Tune in as we chat with the School of Veterinary Medicine and UC Davis Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Programs, Dr. Karl Jandrey. We share a glimpse into a day of his life, the ways he keeps balanced, how UC Davis Veterinary Medicine is pivoting amidst a pandemic, and their effort to keep students educated and engaged.
In this episode we mention the following resources:
- UC Davis Veterinary Medicine: https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/
- School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis: https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/dvm/dvm-program
You may learn more about the VIN Foundation, on the website, or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
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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 Karl Jandrey, DVM
Jordan Benshea: This episode, we’re having a discussion with Dr. Karl Jandrey, the UC Davis veterinary school associate dean of students and programs. We share a glimpse into a day of his life, the ways he keeps balanced, how UC Davis is pivoting amidst a pandemic and their effort to keep students educated and engaged. Thank you for listening. Hi, Karl, thanks so much for being with us today.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
Jordan Benshea: I like to start each of these podcasts and ask how were you first introduced to the VIN Foundation?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That’s really hard to answer because I’ve known VIN for a long time. In fact, I knew Paul from 1993 when I first came to Davis, and I knew the company and I knew what VIN was all about. Then, the VIN Foundation blossomed from the initial foundations of the Veterinary Information Network. I don’t really know when I first knew about the Foundation, but to me, it’s just part of the same extension of the services that VIN provides to its veterinarians.
Jordan Benshea: Yes, Dr. Paul Pion is co-founder of the Veterinary Information Network, VIN, and one of the VIN Foundation board members. I think that probably makes sense since the VIN Foundation was born out of an idea from VIN. They are separate entities, but same values and core mission to support veterinary colleagues.
Early Influences and Childhood
Jordan Benshea: When did you first realize you wanted to be a veterinarian? Was there an ‘aha’ moment or was it more gradual for you?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I think that my earliest memories of childhood when things were not pushed upon me but suggested, it was I remember first grade. I’m a first-generation student, so my parents never went to college. I am the youngest of three kids. I was in first grade, and my mom had one of those parent teacher conferences, came home, and was discussing me with my dad. I remember, they’re like, Mrs. Carr thinks that Karl needs to go to college, and we need to do as much as we can to get him to college. I’m like, I don’t know what that means. I’m seven years old. Mrs. Molnar never said that anything when I was six, but Mrs. Carr said that when I was seven, okay, fine. So, I have to go to college is what my parents are trying to say, and I think that was always on their radar. They were always going to do as much as they can to ensure that my brother, my sister, and I had everything that they didn’t have and potentially more. They were very, very giving that way. Not educated, like I said, being just graduated high school but never went to further degrees beyond that, but they were super smart and super common sensical. They basically were like we’re just going to make sure you’re getting to college. They did what they could to save. They gave us all the opportunities. Part of all of that, I think, was that the town we lived in and the people we hung out with, 4-H was a big thing. My brother was in 4-H, and I was going to join 4-H and had to come up with some kind of project. My colleagues in my class had a sheep farm, and that was sort of like, well, they’ll have sheep. Why not? My dad was like, yeah, we’ll have sheep. My mom’s like, nothing in the house. I don’t want animals in the house, but anything outside is good. So, my first sort of revelation, I think, when I was going to be a vet is when I was eight. I got a lamb. Her name was Blatz. She was sort of the golden retriever of sheep. She followed me everywhere because of course, she was the only lamb in the entire barn. So, I was it and I was her world. She followed me everywhere. It was kind of like having a dog. I was in 4-H, she was my project. I was going to do it right. I had to learn as much as I can, and I was like, I could do this. Taking care of animals was pretty fun. So, I think about that time I’m like, I’m going to be a vet. It makes sense. Mrs. Carr told me I have to go to college. My parents agreed with her. I got this ewe and now I’m like, I think being a vet is going to be a cool thing. To that point, I never actually remember ever going to a vet, seeing a vet, having a vet come to the property to look at our animals, but it was just I guess the thing that you do when you’re a kid. If I’m taking care of this animal, I get to do it right. Who does it right? A veterinarian. So, I think that’s the way I became interested in being a veterinarian, and it never changed really from that time. I said I was going to be a vet. I’ve always had my eye on that prize. It’s not really an exciting story, but I think that it was pivotal when I was seven or eight.
Jordan Benshea: That’s a great story. Those experiences that you have as children with pets make a huge impact for some people, and clearly this did for you.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: All the sheep were named after beers, which is really weird. I don’t know why a seven- or eight-year-old kid is naming all the sheep after beers.
Jordan Benshea: And you never waivered from that. You decided at that point when you were eight years old, and you stuck with it.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Sure. Yeah, I did. We had a small gentleman’s farm. We had chickens, ducks, rabbits, sheep, of course, and eventually, we got pigs. It was all in the name of 4-H, loving animals, doing right by animals. It was also sort of farm-to-fork. We were actually eating the chickens, the chicken eggs, the pigs were slaughtered at market. It was all part of living on the farm when my family moved out of the suburbs. It was sort of a lifestyle, but the animals were pretty integral to all of that. It was I think, for me, my brother, and my sister, [although my sister wasn’t into the animals as much, my brother definitely was], it was the thing we did. It was our chores. It was how we defined ourselves amongst our family.
Jordan Benshea: Also, what a great way to connect you to our food system. So many people these days are just so, so much further removed from that. When you have that at a young age, you get a much better grasp on what it means, how that process works, and a lot of responsibility.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yeah, both the responsibility of caring for those animals in the best way possible so that they remain healthy, so that they can make you healthy later on when they serve their purpose, but also, it was a community building thing, because I can tell you, we had far more eggs than we ever needed. We built our community because people are always stopping by to get eggs. My mother and my great aunt would always come over when we were culling the laying herd, the laying chickens. We would take care of all of the respectful slaughtering and processing of the birds. I remember working with my grandmother and my great aunt, who were both from Germany, and they did this when they were a child. So, it just seemed like normal to pass it down the generations. To learn how to pluck feathers and inspect the insides of these chickens as it’s all being taken care of. It was a really bizarro childhood, I would have to say. I don’t think everyone has experienced that kind of stuff, but that experience for sure teaches you a lot about animal husbandry, animal care, and definitely about animal advocacy because they were integral to our family’s health. We also had a garden. We took care of making sure the vegetables were growing. My parents were sort of organic gardeners at the time, because it was the 70s and that was totally cool. We would have a bumper crop of green beans. Next thing you know, my mom’s canning green beans for the winter, because Ohio gets cold, and you have no fresh fruits. I thought, what the heck, why don’t you just go to the store and buy a can of beans? Why do you have to can your own beans? I was thinking to myself, why would anyone ever do that? Why would anyone grow their own stuff and process it? What a pain? That’s a lot of trouble, and then of course who does that now? Like, if I see rotting fruit on a tree in my neighborhood, I’m like, hey, can I pick your fruit because I need to make raspberry jam or peach jelly or something? Because I can’t let it go to waste, and now I’m that person. I’m the one who’s canning, fresh fruits and vegetables for later.
Jordan Benshea: I do similar things, so I completely understand.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I am a product of my environment.
Journey to Veterinary School
Jordan Benshea: In your current role, the UC Davis veterinary school of medicine Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Programs, did I get that correct?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yes, that’s right. That’s one of my jobs.
Jordan Benshea: That’s one of your jobs. Can you share with us a little bit about your path from you’re eight and you decide, yeah, I like this, I’m going to be a vet, I’m supposed to go to college, and that will check that box and therefore this is clearly going to be my path. Can you give us a little insight into your story as to how you go from that to where you are now?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Sure, how much time do you have?
Jordan Benshea: However much you want to share.
Professional Path and Mentorship
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Well, let’s see Northeast Ohio, age eight thinking about being a vet, you need to find veterinary experiences, and at that time, like I said, I never had met a vet before. Eventually, I would have met vets. There was one in our town. There’s one in the next town over and there was one who was a board-certified specialist. He was an ophthalmologist, and he lived down the street from us, and he went to our church. So, Chuck Parshall is what I would call my mentor who was that go to guy for anything that I needed to know or think about veterinary medicine. I think I was 12 and I’m like, hey, Dr. Parshall, I really want to be a vet and when do you have a job for me? I’d love to come and work with you. He’s like, you’re only 12, call me back in a couple of years. So of course, I kept doing all my 4-H stuff and doing as much as I can staying close to as much veterinary medicine as I could, but you know, I’m 12 so it’s kind of backburner stuff. Then I think he hired me at 14 to start cleaning the clinic, mowing the lawn of the clinic, and all that kind of stuff. I think I was about 16 when I was given animal responsibilities. Everything in his clinic, I think I got to do – from bookkeeping, to being a receptionist, to being the janitor, to being the technician, to being his surgical assistant. He just trained me all the time and I worked with him from 14, but really from 16 animal handling until I left Ohio when I graduated vet school. I worked with him every minute I could, weekends, holidays. He was always welcoming to say, yeah, if you’re here and you want to work, I’ll put you to work. I left Ohio when I was 25 and graduated Ohio State vet school and came to California. He was my go-to guy. He was the veterinarian by which I rated all other veterinarians. He was it. Of course, he’s a board-certified specialist. He was a Davis grad, and he was one of the founders of the ophthalmology college. So, he had a lot of experience and a lot of worldly wisdom to give me from across the entire country, from general practice to specialty medicine to army and to all these other facets. He also gave me a lot of connections to other people in the veterinary industry to gain more experiences in other areas. He was like if you’re going to go to vet school, you shouldn’t just work for a vet ophthalmologist. You should explore other things, because you may not want to be a veterinary ophthalmologist. You might want to do racetrack medicine or something other. I was like okay, yeah, so he hooked me up with other places to get other experiences. I was always very animal centric, and any experienced that revolved around animals, I was like, for sure I’m going, I’ll check it out. He probably helped me more than anybody with the professional part of wanting to go to vet school. Of course, my parents were certainly supportive 100% of the time. They never wanted me to do anything that they did. They thought their work was boring, and I would be bored with it. They wanted me to explore and do what I wanted to do, and they were like, go do it. So having parents who are super supportive, having a mentor who’s super excited to share his passion about the profession with you, I was sitting pretty to make it really easy to get to Ohio State for my undergrad degree, which was actually in poultry science. That’s maybe another long story. I got into vet school after three years of undergrad and finished my bachelor’s while I was in vet school, so that I finished both degrees, my bachelor’s in poultry science and my veterinary degree in June of ‘92. That’s when I also turned 25.
Internship and Early Career
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That’s when I moved to California for my internship at Los Angeles, the West LA Animal Hospital, which at that time was the premiere and the biggest, the best, and the brand newest VCA hospital. So that was at the transition from West LA Animal Hospital to being a VCA practice and what a great experience that was for me because they had had an internship for quite some time, and they were adjusting to now being a VCA clinic. Our class was really tight. We had seven interns which was super fun to grab people from all over the country and now hear different stories and different experiences in different schooling techniques and educational modes. It was really eye opening because I would have to say that I was a smart undergrad, and I knew how to really focus and do well in undergrad, but I didn’t really know how to focus and study in vet school, so vet school was a big slap in the face. I was not a stellar student as far as grades were concerned, but I think I started “improving” my grades, if I was going to be graded, in my clinical year and in my internship because my learning curve was just astronomical, and everything started to fall into place where before it didn’t seem to be integrated very well in my brain. Then everything started falling into place the moment I got to apply the stuff that I was learning. So, that internship was the pivotal part of my career because my brain I think was finally jelling about being a veterinarian. Also, my personal life was now my own because I was away from my family. I was out of my state, I was an Ohioan, right. I’m now in California and have for the first time in my life both being now independent and being a professional and having degrees and being done with school.
Personal Life and Career Decisions
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That was also an awkward stage for me too because I was like, huh, I think I’m gay, actually. I think I like this guy I’m working with who’s one of my technicians. Funny enough, that’s the guy I’m still with. So of course, now, the narrative switches because at the time, I was going to come back to Ohio to an ophtho residency and take over my boss’s ophthalmology practice in my hometown, right? This is what you do.
Jordan Benshea: Right, you have everything planned.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Oh, of course, everything is always planned in my world, but here’s the big divergence in the path. I met Michael and he wanted to go to vet school and he applied to vet school and got into vet school while I was an intern. So, the following year, I did not get an ophtho residency, and Michael got into vet school at Davis. Now my story turns into a tagalong story, because now I’m following Michael through his path and through his career, because he’s in vet school here for four years. So, I’m in Davis for four years. In the process, I go from my internship to a general practice job in the Sacramento suburbs, which was really rewarding because I got so much surgical experience. It was utterly amazing, but it didn’t really fulfill me professionally because I was used to heavy duty cases – really complicated and really sick. I was growing a love for emergency and critical care during my internship, even though I still love ophthalmology. This intensity of an internship and the cases and clientele who are willing to push the boundaries of medicine with you, was really fantastic. I missed that in my general practice year. I was torn between ophthalmology and emergency critical care at this time, and Michael’s still in school. He’s studying and I’m trying to study to be a specialist. And I asked which specialty I really want, which is challenging. I think a lot of my students feel the same way because everything they find fascinating, they find fascinating, and they pivot all the time as to what they think is best. I continually still do that.
Academic Career and Specialization
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I still think that’s an okay thing to do, but I eventually landed on emergency/critical care and found Steve Haskins here at UC Davis as my mentor to establish what was at the time called a nontraditional emergency/critical care residency. It was done as a private practice residency where at the time there were only about 60 or 80 veterinary emergency/critical care specialists. To grow the college, they needed more people, and they had this alternate pathway for residency training. So, between a pet care specialty veterinary hospital in Santa Rosa and Steve Haskins at the University here in Davis, we were able to build this nontraditional pathway to an emergency/critical care residency. I became a resident, and I was biding my time between Davis and Santa Rosa. It was actually quite fun because Michael is still here studying to be a vet student and to get his degree, which he did in ‘97. I finished my residency in ‘97/98. So, again, I have to follow him because I’m a vet, so I’m pretty flexible. He’s a newly graduating vet, and he’s got an internship which took us to Philadelphia. He was an intern at University of Pennsylvania, and I went to set up an overnight emergency business in a surgeon’s hospital who had overnight care but never overnight veterinarians. I helped to set up her 24-Hour Emergency Service in a private practice in Philly while Michael went to do his internship. Then the next year, we loved Philly so much, he was like, okay, I want to do medicine, but he applied for a medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania in Philly as his only choice because we like Philly so much. I was planning to stay in Philly as well because it was a great quality of life. We really liked the city. The second year, he didn’t match, and I noticed that they had a job available at the emergency room at UPenn. I was like, oh, that’d be super cool to tryout academic medicine as a path because I set up this emergency business and it was fine, but I was like, what else could I do in the veterinary profession? I’ve never dabbled in academics because my private practice residency really was much more private practice. I just had cameo appearances at the university. I never really felt like I was an academic. So, my second year in Philly, Michael got a job in private practice outside the city, and I got a job at Penn being a lecturer in emergency/critical care. I was absorbed in a very powerful group of people with lots of energy. I mean, this is the premier largest, probably busiest at that time emergency/critical care academic program because the inner-city caseload is amazing. It was pretty cool to now flex the other side of my brain, my academic brain and start focusing a little bit more on teaching instead of just taking care of animals and teaching the clients I was now teaching vet students, other residents, learning from people still and it was super energizing. I probably have always had that gene to explore and discover and question, but this made it really clear to me that this was probably a good place where I would like to land. Of course, it’s a partnership, and we’re always compromising and Michael’s now applying for oncology residencies. The following year, he gets an onco residency back in Davis.
Jordan Benshea: Wait, that wasn’t part of your plan.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That wasn’t part of my plan, either. I had a plan. I was going to specialize sooner or later, and I was now taking my boards and hopefully passing my boards. Now Michael is still in his training phase. I’m like, fine, fine, let’s just go back to Davis. Of course, they wanted me back with open arms because they wanted a veterinarian to staff and run their afterhours service. So, he got the residency, and the hospital was hot after me to be that person to basically staff their emergency room. I did that for two years running. I worked four nights a week for two years straight and made sure that the emergency overnight service here at Davis was as good and as strong as it can be not just for the hospital, but also for the referring vets in the area. That was 1999 when we came back.
Life in Academia
Karl Jandrey, DVM: It’s now 2020, and there’s a lot to pack in here and when we arrived back, but man, that’s a whole lifetime, it seems. Of course, because Michael did his first residency in med/onc and then he did the second residency in rad/onc and was hired on as faculty and I was already here as faculty, it just seemed normal to stick around and really work hard and do what we’d like to do. Which is super easy, because everyone here that we work with, we’re still in Davis, we love it. Like, we work a lot. We work hard, but we’re both energized. We’re both super fulfilled professionally and personally. We have great teams of people, we have great students, we have great colleagues we work with. I don’t know if I can say I feel like a pig in shit, if that’s allowed to say on the radio or on a podcast, but I do feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. Like this is an excellent position for me, for my partner, for our life. We really dig what we do. The 20 years or so that we’ve been here has just been a growth experience all the way around from clinics to learning how to do clinical research. I never expected to be an academic. I never really explored research and I don’t really know how to do it well, but while I was here, I finished a master’s degree in advanced clinical training so that I can learn some epidemiology, some statistics, study diet, grant writing, all those kinds of things to do good clinical research. Everyone around is so welcoming. We ask questions. We build teams. We collaborate. We answer questions that haven’t been answered before. We discover new things. We try to push the envelope and try to advance veterinary medicine and then sometimes we advanced human medicine as well. So, it’s been this cohesion of all sorts of fun things that are going on all at the same time that made it the perfect place for both of us. We’re here and we’re loving it. Honestly, I go home, if he’s home first, he’s on the computer on the couch working still. I can guarantee it. If I get home first, I’m probably not going to open my computer. I’ll probably start cooking dinner, canning peaches, or something. You never know, but we work hard, and we work long hours, but we really enjoy it. When some students are like, tell me about what it’s like to be an academic. I’m like, whoa, I can tell you what it’s like, but I don’t know if this is for you because some people would say, well, why don’t you do this, that, or the other thing? I’m like, I don’t have time to do those things because I’m having so much fun doing the other stuff. I don’t leave work at work; I leave work wherever I am. Like, it just follows me. So, it’s not necessarily what everyone wants to do with their professional career, but for both Michael and me, it’s a sweet spot. We really hit the jackpot.
Jordan Benshea: It is wonderful when you truly love what you do. I feel the same way. I phenomenally love, love, love my job, and I feel so grateful for it. To be able to do something that you love is just such a gift. It’s not for everybody. You know what each of us thinks is great for ourselves is not for everybody. How wonderful for both of you that you have found this. And this path is taking you here to Davis where you are and that you have this opportunity to continue to expand and learn and grow. Right. So often people get into a position, and they find that they hit a ceiling, and that those growth opportunities aren’t there, right. To be able to be in a situation, even specifically an academic one, and to be able to have those opportunities is wonderful.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I wonder if it’s more likely in an academic setting to be able to be super flexible and explore because if I look back to my boss and veterinary mentor, Dr. Parshall, and I say I would want to do what he does, yes, fascinating work. I loved it, but would I do it for 40 years? Would I be that type to be engaged and enthused and excited every day for 40 years doing the same thing? Personally, probably not. Now looking back, before that’s what I was going to do, because that’s what I think people have in their mind when they go to vet school. You set up shop, and you are that shop for the rest of your life. You retire from it or sell it when you’re really, really, really old and done.
Jordan Benshea: Really, really, really old.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: When I was growing up veterinarians were “retiring” when they’re 65, 75, 80. They were in it for the long haul. If I envision myself, if I graduated at 25, I sold my business at 75, and I did the same thing for 50 years, I probably would go crazy. I don’t know, because I haven’t explored as much in private practice, so I don’t know if there’s as much opportunity to be as creative if you’re just doing the same sort of clinical work all the time. Yes, clinical work advances. Yes, you can help advance everything when you grab case data. Unless you become like a practice manager, or a practice owner, I think there’s not a lot of flexibility in the things that would make me enthusiastic. Where the academic setting for sure for me. Every time I turn the corner, I’m having this, are you kidding me moment. We’re doing what now? How is that working? Who’s doing what? What kind of tools did you just bring to the school that we’re now going to use in advance of this kind of technique? I’m like, wow, this just boggles my mind. Then I learn about it, and I employ it in my daily work. I don’t know if there would be as much of that creativity in private practice, so I stumbled upon academics. That was not ever in my mind. Even when I graduated veterinary school, I never expected to be in academia, let alone being an administrator in academia.
Embracing Opportunities and Flexibility
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That was also not on the list of things that was going to happen, but you know, it does. I’ve basically capitalized on a lot of different opportunities, because I think that here we have flexibility to do amazing things. We really can do amazing things, and it’s supported.
Jordan Benshea: I think part of that is, you’ve mentioned a couple times you had a clear plan. I think part of that is being open to the opportunities when they arise so that you’re not so set in your plan that you could recognize those as opportunities. This is the case both personally and professionally. The ability to be able to recognize those opportunities, the courage to explore them, and decide whether they’re right for you or not. If you had stayed at Penn, that would have been an amazing career in a lot of different ways. Through your experience with Michael and joining him back in Davis, that opened up a whole other world that you never could have imagined when you were at Penn, at the same time phenomenal opportunities by being open to look at that as an opportunity. So often we get really closed in our mind that oh, no, it can’t be that because I have this plan here and it’s got to be this, but really, if we’re willing to take down those shutters a little bit and see what’s out there, there might be great things beyond what we’re so set in our ways about.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yeah, that’s for sure. So open eyes is really the way to be when it comes to being a professional because your professional degree is your professional degree, it doesn’t mandate that you have to do any particular aspect of the profession.
The Importance of Support Networks
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Part of capitalizing on all those opportunities is also having the support network, both from your boss or say the organizational structure of your business, as well as at home. Making sure that it’s the right thing for your family, your partner, and everyone else that is impacted by it. Why not? It seems like a plan is a good thing to have. Don’t get me wrong. I’m 100% a planner, sometimes I enjoy the planning part much more than the execution part, but if you don’t take those opportunities, it seems like you’ve missed out on a whole heck of a lot of excellent that you may have never known about. What’s the worst-case scenario? You try it out. You flub it up or it flubs you up. You just default back to where you were. You’re still a veterinarian. You still have a fantastic degree. You’re still in a great position. We’re still highly needed. There are no veterinarians that are at losses for jobs right now. My students graduate with many, many different offers. They get their pick of their choices. They command a quite a good salary leaving veterinary school. It’s kind of a market right now where veterinarians are in charge of their future. I don’t think that’s ever changed to tell you the truth, and it’s probably only going to get better.
The Value of Failure and Learning
Jordan Benshea: Yes, and that opportunity, or the willingness to fail by looking at opportunities is so important. Sara Blakely, who founded Spanx, has said that when she was a kid her father used to go around the table and say, “What did you fail at today?” That taught her that it was okay to fail, and that’s how she started this multibillion-dollar company, with learning it’s okay to fail, and to not be scared of that. It’s so often that we are scared of that.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: For sure. You mentioned failure. Maybe two years ago, at the white coat ceremony for the class of 2022, I talked about success and failure in my little commentary to them, because what happens is that you can be successful, for sure, but you should reset your mind to say it’s not success or failure, it’s success or learning. When you approach failure, and I think we all know this, we remember our “failures.” We remember things that didn’t make us so proud. We remember those more pointedly than we remember our true successes. For whatever reason, they just stick in our mind because they were awkward. There was a quote, I forget who said it, but you either succeed or you learn. There’s no such thing as failure. Sounds like a Winston Churchill quote, but I’m not sure who said it.
Jordan Benshea: That’s very true and one that’s extremely beneficial, I think, for everybody, especially veterinary students as they’re going through veterinary school. All of us even in our day-to-day life personally and professionally, we are consistently failing and hopefully trying again.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yeah, it totally was Winston Churchill. Here it is. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Jordan Benshea: There you go.
A Day in the Life Pre-Pandemic
Jordan Benshea: You mentioned that you’ve been at Davis now for 20 years. Can you tell us a little bit about how you spend your days now and what your role looks like?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: That’s awesome, because like I said, I never really imagined being an academics let alone doing clinical research, and then let alone becoming the director of continuing education for three or four years. Now, I’m the Associate Dean of Admissions of Students. None of those were on my list of things I was planning to do, but the opportunities show up so every time something else happens, my job reconfigures itself into different proportions of my time directed towards different things. Now that I spend much more time being an academic administrator, I spend less time in the clinic and less time teaching. Some things have to give, because I can’t do all of it all the time. How does my day run now? Typically, let’s talk about a normal day pre-pandemic, I would get up at 5:00 to 5:30 and go to the gym, because that was the only time I think I ever had to myself. I would wrap up the gym, get home and shower and be on campus by seven. Somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15, I arrive to campus. When I’m on clinics, I would be getting into the emergency room or the ICU to help with the transition from the overnight staff to the daytime staff, see what’s in the emergency room, see what’s transferring to other services, see what’s in the ICU, make sure they’re all under control, learn about them, understand what happened overnight, consult with veterinarians that are primarily in charge of those patients, and then let the day take it where it needed to take. Usually, the day in either ER or ICU ends around, for us if we started at 7:30, ends probably around six to seven o’clock. Then I would make sure the transition from daytime to nighttime went well, make sure everyone’s under control, make sure my residents, my interns, my students, my colleagues, everyone’s comfortable, and then I would bug out. When I’m on emergency I’m still on a pager, I get called if my patients in the hospital need me or need adjustment to their therapy based on changes. If I’m on ICU, I’m also on call with my resident for anything that needs ICU care or oversight. When I’m on clinics, I am always on, my phone never gets shut off, but when I go home at six or seven o’clock, I try to leave work at work if I can. That’s where I would sit down to focus on spending as much time as I needed to create a relatively elaborate meal. I love to eat. I love good wine. I love myself a good meal with a nice glass of wine that’s perfectly balanced and paired. I love that. I would spend as much time as I can, sometimes two or three hours, to prepare a meal, eat it, relax, and enjoy. My brain separates from work that way, and then if I need to, I’ll go back to my computer for an hour or two at the end of the night to check on emails, people, whatever needs to be done. Then I’ll go to bed hopefully around 10 o’clock. That’s my typical pre-pandemic life. If I’m not on clinics, I would probably do this very similar thing. I’m pretty regimented about getting up early. I get to the gym. I come to the office instead of the hospital and take care of all the things that I need to do in the office. My team that I work with has a lot of hands in a lot of different areas, so keeping on track of all of those things that revolve around our extracurricular student programming things. I’d usually spend a lot of time on emails, phone calls, and meetings to make sure that we’re meeting our goals and planning the next great thing for our students. Generally, in the office, I still leave around six o’clock to tell you the truth. If I come in at 7:00 – 7:30, I’m still leaving at six, because I need that amount of time to get the stuff done I need to get done, but then I go home and I’ll do a nice dinner again. That’s kind of my normal day.
Jordan Benshea: Well, that was pre pandemic, so I was going to say what would be your favorite part of your day, but now everything’s changed because we’re in current pandemic.
Adjusting to Pandemic Life
Jordan Benshea: How has that shifted things for you?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I sleep a little bit longer, my gym’s closed. I just do like stretching and floor work at home. I probably get up around 6:00 to 6:30, I’m now in the office closer to eight, and I leave the office between five and six, something like that. There’s only been three days this entire pandemic that I haven’t come into my office, including the weekends because stuff still needs to get done. We’ve been impacted to an extent that is relatively unimaginable, because you never know what you need to do until it happens. To retool the curriculum, the clinics, the programming, the pipeline and pathway programs we’re trying to do to encourage veterinary, pre-veterinary students to become veterinary students, and veterinarians, all that stuff we had set and nicely planned but then when things get upended because of the pandemic, social distancing, and restrictions on gathering seems like I’ve been spending more time this summer really doing a lot more planning, and some executing of those plans. Of course, Zoom is now part of our life. We spend many more hours on Zoom, and it’s not just during regular office hours, now it’s trying to connect with friends and family on Zoom at night and also with some of my students and some mentoring on the weekend. There’s quite a bit of expansion, I would say, of the workload. I distribute it a little bit into the weekends as well as into the evenings these days. That’s been a little bit of an adjustment. We’re still working really hard. In fact, I have a feeling that I’m working a lot more, because it’s always at your fingertips, right? You can always pop on Zoom at any time, and because you haven’t seen anybody, because you’re keeping your life in your little bubble, you’re really craving to see people, even if it’s on Zoom from eight to nine o’clock at night. So, it seems like my work is stretched more than the sort of justified hours that I had before, say, seven to seven. Now, it seems to have expanded to any time, but I still tried to get good sleep. In fact, I think I’m getting at least one more hour of sleep at night for the last five months, which is pretty nice, I guess.
UC Davis’ Response to COVID-19
Jordan Benshea: We’re starting a new veterinary school year within the last couple of weeks, right? How is UC Davis pivoting in the midst of all these changes and this ever-growing uncertainty and open, closed, etc.?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yeah, there’s been a lot of changes, and a lot of changed changes, because everything does continually morph. That is, I guess the pandemic is good for people who are spontaneous and are more comfortable with changes in structure and opportunities that just show up. People who are rigid, and who have to have a plan, and have to have a schedule, and have to know what’s coming, they’re not going to do as well. What we’re doing to make sure everything unfolds both clinically for the hospital and for the curriculum, that is always based on things that require safety as the primary concern, because we don’t want to pose any risk or put anyone at risk. Safety is always the biggest issue for our people. Readjusting the programming, so for instance, from my office of student programs, the summer is our bumper crop time for pathway programs from K through 12 and undergrad as well. We have lots of undergrad and pipeline programs for vet students and pre-vet students, so we had to reconfigure all of those. Some we had to cancel all together. Some we had to turn online. It was just a whirlwind of what is our goal, what is our endgame, what’s our outcome, and then see how we could get there. We had to do a lot of that this summer, and spent many, many hours pulling it off as well. For the curriculum, Dr. Watson and her team in professional education here in the school have spent more hours than I can even imagine rethinking the process on how to safely educate the students. For a small time, we had no students in the clinic, and it was a virtual rotation for the class of 2022. Class of 2020, as they were ending, we gave them some virtual experiences which were novel, and it took the realization on Friday that said we have to close the clinic. We have to retool the clinical experience for the students who are supposed to be on your rotations by Monday, so our faculty basically had three days to deal with a shutdown of senior students in the clinic and providing them with those outcomes that we still needed them to have to feel comfortable enough to graduate within three days. We built these online virtual rotations for clinical students, and I think we did a pretty good job. It’s hard to know, because it was novel, and we never had done it before and who knows if we’re going to do it again, but that was the complete closure of clinical activities. We reopened up to some clinics modified June 8th, so the class of 2021 the current final year class, is in the clinic doing in-person rotations, and some are hybrid rotations. Some are a blend between in-person and online. Depends on the service and it depends on how the service wanted to build the safe learning environments that allowed us to meet those goals. Remember, our curriculum is always built on learning objectives and outcomes. When we map our activities to those learning objectives and the outcomes, then we can say we are delivering what we want to deliver and what we know needs to be delivered. That will be different, because the world is different right now, but it is still mapped to the outcomes that we think we need to have, that were in the old style, but now we just have to do it slightly differently. That was quite a bit of a challenge for the clinic and that’s still ongoing. We’re now in the process of rethinking how those have been going for the first say six weeks and now we’re retooling again, to find out how we can open up a little bit more considering public health guidelines and the current states of those. We’re trying to figure out how to increase more student exposure in the clinic and try to lessen the amount of hybrid rotations, we’re looking for more in-person experiences. That’s how the clinical year has been changing and changing multiple times through the summer. For the current academic year for the preclinical students, years one through three, again, mapping to the learning outcomes and objectives that the curriculum demands. The Professional Education team had to really figure out how to deliver the content and do it safely. We have hybrid clinics, hybrid experiences, hybrid classes, and hybrid labs. It’s not 100% remote, we have the larger lectures, of course, are going to be remote using Zoom, but anytime we need to do hands-on small group, and more type discussions, we will have different experiences here throughout campus, so that we can still socially distance, do it well with our PPE and make sure that it’s safe for everybody, not just the students, but also our faculty and our staff. So that’s started a week ago Monday, and it’s so far gone pretty well. Of course, it’s a big adjustment. It’s all new, so we’re all on pins and needles to make sure that it goes well and there’s no big hiccups. The university for sure is behind us. We have five new tents that they’ve put out around the vet school campus, because currently, I think still no one’s ever gotten COVID from aerosolized transmission in an outdoor setting. It’s mostly indoors with bad ventilation, so we have now I would call them canopies. They’re basically tents without walls, and some of them are pretty huge. We have five of them around campus where we can hold small group sessions outside in these tents. All the rooms that we have on campus have been rated for ventilation and air exchanges and how many people can be in each of those spaces, so we know all of those data. We can have in-person events where we’re wearing PPE and masks and those kinds of things, but also, we can cluster a little bit more if we have better air exchanges. For instance, our anatomy lab has extremely good air exchanges, so we can put more than 10 people in there. I think we could put a quarter of the class in our anatomy lab wearing PPE, so they’ll still get a lot of hands-on experience. Of course, when you’re in a surgical experience, like our third-year students, they’re fully gowned and gloved, so they’re in PPE. They can also get about a quarter of the class in our surgical experiences. We’re adjusting on all these different ways to make sure that the content is still what the students need, and the safety issue is still the highest priority. It’s been quite an adjustment, but I know what we’re doing right now is going to probably be rethought and retooled. It’s going to change a little bit every time we reevaluate it, but that’s just the nature of rolling with the punches. If we have, say, a worse outbreak of COVID in the county, we might have to backtrack on our plan and go back to more hybrid or no one in the hospital. No students in the hospital. You never know. Hopefully, we just all do our part, and we all try to squash this virus, and no one gets it, which is pie in the sky thought. If we are able to open more, we for sure will. We’re just waiting for that chance, but it’s baby steps, I think to get there, and it might be different versions of what we’re doing now until we get to the old way, the pre-pandemic way of education.
Jordan Benshea: Do you poll the students to find out what’s working for them? What’s not? Is that more a professor, academic staff feedback? How do you guys determine what’s working?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I think that at the very first thing when we tell the faculty that you need to read to your rotation in three days to make it virtual, like, of course, I think we left the students out of that. We have definitely done a lot of discussions, especially Dr. Watson and I, with the presidents of each of the classes during the summer and finding out where they are, what they’re doing, how they’re feeling, what their vibe is from their class, and what is the class worried about. We’ve had town halls throughout the summer with the classes as well, to keep them informed of what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and get some of their feedback. Of course, when they’re in the rotations or in the classes, every evaluation is reevaluated and looked at making sure that the student perspective is taken into consideration. Then above and beyond that, sometimes our students don’t wait for the evaluations, they get together and say, “Hey, Dr. Watson or hey, Dr. Jandrey, we have this concern. Here’s some things that we’re thinking about. Can you be creative in this way, and this way?” So, we have all sides of it. We wait for the feedback, they give us the feedback before we ask for it, we try to keep them well informed both from them and from them to us. We’re really partnered with the students as well as the faculty to make sure that we can do as much as we can to meet those goals. Of course, there are certain goals, we’re not going to be able to meet. Our office does a lot of extracurricular programming for club events, and other school-wide events where we have barbecues, picnics, can have nice social time, and of course, we had to shut that down. Everyone understands that it’s shutdown pretty much for the whole fall semester, but where we can do things, where we can still pull off a good curriculum, and meet those learning objectives, we’re doing the best we can right now. Like I said, we’re probably rethinking it, and when I change it again because this is basically, I think the new normal in the pandemic education realm is morphing and responding to changes, hopefully, they’re all improvements back to normal as opposed to more of a shutdown kind of process. We’re ready for all of those things.
Jordan Benshea: That’s great to hear how you guys are responding and engaging with the staff and the students. One thing that seems that we’ve heard a lot during this pandemic timeframe is that there’s such a level of uncertainty, and so much is different. Such a vast shift so quickly and so drastically, that we’re hearing that lot of people are very anxious in the world. I’m wondering if you’re seeing that impact in your students or with your staff.
Mental Health and Resilience
Jordan Benshea: Are you’re seeing sort of an increased need for mental health support?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: What’s actually nice to know and I’m surprised and pleased at the same time, is I’ve kept in touch with our primary mental health counselor, Dr. Ward, our psychologist employed by the school. We have 1.5 full time equivalent, so we have Dr. Ward and another mental health counselor. I kept asking them basically every month. How’s it going? What do you need? Do you need extra resources, because they had to switch to online counseling from in-person counseling and how’s it going? Are you guys overloaded, you underloaded, what’s going on? They said, “We’re okay. We’re not seeing an uptick.” which was nice to hear. That was from basically March through last week. Our students who may have not been in Davis may not have used those services on a typical basis. Normally, a lot of our students leave campus or leave Davis for the summer, and they would not come to meet with our mental health counselors, but when they’re all distant, and all the counseling is done in a distant way, that opened up all of my students to have access to all of the counseling need, which was a shift from normal. Despite that, we didn’t see an uptick in the numbers of counseling hours needed for my students this summer, so that’s good. I don’t know about my staff or my faculty because that mental health counseling is done on the central campus, not through our student counselors here on our veterinary campus, so I don’t know about that. I am pretty impressed I think by the resilience of our team. Our team is all across the board, from students to staff and faculty for sure, because I think we have a higher prize. We have a community goal, instead of a personal goal, and I’m not saying that people aren’t stressed or anxious or angry, or all of the above. They are. People are expressing it in different ways, but at least from the perspective of my mental health counselors, they did not have an uptick in my student need for mental health counseling.
Jordan Benshea: That’s wonderful to hear. In some ways, the going virtual for that support has, as you said, really opened it up, so anybody can utilize it.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: For sure. We have 600 vet students, and now all 600 had equal access during the summer, as opposed to maybe a quarter of them are usually around, maybe a third of them at most are around. Yeah, it was more access and more people having the access, but we didn’t have to use it. I was surprised as well, and I was really pleased.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful. I’m thrilled to hear that. That’s great news.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: I hope it’s the fact that the resilience of veterinarians is like, well, you know what, it’s all about the community right now, it’s not about me, and I got to take care of what needs to be taken care of. I mean, when I was on clinics for the majority of July, I had an absolutely great time, because 99% of our clients were super positive, super engaged, and super thankful. Even if you have anxiety about taking care of clinical work, because there’s hardly any way to socially distance in the emergency room, it’s nearly impossible. We have a small space, we have a lot of people, and we’ve been really busy. So, even if there was anxiety amongst my team, no one expressed it because they were still being given so many kudos from each other, and from our clients, that it might resolve some of that anxiety. I think people are super, our clients are super thankful that we’re here doing what we’re doing. Even though we’re doing it differently, we’re still getting the animal from the car in the parking lot, bringing it in the hospital, and the owner contacted through phone. They’re not in the hospital unless it’s really for euthanasia. Our clients, despite that, are still super thankful. I think part of that gratitude that they’re showing is, maybe I don’t know for sure, but they certainly make me feel good about doing what I’m doing because they’re so, so thankful, and so verbally rewarding of me and my team during this time.
Jordan Benshea: That’s wonderful to hear. You hear a lot of stories of how stressed and overwhelmed people are, and it seems that based on your sharing that if you really focus on being community-driven and community-focused that you have that opportunity for a lot of positivity in the midst of these times.
Excitement for the Future
Jordan Benshea: What is something that you’re excited about in the veterinary profession?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: There are so many things, I think I’m always excited. I’m a pretty positive person to begin with. Some of my students think I’m a golden retriever. I’m kind of like the Gary Larson cartoon where my face is the same, but the emotion that’s underneath the header is different. I guess I kind of feel like that. Everything is fascinating to me. I love what I do, I do what I love, and I’m a pig in shit. If you are looking for what’s happening in the future, I have no idea what the future is going to bring, because anything I thought and planned out for my future is different. I guess one thing I’d be excited for is for the next big thing, the next big opportunity. At least this weekend started the next big opportunity. There are a bunch of fires going around in the northern California area, and some of them aren’t too far from us. The next opportunity is going to take care of another potential load of burn victims. We have a lot of experience with dealing with burned animals from previous years fires’ experiences. Now some of these fires are pretty close, and I anticipate seeing some of those. Whenever we have fires and have a lot of fire victims, I can tell you that it’s one of those things where the entire school pitches in because they’re in it to win it. They want to make the best out of the badness that can occur to these animals. That’s going to be different this year, because we don’t have as much ability to get as many people into the hospital to care for these animals, but we’re just now getting poised to see if there’s going to be an onslaught of animals that are going to be diverted to us or brought directly to us for the burn care. These are unanticipated things that we have experience with, that we’re really good at, and to tell you the truth, there’s nothing more exciting than seeing the entire school pull together to take care of animals that have suffered through a fire. Every time this happens, the camaraderie, the giving, selflessly giving of their time and their talents is amazing to watch. It shows you the grace and the goodness of veterinarians, it’s really powerful. So that might be happening soon depending on how bad these fires get and how many animals are affected. The other things we’re thinking about is how to grow and to keep advancing. We’re always looking to expand our facility, and I think if we had any major, I would say major hindrance to our curriculum right now, it’s the physical facilities, because if we had different facilities, we wouldn’t need these tents. We would be able to reconfigure our teaching into different areas, so the veterinary medicine complex to the MC campaign that we’re trying to raise money for an expansion of the entire facility. I’m looking forward to that, because that would have helped in this pandemic to give us more space to do more socially distant teaching. We would have had bigger facilities, and we could spread our people out, because right now in our smaller facilities, it would pack people in and that’s one of the major limitations to really getting back to normal. So, I’m excited about the growth of our facilities in the next five to 10 years. Also, with my colleagues across campus at the medical school and the nursing school, I’m involved with a study that queried our students in the class of 2023. We’re looking at many different aspects of their wellbeing and mental health. We surveyed them at the beginning of their year, and at the end of the year. We got some information in there about how they feel, and how they respond to the pandemic, how that changed their comfort, their wellbeing, and their approach to education. Some of these data we’re chewing on right now, and from the data set we’re probably going to get three or four different papers out that focus on different areas. One of the papers is already submitted, one is in review, and two are in construction right now. That’s something I’m really excited about, because it’s a global health professions approach to looking at our students and what we can do to help them be more successful in their current state, as well as to build programming so that we can address any of the issues in future programs out of my office. So, I’m pretty excited about that. That’s some of the research that I am currently involved in. I’m hopeful for the world to pull together to flatten the curve and make this a safe place again. For me personally, I’m looking forward to getting home today, figuring out what nice meal I’m going to cook, and what nice wine I’ll pair with it.
Jordan Benshea: You’ve been so generous with your time, and I really appreciate you sharing your story and sharing so much information with us.
Hidden Talents and Final Thoughts
Jordan Benshea: Do you have a secret talent, and it might not be a talent but something that you enjoy doing that not everybody might know?
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Well, I think I’m pretty much an open book. I think my students know that I have a fascination for chocolate, for good wine, and for boba. A hidden talent, actually, I used to be a musician. Long ago, before vet school, I was quite the musician. I played saxophone in jazz band, drums in marching band, I did all the percussion in symphonic band. My professional career is putting a big damper on that. I can tell you, I know my students very, very well, because I read nearly every word of every application. Veterinarians have a lot of secret talents. They’re extremely accomplished. In this brand-new class alone, we have ballet dancers, Navy seals, and people who’ve been on stage. I mean, the list of artistic talent is amazing. They’re smart people, but there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of secret hidden talents amongst veterinarians in general. We’re an impressive bunch. I would have to say veterinarians sell themselves short. They don’t toot their own horn very much. They are the salt of the earth kind of people, but when you ask them a little bit more deeply, they’re always impressive. I’ve got to tell you that.
Jordan Benshea: I have definitely found that. I’m not a veterinarian. It’s been fascinating to me to learn, and I’m consistently impressed with veterinary colleagues, veterinarians, and veterinary students. One of the reasons I love doing this podcast is just learning the different stories that people have because they’re all so fascinating and very inspiring.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: Yeah, well, if there’s something that we didn’t dive deeper into, we could revisit another time. I’m always happy to come back and chat with you.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful! Thank you so much for taking the time, Karl, I really appreciate your time and your effort. I know that you’re extremely busy. We really appreciate you sharing your story with us, so thank you.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: No problem, Jordan, anytime. I had a nice time with you.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful. Take care.
Karl Jandrey, DVM: You have a great day.
Outro
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.
