Tune in as we chat with Victoria McKaba, a 4th-year veterinary student at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. We discuss what it’s like being a 4th year in the midst of COVID, how she is planning for the future, and her advice for the Class of 2024.
About Victoria McKaba:
Victoria has a strong interest in small animal cardiology and hopes to pursue an internship and residency after graduation. While in veterinary school, Victoria has dedicated her time to organized veterinary medicine, serving as the Illinois SAVMA President, Omega Tau Sigma – Theta Chapter President, and currently serves as the National SAVMA Chapter President Representative. Outside of vet med, Victoria loves hiking with her dog Bentley, spending time with friends and family, traveling, and discovering the best local breweries.
In this episode we mention the following resources:
- SAVMA: https://www.avma.org/membership/SAVMA
- University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine: https://vetmed.illinois.edu/
You may learn more about the VIN Foundation, on the website, or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
If you like this podcast, we would appreciate it if you follow and share. As always, we welcome feedback. If you have an idea for a podcast episode, we’d love to hear it!
TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Jordan Benshea: Welcome to the Veterinary Pulse podcast. My name is Jordan Benshea. I’m the Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Veterinary Pulse is the heartbeat of the profession. Join us as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, from student debt to mental health, and share stories. Stories connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible through individual donors like yourself, and our technology partnership with VIN, the Veterinary Information Network. Thank you for being here.
Meet Victoria McKaba: A Fourth-Year Veterinary Student
Jordan Benshea: This episode, we’re having a discussion with Victoria McKaba, a fourth-year veterinary student at University of Illinois. She shares what it’s like being a fourth-year during a pandemic, how she manages planning for the future, her love for the profession, and advice to the class of 2024. Thank you for listening. Hi, Victoria. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Victoria Mckaba: Thank you so much for having me, Jordan.
Discovering the VIN Foundation
Jordan Benshea: How were you first introduced to the VIN Foundation?
Victoria Mckaba: I, originally as a first-year, was told about VIN as a resource for students to get answers to different questions. Here at Illinois, we’re lucky to go into clinics our first and second year for eight weeks long. So, it was introduced to us pretty early, but I didn’t know about the VIN Foundation until second year where we had a colloquium talking about student finances, student debt, and all of the resources available to us to track that debt and the VIN Foundation’s student debt resources is probably my favorite thing on your website. It’s really put into perspective what my student loans are going to look like after I graduate. So, I think that was really my first introduction. Then, when I met the wonderful Matt Holland, who obviously is very involved with you guys, he was able to tell me a little bit more about all of the different resources you provide for all of the people in between, pre-vet to post grad.
Jordan Benshea: Yeah, Dr. Matt Holland is a VIN Foundation board member, and we love him. He’s great. He also works at VIN, so he’s a great resource.
The Journey to Becoming a Veterinarian
Jordan Benshea: When did you first realize you wanted to be a veterinarian? Did you have sort of an ’aha’ moment or was it more gradual for you?
Victoria Mckaba: No, unfortunately, I fall into the category of ‘Oh my God, this has been my dream my whole entire life, I’ve never wanted to do anything else,’ and that’s really true. I grew up around animals everywhere, from horses to dogs and cats. I had a lot of exposure to different fields very early on. I had a cat that had cancer, so he was seeing an oncologist. I’ve had a dog with a heart issue, so he was seeing a cardiologist. I’ve been exposed to the profession for a long time, as well as obviously, taking them for their annual wellness visit to our local general practitioner. So yeah, unfortunately, I do not have a very interesting like, this was when I figured out I wanted to do veterinary medicine, but it wasn’t until college when I was able to get myself involved with some shelter work, but on the medical side, so more spay and neuters, that I really started to see the vision come to life, because at first it was always this is what I want to do. This is such an amazing profession. But I really didn’t know much about it side from what I was just seeing from the client standpoint, until I got to do hundreds of spays and neuters on all different types of animals from dogs and cats, to pigs and rabbits, that it really became solidified in my mind like, yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
Jordan Benshea: So, you’re sort of the classic case of I love animals, but it grew to something more substantial, and to you realizing that it took more than just loving puppies.
Victoria Mckaba: Well, yeah. I had always had an affinity for the STEM side of the educational system. I always did very well in science and math, and I somewhat dreaded social studies, history, and English. I love the people, especially a lot of students, who this is their second career. They have such an amazing story, and I’m just like, yeah, I just really loved my dogs and I thought this was a cool profession to be in, too. I got myself involved, and I was like, yep, this is what I want to do.
Jordan Benshea: Hey, if you can have a dream and it works out where when you get involved in the dream, you still really like it, I think that’s clearly a good choice.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, that’s true.
Impact of COVID-19 on Veterinary Education
Jordan Benshea: You’re a fourth-year student at the University of Illinois. You are in the midst of this very unprecedented time of living through a pandemic and COVID. How have you found that this new reality that we’re living in, or this potential one, we don’t know, this current reality impacted your summer plans?
Victoria Mckaba: Yes, so unfortunately, the first week that COVID was national news was supposed to be my spring break. The week before that, I was in the middle of finals. I was supposed to take my final exams, go on spring break, come back to school, take some milestone testing, and then start my clinical year. Unfortunately, when we were sitting down for our final exams, our dean had let us know that our white coat ceremony was canceled, and that our OSCE testing would be postponed, and that we would be canceling the first block of the rotation. I remember now looking back, feeling like this was so surreal, and it was just going to be a few weeks, and they were going to get everything under control. Missing the first block was upsetting, but in reality, I just looked at it as like a nice little extended spring break. Our white coat ceremony, I guess they technically didn’t cancel it, they postponed it, it hadn’t definitively been cancelled at this point, was a bummer. But in the grand scheme of life, we were still going to be in the clinic, we were done with didactic school and that was all very exciting. I went home back to the east coast where I’m from. I was with my parents and the news got worse from there. It felt like for a while I was just sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next email from our dean or our SA office about what was going on with the decisions being made. As well as just watching the national news and watching what was going on. I’m from New Jersey, and when you were looking at the original COVID map that big red dot in New York and New Jersey is quite literally where I’m from. So, it was a really scary time overall, on top of the anxiety of what was going to happen to my clinical year.
Navigating Clinical Year During a Pandemic
Victoria Mckaba: What ended up happening was that we were pretty much home from March, I think I left Illinois March 14th, and I arrived back here August 1rst. The first six weeks of COVID were essentially just like off time for a lot of people. Some people were fortunate enough to get jobs, whether that’s at their hometown clinics or local places. I was not. Again, just being in the northeast with how strict they are over there about COVID regulations, I wasn’t able to. Then we had some online rotations, which the university worked really hard to put on the best possible content for us and make sure that we were still getting the most amount of information as we could not being able to be in the hospital and touch real patients. They moved our professional development, which is typically at the end of our clinical year where we’re allowed to go off and explore things that are more relevant, I would say, to your desired field or desired career path. I ended up just doing more online modules through the university and then I did a one-week externship at a cardiologist’s in Connecticut before I came back here for school. Now, we just hit the ground running with clinical year.
Jordan Benshea: So that was a big shift for you. For some people, it seems that they stayed where they were, where their school was and hunkered down, but you went home, which means that you went home for a much longer time than you were probably expecting.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, honestly, it’s the longest amount of time that I’ve been home since probably I left for college. Everyone in our class jokes it’s the summer break we were never supposed to have, and that’s really true but it was a blessing in disguise. I got to spend a lot of time with my family, with my loved ones, with my partner that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. So, when I look at it in the grand scheme, what happened to my education is something that I’m still processing, but at the same time, I gained something I would have never had. That’s how I’ve been like dealing with it, so far.
Jordan Benshea: I think that’s a good perspective to have. There’s a lot of things that are not in our control and this is definitely one of them. But how we react to them is in our control and it’s good to focus on the positives of that, absolutely.
Victoria Mckaba: This is nobody’s fault, right? This is not the school’s fault. This is not my fault. This is not Illinois as a state’s fault, or any individual state for that matter. There’s no one individual or one organization to put the blame on for something like this happening in our country. At some point, you just have to say this is what we’re working with, and we’re doing the best that we can.
Jordan Benshea: Absolutely, and feeling that you have that support from your school is really important, I think. That’s definitely a benefit.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, I agree.
Jordan Benshea: Along those lines, you’re now a fourth-year in the midst of this pandemic, starting your last year of veterinary school. I’d love for you to share a bit of your story about what that looks like for you. What are the things that are on your mind? How are your classmates and you dealing with this?
Victoria Mckaba: It’s a lot. Right now, I feel, honestly, very safe going to school.
Innovative COVID-19 Testing at University of Illinois
Victoria Mckaba: Illinois has developed the saliva PCR testing for the virus, and from yesterday, I believe, I looked at a statistic that said that the University of Illinois has processed over 1% of all of the tests nationwide. We’re getting tested twice a week, and now it’s tracked through an app. Now that the undergrads have come back, they’ve instituted this access granted or denied based on your test status.
Jordan Benshea: Can you tell me a little bit more about this saliva test? This is just a cheek swab?
Victoria Mckaba: No, so it’s a saliva test where they give us these like long cylindrical tubes and we quite literally spit into the tube. We have a running joke in the hospital that anytime someone’s going to leave to get tested, we say, “oh, we’re going to go spit in a tube now”. It’s not at all like what a lot of people have been describing, which is a cheek or a back of the throat or into the nasal sinus passages test. This is based on saliva that you produce, and you spit in the tube. It gets sent off, and you get your results usually, honestly, same day, if not directly the morning after.
Jordan Benshea: You’re able to track all of that within an app that you have on your phone?
Victoria Mckaba: Yes, it’s called Safer Illinois. It gives me my status as of the last time I was tested and what my results were. Then what I assume, because this has happened around campus, is that if there’s a possible exposure, so for example, I imagine the students who are living in the dorms, if there’s somebody in the dorm who tests positive, everybody on the app is going to get an alert that they’ve had a potential exposure, and that they need to get tested. It links, from my understanding to our ID cards that allow us to get into certain buildings. If we have a possible exposure without a negative test, our ID cards do not work. So, we are taking this very seriously, a lot more serious than I feel a lot of other schools are and I’m really grateful for it.
Jordan Benshea: Wow, absolutely. I live in the central California area and our testing, none of it is anywhere close to anything that you have going on. That’s wonderful! That’s a great way to really manage a situation and wow, that’s fantastic to hear. I’m so impressed.
Victoria Mckaba: I think it is one of the biggest things that gives me peace of mind while I’m in the hospital setting, because at the end of the day with patient care, you’re not going to be able to be six feet apart from everybody that surrounds you. That’s been stated and that has been agreed upon and just said this is what being a veterinarian is, what being a being a veterinary technician is. When we’re holding a dog for a vaccine or a blood draw or whatever the test we’re doing is, even a 70-pound dog when you’re holding both ends, you’re not six feet apart. So, knowing that everybody around me at all times is getting tested twice a week really puts peace in my mind. That if there’s a possible positive, that I will have a good chance of being alerted right away so that I can quarantine myself and not add to this spread. But that in reality, if you’re showing up to work and you feel well, and everyone feels good, then there’s a really good chance that we’re all negative, and we can go about our day without being worried that we’re going to come into contact with someone who is even asymptomatically positive.
Jordan Benshea: I would say so. I’d say it’s totally fair to have that sort of sense of security, and it’s wonderful that the school has taken those measures to make sure that happens. That’s got to at least give you a little bit as you’re saying peace of mind as you’re in the midst of this crazy last year of veterinary school.
Victoria Mckaba: Absolutely. Thankfully, with the test results being so rapid, I don’t worry. For example, I got tested today, I haven’t gotten my results back yet, but I expect to get them today so that I know when I go into the hospital tomorrow, I’m walking in with a negative test within 24 hours. I know, at least for me, that I’m not contributing to this, and that I am a negative human being. Therefore, I can do my job without worry.
Jordan Benshea: That’s great. That’s why I’m so impressed. You guys are getting tested, and that’s a big part of it. Share a little bit more about how this is impacting your fourth year. I’m fascinated already.
Victoria Mckaba: It’s changed a lot. It has created for everybody involved, from the faculty to the technical staff to the students, this sense of community. We’re all looking out for each other. For us specifically, obviously, we are masked and socially distant, when possible, they’ve installed a ton of hand sanitizing stations, they obviously encourage you to wash your hands whenever you can.
Adapting to Curbside Medicine
Victoria Mckaba: We’re doing completely curbside medicine. We’re obtaining histories and any information over the phone usually the day before, and then are able to use Zoom or texting with our clinicians to update them and formulate a plan. They get dropped off at a tent outside, we meet the clients, and we just pass them off. Then we say, “okay, we’re going to take them inside do our physical exam, and we’ll call you when we’re ready to discuss what we found today”. So that’s the basis of how the hospital is and how I think a lot of veterinary hospitals, whether they’re academic or private, are running right now. The only time that clients are allowed in the building are for euthanasia. No one’s allowed to visit if their dog was in the ICU. No one is coming in and talking and sitting there in a physical exam room like everybody normally thinks of. It does limit the amount of people inside the hospital at one time, as well as limiting the amount of people who are not necessarily being tested twice a week, because you have to be a member of the university in some capacity to have access to the free testing that I just talked about. They’ve set up these pods. They called them home rooms when we first got introduced to them, but now everyone’s just calls them pods, which are designated rooms throughout the entirety of the hospital. We get one seat with a desk that is ours and it is ours for the entire year. In this room is where we are allowed to eat lunch, drink water, be unmasked, do paperwork, do client calls, do whatever we need to do, which would have usually been done in the rounds room. Unfortunately, while Illinois is doing a lot of really awesome expansion projects right now, the rounds rooms just are not big enough to fit the number of students, faculty, residents, and possible interns all in that room at the same time while abiding by a six-foot distance. So, they’ve put us in these pods in hopes to give us our own space, to be able to eat lunch to be able to do these things and not wear a mask for 12 hours straight, which I appreciate very much. But it does limit the amount of exposure that we get to our individual services because in a normal world where COVID doesn’t exist, students would sit in the rounds room all day and when their appointments would show up, they would do their appointments, and then when their appointments left, they would go back into that rounds room.
Challenges and Changes in Veterinary School
Victoria Mckaba: But when the rounds rooms are directly connected or right across the hall from where everything else is going on, if something interesting is happening, or there’s a really cool heart murmur, or this dog is, I’ve been on neurology, so I’m just thinking about neuro things like this dog has a very profound vestibular ataxia, and they want everybody to walk in and look at it so they know what it is, you lose that because when we’re not with our direct patients, we’re out in our pods. Our pods are not very close, there are a lot of office spaces and classrooms. Even one of the equine wards has been turned into a giant pod. So, we are losing a lot of secondhand exposure to some really interesting things that you might never see in a general practice setting, because they most likely are going to be referred to a specialty hospital. I think that is probably the biggest day to day impact that I’ve noticed on top of the curbside medicine. We started in curbside medicine because none of us have been doctors before, but a lot of us haven’t been techs before and probably haven’t done physical exams and gotten histories with clients in the room. Now that we’ve started with curbside medicine, when we eventually transitioned to that, I think it’s going to be a really difficult one.
Jordan Benshea: Right, and I can imagine, along with missing that sort of secondary exposure or learning opportunity, really, you’re also probably missing the community that you have, just being in that rounds room together.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, because, unfortunately, the way that they set up the pods, which I understand why they did it, we’re sitting in the same seat all year. It gets cleaned, I think they are spraying down the rooms at night, but overall, it’s the same person sitting there as opposed to a rotation. That means that the people around me are not on the same rotation as me, and while we’re still together, and we’re able to talk and it is nice to say, “Oh, how’s internal medicine? How’s equine surgery? How’s dermatology? How are all these rotations?”, there is a sense of community and immersing yourself into a specialty or into a certain rotation when all of the people around you are talking about their cases, and all of the clinicians are around you reading reports and saying, “Look at this x ray and look at this MRI.” So, it is a sense of community, it’s a sense of being immersed, and getting the full experience as well as that secondhand learning that I was talking about earlier.
Jordan Benshea: Right. That’s a big part of school as well, just having those what seems to be small conversations about what each other is going through, but that is also a bonding experience, and it makes you feel closer to your colleagues and your classmates when you have these shared experiences. Are these pods sort of cubicle like? Can you give us a visual?
Victoria Mckaba: They’re all very different depending on the room that you were assigned to. For example, my pod is a classroom that has been converted into a home room. We each have a desk, it’s a pretty good-sized desk, I’m not going to lie, it’s probably the size of like a queen size bed lengthwise. We are all six feet apart, taped on the floor where your chair is allowed to be. We can’t unmask unless we’re inside of the red square. There’s only nine of us in there, so it’s a pretty small group. However, in the equine wards, like I was saying before, they have set up these folding tables with marked seats of the appropriate distance. There’s over, I believe, 50 students in that pod spread out, but within like Tetris type of table setup is the best way I can probably describe it. So that everybody is safe. One of the other pods that we’re using is our classroom from last year. There are marked seats that are the appropriate distance apart. Students who are assigned to that pod are able to just use the folding chairs and the desk that’s associated with that chair for their computer or their notebook or whatever they need. It’s hard to explain because each of them is so different, but that’s the basic overview. It’s all taped off and very easily marked to see this is an appropriate place for you to be, and this is not an appropriate place for you to be.
Jordan Benshea: Lots of rules, understandably.
Victoria Mckaba: Getting updates, and they keep updating the policies. Every week, they have been sending emails out saying this is the updated policy, this is what we’re going to be able to do if someone tests positive. It’s an ever-changing situation, and so, at the end of the day, if something changes, they need to let us know.
Jordan Benshea: Right, absolutely.
Victoria’s Role in SAVMA During the Pandemic
Jordan Benshea: One thing that you have been very active in is SAVMA. You’re currently active in that as well. Would you tell us a little bit about your role with SAVMA, and how you’re feeling the impact of this pandemic in the midst of that role?
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, so I started as a chapter president at my individual local chapter, obviously, at Illinois. Last year, I was elected to the National Executive Board as the chapter president, Representative-elect. I’ve been serving in that position all year since last summer. COVID made it very difficult for me to get the full experience from this position as well. I keep saying that phrase over and over again, but it’s really true. Everything has been converted into an online model. Right when COVID hit in March, we were literally two days out from attending our SAVMA symposium, which was hosted by Cornell University. I want to shout out to their SAVMA chapter for all the amazing and hard work that they put into planning an incredible event that unfortunately had to be canceled at quite literally the very last minute. We, very quickly and in a matter of a few days, put together an online conference just for our official meetings. The conference itself did not go virtual, but the chapter president and the House of Delegates both went online, because there’s a lot of business that needs to get done at the specific time points in the year. We were hoping and praying and everything we could possibly put the good vibes into, that the AVMA convention was going to be in person, which was supposed to be in San Diego this year. Unfortunately, that went virtual as well. The convention was able to switch to a virtual platform. I’m pretty sure that they actually just wrapped up their convention last week, but we did have a few more months to plan a virtual meeting for both the President and the Executive Board and the House of Delegates. So, between myself and the trooper who was above me before I was elected to the full-time position, as well as the President and the president-elect, we talked for months in conjunction with the AVMA on how to make this the most engaging two-day conference on Zoom that you can make it. Sitting on Zoom for eight hours is no fun to anybody, and we wanted to make it an enjoyable experience. We wanted to get people breaks. We were able to have lunch sponsors one day, so everybody got a $20 gift card to a lunch delivery service of their choosing, whether that’s Grubhub, Uber Eats, Postmates, or whatever it was. We were able to provide some lunch, and some fun speakers to come and talk to us. Then it gets down to the business. It’s been really difficult because part of the reason why I wanted to continue my term in SAVMA and move to the national position was so that I could continue to build these very strong relationships with students from other schools. I think that’s always been my favorite part of SAVMA, going to these conferences, coming out feeling like I could tackle the world, like I could solve all of the problems in veterinary medicine. Our generation of veterinarians are going to be the ones that change it for everybody else. It’s been really difficult. Not only just losing that aspect, something that you’ve been looking forward to and planning for almost years or very many months, but also just feeling like I haven’t seen some of these people who I consider my very good friends now in over a year. That’s really hard for me, as a human, because I value that quality time with people, whether that’s one on one, going to lunch, just sitting down and catching up. We’ve all been utilizing FaceTime and Zoom as much as we can, but it’s just not the same. Nobody’s pretending that it is. So, that’s been the hardest part for me is just feeling like there’s so many people across the country that I love, and I want to see them so badly, and I haven’t been able to. I was supposed to see them three times this year at three different conferences that have now all gone online. That’s been really difficult.
Jordan Benshea: That lack of community engagement is so challenging because we as humans, they’ve done studies that there’s so many things that impact us and impact our health, but loneliness has a huge, huge, not just mental health impact, but also a huge physical health impact. I think a lot of people are coming, Definitely within the first three months of COVID, since then things have opened up, closed, etc., but depending on where you live, it shifts, of course, it’s always shifting everywhere. That lack of human connection is so challenging, and I don’t think anybody would disagree that Zoom definitely doesn’t fill that role. Well, I’m seeing somebody on a computer!
Victoria Mckaba: Absolutely. If and when, and I hope we can meet, I am a hugger. I tell that to everybody. Unless I’m in like the utmost professional setting, like if I were to be greeting clients, I definitely wouldn’t be hugging my clients, but everybody else I’m like, I’m so sorry, but I’m a hugger. This is just who I am as a human. That’s why I’m so thankful that I was able to go home and be with my parents, and be with my partner, because I do not do well on my own. I do not do well being in solitude, and while quarantine was definitely difficult, it was nice to be surrounded by the people that I love. I just can’t wait till I can like hug people again and not be like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I promise that I’m negative! I’ve been getting tested! I promise that I’m okay. I go to shake people’s hands, and I’m like, oh, wait, I can’t do that anymore type of feeling that I just absolutely hate.
Jordan Benshea: Yes, and that’s really hard. As kids were taught to shake somebody’s hand, look them in the eye, and I started wondering is that going to totally go by the wayside? I don’t know.
Victoria Mckaba: It honestly might. It wouldn’t surprise me if this very young generation who are being taught what I would call polite social manners are not going to learn that because they’re going to be like, well, I don’t want to touch this person’s hand. I don’t know the last time that they’ve washed their hand. They’re thinking this in this time of pandemic while their brains are developing. I can’t imagine what that would be like, especially I’ve been thinking a lot of my cousins, family, and friends who have young children and what it would be like to be raising kids in this time. I don’t know. It’d be something out of a movie.
Maintaining Community and Engagement
Jordan Benshea: With this need for community, is there something that your school is doing or that SAVMA is good at doing and pivoting to help you guys give you that sense of community? Are there things that you’ve seen that are being done that are helping in some way?
Victoria Mckaba: Yes, I think that SAVMA has a ton that we’ve been doing, especially since the beginning of COVID, both in resources and trying to keep people engaged with veterinary medicine as a whole. I know that Laura, our gee pole, worked her butt off during quarantine to put on amazing, amazing events. She planned a 5k, a virtual 5k I should say, between us and two other health professional organizations to raise money to go towards the CDC for COVID funding. We also put on a pollinators week talking about honeybee health and resources for people who are interested in that type of work, environmental work, talking about bats and all the different types of pollinators that exists on our planet. At least as the chipper, me and Talita, who was the chipper above me had hosted a few social Zooms with some of our chapter presidents, where we hosted a game night. We hosted what we called presentation night, and the gist of it was you have to give a three-minute presentation on whatever you want. Doesn’t matter, could be anything in the world. It has to be three minutes or less. It was really fun to see what people pick. For example, there was one, “why leggings or pants?” which I 100% agree with. I did mine on why New Jersey is the best state in the country, a small personal bias, but it’s fine. It was really, really fun. It was an easy, relaxed night, a lot of us hadn’t had a lot of school responsibilities yet, so we were able to unwind, talk, catch up, and get updates from other schools to see what they were doing. So, we’ve been trying to keep that sense of community throughout at least our chapter president. We have our chapter summit coming up here in September that unfortunately, also is virtual.
Virtual Escape Room Excitement
Victoria Mckaba: It was supposed to be up in Schaumburg at the AVMA headquarters. We are doing a virtual escape room on Friday night. I’m really excited to see how that goes, and how that will impact their team building on a virtual platform, because a lot of team building initiatives and retreats that people go on are based on physical trust. There’s the fall exercise, for example, or people will go zip lining, and you have to trust that your partner is going to catch you and you’re not going to be hanging from a rope. Even escape rooms in person, you’re looking for clues, you’re looking for ways out of the room. You’re problem solving together.
Challenges of Virtual Team Building
Victoria Mckaba: So, I’m really excited to see how this works on a virtual platform, especially for our presidents because they are going to have to build that same sense of leadership and community within their individual executive boards, and 95% of them, if not all of them, are on a virtual platform at this point. That’s really hard. That’s really difficult when you’re not all sitting in the same room and you’re on Zoom. It’s easy to mute yourself or stop your video or step away without “people really realizing” and not being 100% engaged. Whereas when you’re in a meeting, and you’re sitting there and you’re looking somebody in the eye, it’s very difficult for them to not really pay attention to you. So, I really hope something like that is going to help them take this new virtual reality that we’re pretty much living in and really be able to apply it so that they can still make positive changes at their schools, while their schools are changing constantly.
Jordan Benshea: For sure, this is definitely something that makes even the realities of the current time more challenging and finding ways to create that sort of sense of community. I love the idea of a virtual escape room. I didn’t even know that was an option. I’m going to be looking into that for an upcoming board meeting potentially.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, I didn’t know it was a thing either. Jackie Ross on the AVMA said we’re thinking about this virtual escape room. I was like virtual what? She was like, yeah, virtual escape room. I’ve never even been to a real escape room, I guess we’ll do it virtually. I’m excited.
Jordan Benshea: Well, that’s great, and just getting innovative with things because I think everybody these days are asking what can we do to engage people?
Impact of COVID-19 on Conferences
Jordan Benshea: We were completely set to go to Cornell for SAVMA, and we were at the point where I think it was the week before we were supposed to leave, and we had everything shipped. It got canceled, I think it was the right call based on how things were going, but our hearts were just breaking for the students. That is my personal favorite conference that we do every year. I just love meeting all the students. I feel like everybody’s so engaged and so enthusiastic, and so authentically happy to be there. It was definitely a shuffle. We’re looking forward to whatever SAVMA decides to do next year, whether it’s virtual or not. We love supporting SAVMA and working with the students because it’s just great to have colleagues that have this different perspective, and we love engaging with the students.
Support from Donors and Community
Victoria Mckaba: I thank you for all your support because our donors have really stepped up during this pandemic. I was talking about that lunch delivery service was still provided by our donors. I believe it was the AVMF, although I’m not 100% sure. It means a lot to us to have outside entities support us that really care about the students, because that’s really who we serve. We’re here as a voice, and to make sure that the students are getting the most they possibly can, not just out of their SAVMA membership, but out of veterinary school as a whole. So, it is really, really nice when I get to meet people at these conferences who are so interested to hear about what is going on in the veterinary school world right now. A lot of these veterinarians who graduated school 10 years ago, even Illinois grads say, “Oh, my goodness, I heard about this new curriculum, can you tell me about it? It sounds amazing”. They’re still really interested even though they’ve been veterinarians in the profession for 10 -15 years. I love those conferences. As I said earlier, it’s been really difficult to miss out on those opportunities as a professional and as just a person.
Jordan Benshea: Absolutely, there’s a lot of I keep thinking about how much has been missed because of COVID, birthdays, celebrations, weddings, etc., but there’s so much that just continues to come up. Those parts that we miss are not things that you can recreate. Hopefully they will happen at a later date, but a lot of them are those experiences that really enrich us as humans and as professionals. It’ll be wonderful when we’re able to gather again and encourage that sense of community.
Victoria Mckaba: Yes, I’m really hoping that we get to go to Kansas State, because it will be my last SAVMA symposium as a student. I’m praying. I’m sending all the good vibes. I’m trying to do it differently this time, because it didn’t work for AVMA convention. So, I’m going to try a different strategy. I’m really, really hoping that we can go, but of course, I understand that the safety of the students come first. The safety of the staff and the faculty who would be running the lectures in the wet labs at Kansas State come first. So, if they don’t feel like it is the smart decision to host an in-person conference where hundreds of students are traveling from across the entire country, nobody can blame them.
Jordan Benshea: Right. I think that was one of the biggest concerns of SAVMA from this year was what if everybody gathers and then people get sick, and they take it back to all the schools? That would be horrible. Nobody would want that.
Victoria Mckaba: That would be terrible.
Jordan Benshea: It would be absolutely horrific.
Concerns About Clinical Training
Jordan Benshea: We’ve discussed how this fourth year is starting for you, and the impact that it’s had and your lack of ability to hug. As we look at the future, how do you think COVID is going to have a long-term impact on your veterinary career, or do you think it will?
Victoria Mckaba: So, at the current moment, I am hopeful that it will not. Yes, I lost time out of my clinical year, but ultimately, in a 25 – 30 plus long career, is four and a half months of clinical training going to truly matter? I would really like to hope not. But there is this other part of me that always worries about the what ifs. It starts with, well, what if the country shuts down again and the second wave, which everybody’s been talking about happens, and we are once again, sent off campus? Whether or not we convert to an online format for the younger class years doesn’t have as much of an impact because they can still get their lectures and still take their exams online. It’s not the full experience. It’s not what they signed up for, but it’s still the same information. What’s unique about fourth year is there’s this fun little clause in the COE that is 30 weeks of in person training required to graduate and hold a license and that clause which says right there it’s got to be in person. If we’re kicked off campus again, and we are on an online format, we can do all of the online rotations that make our heart happy, but we are not going to be able to fulfill that requirement. So that brings up the question, well, what if graduation gets delayed?
Jordan Benshea: You mentioned COE. Can you explain to us what that is so that our listeners can be up to date as well?
Victoria Mckaba: Of course. The COE is the Council on Education, which is a board that is hosted through AVMA. The AVMA is the overarching accreditation organization. That was a terrible way to describe that, but they are basically the group of people who visit the schools and say the students here are receiving an adequate education to then become veterinarians when they graduate. Obviously, the other part of that is passing the NAVLE, which the COE he has nothing to do with, but they are the ones who give these overarching points in what students have to fulfill from first to fourth year to basically be able to graduate.
Jordan Benshea: Have there been discussions started that due to the pandemic, that specific wording of ‘in person’ might shift?
Victoria Mckaba: I don’t know the answer to that, unfortunately, even though I work very closely with SAVMA, SAVMA is still its own entity. I have no idea if that’s been talked about. However, I would be very surprised if that were to be changed, because personally, I feel like 30 weeks is cutting it close. When I was originally scheduled, I believe when I did the math, it was like 48 weeks of hands-on clinical rotations. I think now we’re down to 36, I believe. We have some wiggle room, but ultimately, I still don’t feel like if it were to be less than that, that I would feel comfortable graduating and going out into practice, and that really becomes the question.
Future of Veterinary Internships
Victoria Mckaba: I’m somebody, and we can talk about this in a minute, I am somebody who wants to pursue the match and internship and possible specialization afterwards. So, my training is going to continue, but for a large majority of my classmates, they are not going to do that. They are going to go into general practice and become associates at these different hospitals. I don’t know that 30 weeks of training is sufficient enough, or anything less I should say than 30 weeks, would be sufficient enough to really have these students feel like they are adequately prepared to be veterinarians. I don’t know, maybe, but it would surprise me if that was, I guess I would say excused for our class.
Jordan Benshea: That’s understandable. Okay. So that could be a shift, because right now you’re at 36 weeks. It says that you need 30, and that seems in a normal world, like a lot of wiggle room, but not in a COVID world.
Victoria Mckaba: Right, and that’s the scary part, because it took from March when you really think about it, we were sent off campus and told to quarantine when the case numbers were low. New ones were popping up and they were occurring at a very exponential rate, which I think was really the big panic of ‘everybody stay home’ because we don’t know how long this has already been going on without these precautions. So now we really need to start taking them very seriously. It took from March to August for the proper precautions and comfortability with the numbers for the provost of our college, for the Governor of Illinois, for a lot of colleges around the United States, to feel comfortable having their students come back to campus. We don’t have four and a half months of wiggle room. Yes, six weeks is a long time, but in the grand scheme of what this virus has already proven it can do, six weeks is absolutely nothing.
Jordan Benshea: Absolutely. So, you’re seeing this and you’re thinking, okay, if I look at potential graduation, [you will be graduating, when you look at your graduation next year and you see the things that you want to accomplish, like matching, etc., how does COVID play into your thought process there?
Victoria Mckaba: Right now, it really isn’t. As I said, externships have been hard to come by. I’ve lost a lot, a lot have been canceled on me, a lot of hospitals just I think don’t want to run the risk of whether that be a student or whoever coming into the hospital and possibly exposing their staff. That is a whole other field. That’s probably going to be a whole other episode, what a veterinary practice would do if they tested positive. So, it has been frustrating because I was expecting to be able to go to these hospitals and flush them out, see if I would be a good fit, and see if I would be happy there. But it’s internship and internship is notoriously very difficult. For me, I was thinking about it from a personality standpoint, would I be able to fit in, because I’m going to be working 60-to-80-hour weeks every week. I’m going to be on call a lot. I’m going to be in the hospital late night, early morning, seeing a lot of patients. That’s inevitable, but am I going to enjoy coming into work every day to see these people and work with them, and feel like I could form really strong bonds with them? So, I’m hopeful that I have some externships still scheduled. I don’t know if they will get cancelled. If they do, again, nothing I can do about it. I will just continue to look for other opportunities. I’m still going to apply. Match has been delayed by about a month, which is helpful for gathering all of the materials, recommendations, CV, and your letter of intent. Ultimately, I’m still going to apply, and by March 1rst, I will, in theory, know where I’ve matched. I will graduate in May, and I will start my internship some time in June of 2021. Where that could potentially go over as I was saying before, is well what happens if graduation gets delayed? There are a few possibilities. I don’t know that anybody is planning for it at the moment, which is very hard for someone like me who likes to plan things very, very, very well in advance, but what is happens to my internship if I don’t graduate until I don’t know, let’s just say August? Just pick a random date. So, I have an August graduation. Do I not have any available internship? You assume that if Illinois is graduating late, then probably all of the colleges are graduating late because we’re not an isolated state. The internships are going to need interns. That’s why they have interns. They want to teach, and they want to have people be exposed to different specialties and they open up those positions because they want people. So, do they say okay, you can start as soon as you graduate. For someone like me who wants to specialize and applying for residency sometime in the late fall, it’s like this whole vicious cycle all over again where I’m basically starting my internship and having to say, well, I’m applying in a couple months, so could you please evaluate me and tell me if you would be willing to write me a strong recommendation? How does that impact the following year’s residency class? Do I only do what would be nine months of an internship instead of a true 12 years or 12 months, sorry, internship. 12 years of an internship would be I don’t know if anybody with a sane mind would do that! Twelve months of an internship, or do I just do nine months or do the residencies get pushed back? Now I’m on this September-to-September timeframe, and, again, I don’t think anybody’s really planning for this. I’m sure there are some people, I’m not the only one in this position and I’m sure there are some people who are thinking about it. I don’t think any solutions are going to be made until it is actively happening, but as a type A hyper planner, I can’t help but have it cross my mind. How that impacts me personally, and what does that mean for my relationship? What does that mean for my family? What does that mean for the goals that I have for myself that aren’t necessarily related to veterinary medicine? All of this I could go on and it could be this terrible rabbit hole that I sometimes have to pull myself out of, because you can get lost in what ifs. What if this happens? What if I don’t match here and then what if I match somewhere else and I’m there for three years? Then I have to come back and find a job. Where do I get a job? What if nobody’s hiring because of this pandemic, and the possible systemic effects it has years later on all of these small businesses, veterinary medicine and not. Again, it’s like a rabbit hole and it’s a terrible place to be in mentally. So, I try not to do that very often, but it so definitely crossed my mind.
Jordan Benshea: It is very hard to live in uncertainty. When I think about things like that, it’s so easy to go into the what ifs, and I tend to try there’s a line I’ve heard, which is all you can do is make the best decision you can with the information you have at hand. That sounds good, but it’s also so hard when so many things rely on all these different aspects. It’s this game in our head of how do we find solace in what we can respond to, and we can do right here right now. At the same time, almost get okay with the uncertainty of not knowing and focusing our efforts on the things that we do know for sure, the real tangibles that are in our life. That’s really challenging, and I can imagine really, really hard as a veterinary student, especially a fourth-year. I almost think that it’s harder for the class of 2021 than it was for the class of 2020, because it almost feels like the class of 2020 made it out just before this all got so crazy.
Victoria Mckaba: They did, and I’m not going to say that they didn’t lose things. Not having the graduation ceremony is terrible, but it’s a real possibility for us, too. No one’s just going to say next spring everything’s going to be fine, and that all of our parents, our grandparents, our family, and our friends are going to be able to gather in a stadium and watch us walk across the stage. I don’t know if I’m going to get a graduation, and if I do get a ceremony are my parents going to be allowed to be in attendance, or are they going to be watching on Zoom while it’s just me and my class there? That’s a whole other thing that I have been thinking about. But yeah, they did. They escaped by the skin of their teeth. They were like, oh, let me just get out right now. I’m going to practice.
Jordan Benshea: At the same time, the stories that you hear from the class of 2020, there was definitely as we said, there was a lot of challenges there as well. Right? They’re just different challenges.
Advice for New Veterinary Students
Jordan Benshea: So what kind of advice, along the lines of classes having different challenges, the class of 2024 who are now just entering veterinary school, what advice would you give to yourself, if you were starting veterinary school this fall?
Victoria Mckaba: I think the theme of 2020 that I’ve decided on is adaptability. This pandemic has forced me to be adaptable and to take things at face value. I think my advice, especially for the first-year class would just be to enjoy the ride. Veterinary school has its ups, its downs, it’s in betweens. Sometimes you don’t even know what day it is, but at the end of the day, you’re in the most amazing profession filled with some of the smartest people on this planet. People who are going to make positive change. People who are going to represent you and represent I should say on like a policy standpoint. There are going to be people and mentors your whole life who are going to ask you about what this is going to be like for you. I think you just need to remember why you chose to go to veterinary school in the first place. Sticking to your why is probably what’s gotten me through. It’s because I love this profession and the people that I’ve met in it. The class of 2024, much like the class of 2021 and all of the classes in between, have something in common now that a lot of veterinarians while they’re going through this pandemic didn’t have. They’re going to see changes, and they’re going to have new experiences that I didn’t even have. Like I was saying earlier, our Illinois students are very lucky to have eight weeks of clinical experience in their first and their second year. I’m pretty confident that those experiences are going to go online now which is not what they signed up for. Probably last year when they were filling out the VMCAS and applying to veterinary schools, they said I want to go to Illinois, because I’m going to be in the clinic in the veterinary teaching hospital in October of my first year. That’s a really hard thing to lose. That’s a really difficult loss to explain, because, again, it’s not the university’s fault. It’s not like the university is saying, well, we just don’t want first-years in the hospital anymore, so we’re just going to make them online. They have to support each other. They have to band together. They have to take each and every day that they are still learning and that their teachers are still putting together lectures and materials for them. At the end of the day, they’re going to graduate and be the most prepared, more prepared than I am, the most prepared veterinarian at that time. That’s the best part about veterinary medicine is that each class that graduates is better than the class that came before it. I don’t think that is just because they’re online this year, and possibly online in future years, that that’s going to be any different.
Jordan Benshea: I really like what you said about sticking to your why and your purpose. That if you focus on that, that’s what can drive you.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, I think that it took me a long time to really find my core why, because I had always again, like I talked about earlier in the episode I was a kid that said I was always going to be a veterinarian. On my eighth-grade projects, when people were asking what do you want to be when you grow up, I wrote veterinarian. My mom still has them in our attic. It took me until I got here, and I met the people around me.
Finding Support and Community
Victoria Mckaba: I have the most supportive and best group of friends who are also going to be my colleagues here than I’ve ever had in my entire life. It’s a very humbling experience, to say the least. It’s amazing to feel so supported by a group of people, just so unconditionally. If I asked my friend, if I was having a rough day on clinics, and I was just like, hey, could you please run to McDonald’s and grab me a burger because I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m not going to have a chance to. Any one of my friends I don’t doubt would be like, yeah, absolutely. I’ll be there in 10 minutes. That is such a humbling experience that I’ve never had before vet school, and that I think I will carry throughout my career and approach that to every opportunity that I’m presented with. Whether that’s internship, residency, my first full time job, whatever it is, I want to be that person that someone else can always count on. That’s what I’ve found here, and I consider myself very lucky for it.
Jordan Benshea: That’s a very, very special thing to have in a veterinary class and with colleagues and with other humans. It’s wonderful that you found that there in your veterinary school experience and really in that you’ve found these lifelong friends, and colleagues. I love how you put it, that they’ll be your mentors and your friends, and that you’ll continue to explore together and expand and grow and learn and what a wonderful gift to get out of veterinary school.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, and there’s definitely been a lot of hardships. There’s been a lot of hard times and hard exams, and there’s been a ton of really low points. Meeting them and having them as my colleagues, it makes it, I don’t know, it makes it all worth it at the end of the day.
Outro
Jordan Benshea: That’s wonderful to hear, Victoria. I really appreciate you’re sharing so much of your story with us and giving us some insight into what it’s like being a fourth-year. I like to end the episodes by asking a fun question, which is do you have a secret talent or something you enjoy doing which many might not know what that is, or something that is a favorite thing of yours to do and spend your time?
Victoria Mckaba: Well, I definitely don’t have a secret talent, but I was a competitive gymnast growing up, and fitness is a big part of my life. I don’t think that that’s a secret, necessarily. I’m a pretty open book. In terms of a human being, I don’t really hold back on a lot of things about my life. I wear my heart on my sleeve and give my all to everybody. So, it’s not a secret, but I haven’t tried in a long time and by a long time, I mean, like, two or three years, but I’m pretty sure if I tried, I could probably still do a backflip, which I’m pretty proud of at 25 years old.
Jordan Benshea: Obviously now you’re going to have to try and report back.
Victoria Mckaba: I know. Now, I’ve set myself up for failure here.
Jordan Benshea: Now, what we’re going to need is a video of you doing the backflip as a way to promote this episode. I mean, obviously.
Victoria Mckaba: I’m going to be like crashing and burning and eat grass. And I’m going to be like, I did it! Watch this VIN Foundation episode!
Jordan Benshea: There you go. Perfect promotion.
Victoria Mckaba: My veterinary goal!
Jordan Benshea: Exactly.
Victoria Mckaba: Yeah, that’s I guess that’s like, that’s pretty much the most interesting thing about me.
Jordan Benshea: Well, I look forward to seeing this video now. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. I really appreciate it. I know that you’re extremely busy, and I’m really rooting for you. I hope that this year that you get the 36 hours or that you get at least the 30 hours that you need.
Victoria Mckaba: Are you talking about weeks?
Jordan Benshea: Yeah, sorry, 36 weeks. Yes, that’s what I call a COVID brain. So, I really hope that you get the 30 weeks that you need, and I’m rooting for you for things to go well. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us.
Victoria Mckaba: Well, thank you so much for allowing me to vent about all of this. To be honest, it was like a nice little therapeutic zen session about COVID. We try not to talk about it amongst our friends, because it’s just so evident in our faces. So, it is very nice to be able to talk about it in hopefully what was a helpful and educational way and not necessarily in a sad and frustrating way. I hope that anybody who listens to this can take away that it is going to be okay. No matter where you are in your veterinary career, whether you’re a pre-vet scared about applying to, or a veterinarian out in practice in 10 years, that our community is amazing and no matter who you are, where you practice, or what you practice, we’re all here to support each other. If I can be a support system to anybody, I will be more than happy to do that, because I think that sharing our stories and talking about our grief and talking about the things we’ve lost makes it real. That if you can come out the other side a stronger human, then somebody else thinks that they can do it too, and that’s, I think the biggest thing.
Jordan Benshea: I completely agree with you and I 100% agree with what you said. Thank you for offering that support to your colleagues and doing what you’re doing and helping care for our animals. I, for one, am very grateful. So, thanks so much, Victoria.
Victoria Mckaba: Thank you, Jordan.
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the Episode Notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.
