Interns spend roughly 20 to 22 weeks on emergency, roughly 14 weeks on internal medicine, and the remaining roughly 14 weeks divided between surgery and subspecialty rotations, the latter of which is in part tailored to intern interest and openings for the number of weeks requested in a specialty service. Interns spend 1 week at our primary care clinic for the low-income community. Emergency rotations consist of both daytime and nighttime rotation weeks. When on overnights, interns are never the sole doctor in the hospital. For part of their shift, they overlap with another receiving ER doctor. The entire night there is also a highly skilled critical care resident in the hospital overseeing all hospitalized cases. This person is a great overnight resource for interns on their incoming ER cases. Faculty are also accessible to consult by phone during overnight shifts.

1. Anesthesia
2. Behavior
3. Clinical pathology
4. Critical care
5. Cardiology
6. Dermatology
7. Dentistry at a nearby outside dental specialty practice (see #18 below re pandemic)
8. Lerner Spay Clinic (community practice/+/- shelter patients)
9. Oncology
10. Ophthalmology
11. Neurology
12. Radiology
13. Surgery—Soft Tissue
14. Surgery—Orthopedics
15. Tufts at Tech Community Veterinary Clinic
16. Tufts Wildlife Clinic
17. Zoological companion animal medicine (aka exotics service)
18. Out-rotations at other universities or another specialty center when rotations are not available at our hospital (veterinary hospital travel restrictions surrounding COVID-19 may impact the availability of this during the pandemic)

Tufts interns have a lot of primary case management opportunities during their intern year. Through this, interns gain strength in case management, clinical reasoning, client communication, and student teaching among other things. The majority of primary case responsibility is obtained on the internal medicine and emergency services. We are very proud with the strength in clinical skills we impart on our interns during their training year.

Interns are able to attend CE rounds 3 to 5 days a week, depending on their rotation. Cummings School has a longstanding and well-developed intern/resident CE program. CE opportunities are available on every rotation, and many of the CE rounds are now recorded and archived so anyone not able to attend can still access them later. Interns attend intern topic rounds once weekly, wellness rounds monthly, and a variety of service and hospital CE each week. The latter includes opportunities such as ECC topics, Internal Medicine Journal Club, specialty rounds, pathophysiology rounds, clinical pathology rounds, pathology rounds, research rounds, academic development rounds, and service-specific journal clubs for each service. Intern topic rounds span topics from many specialties across the hospital and even include subjects such as EKG review, calculating CRIs, AFAST/TFAST, among many other topics. See a partial listing of some of the rounds from this year below.

Cummings School does not have a research project requirement for this internship program. However, a large portion of our intern class each year participates in research projects with faculty. Some interns each year even present their data at specialty conferences.

The internship consists of 2 semesters, and interns get 1 weeklong vacation per semester. Like most other programs, these weeks are taken as full weeks, and vacation days cannot be split randomly over the year. While on rotations, interns typically have 1 to 2 days off per week. Many rotations are 2 days off.

No. ER rotations are separate from other hospital rotations. On any rotation, an intern is never scheduled for a 24-hour shift. They are scheduled either for a daytime shift or an evening or night shift.

Interns help teach students while students are working alongside cases with them. They also participate in teaching labs (e.g. spay lab, clinical skills labs, etc.) and the community veterinary medicine clinic.

Interns have both a primary faculty mentor, as well as a professional advice faculty mentor. One of these is typically someone in their area of interest. They also receive supervision and mentorship from the 3 internship directors. Anyone facing significant struggles is provided additional one-on-one coaching to help the individual achieve successful growth during the program.

Upon matching for the internship, interns are first matched with one of our current interns during their transition process from school to internship. Once they arrive, they are matched for the year with a resident “Big Sib,” often in their area of specialty interest. This person provides advice along the way, including during the residency application process. Shortly after arrival, interns are also matched with their faculty mentors for the year.

To qualify for application for the internship, applicants must be one of the following:

1. U.S. citizen
2. U.S. permanent resident with authorization to work in the U.S. (i.e. green card)
3. Citizen of Canada or Mexico, which qualifies them for a TN visa

The school currently does not accept any other visas for the internship programs

During non-COVID times, interns usually schedule conference travel to occur during their vacations. Occasionally, if an intern is asked to present their research project at a conference but did not have this time off prearranged, schedule adjustments may be considered to allow the intern to travel to attend.

Yes. This is a crucial period for interns to learn about the hospital policies, how the clinic works, shadow services, and also receive some introductory intern lectures.

We seek highly motivated, hard-working, proactive individuals who are excited to learn, passionate about teamwork and client service, highly committed to their own continual growth, and dedicated to giving each patient their very best. We strongly value personal qualities such as ability to work well with others, being open to input on cases, working in the best interest of the team, and caring about your co-workers, which also includes the technicians/staff.

Factors that significantly influence ability of a successful match into a residency or specialty internship:

• The number of programs applied to. Applying to just 1 or 2 programs is very risky regardless of where you are an intern.
• Dedication and work toward constant development and demonstrating consistent growth throughout the internship.
• Giving their teams, their patients, and their clients their very best.
• Being very open and responsive to direction/guidance/feedback.
• Constantly working on improving communications skills.
• For some programs, prior completion of a research project and/or completion of a specialty internship. in the U.S., it is becoming increasingly common for some residencies/specialties to require prior completion of a specialty internship.

15 interns/class
2020-2021: 92% match rate (1 of 12 did not match)

2019-20: 100% match rate (12 applied)
2018-19: 92% match rate (1 of 13 did not match)
2017-18: 100% match rate (13 applied)

8 total interns/class
2015-16: 100% match rate (7 applied)
2014-15: 83% match rate (1 of 6 did not match)

Below is just a partial sample of some of the CE rounds that have taken place in the past year that were open to our interns. During the initial orientation period, interns also attend introductory lectures on AFAST/TFAST, CPR, CRIs, wounds/bandages, client communication, how to handle euthanasia, student teaching, among numerous other topics.

To contact current Tufts interns, and current Tufts residents who completed their internship with us, please contact lori.muhr@tufts.edu.