31/3/2020
Kakato Scholarship 2020 March‘s Diary

Our school officially started on March 2nd.  Only one of the courses has been replaced by online classes for the entire semester while others are still taught in the classroom. Besides, there are many internships this semester that requires on-site teaching. Because of the epidemic changes of CONVID-19, the classroom arrangement has also been changing accordingly. Teachers and students are trying hard to complete this semester despite the mess. This month passed in chaos, but I have not yet adapted to this learning mode.

Scene of an online class in the dormitory

The scene of surgical internship

There is a practicum on stray animals this semester.  We will have the chance to learn ligation surgery in a stray animal centre. Students can be the doctors’ assistants. If circumstances allow, we can try to ligate blood vessels, to help hemostasis by electric burn. This is definitely a very valuable experience.

In addition, I also took a course in wildlife and zoology, continuing my learning on non-dogs and cats in zoos.  Learning outside the classroom, everything there makes me feel very excited.  I feel very happy to take this course.

—Yoki Chau

 

Most of the courses have been changed to online teaching due to the pandemic of CONVID-19. One major challenge I faced was the lack of screen space while using the online learning software. I had to open the lecture notes and the software simultaneously and kept switching between the notes and the software, making it more difficult for me to take notes.

 

And in this semester, I felt that the most challenging courses are internal medicine and small animal surgery. Internal medicine requires us to apply all the knowledge we have learnt in the previous years such as pharmacology, pathology, clinical pathology and anatomy. Another challenge was to make a diagnosis because a lot of diseases share similar symptoms and clinical features.

 

And for small animal surgery, there were practical and paper exams almost every week. The practical exams required us to pay great attention to small details such as the angle of our arms during surgical scrub which made failing the exams fairly easy. But luckily, I passed the first phase of the exams with quite well results.

 

 

-Ernest Yu

 

Veterinary Clinical Pathology is one of the compulsory courses that we have to take in the second semester of the third year. It mainly focuses on the use of clinical chemistry, haematology, and cytology to carry out clinical analysis and pathological analysis. In the first laboratory lesson, we had to group ourselves and went to the laboratory separately to draw blood from our fellow groupmates.

 

Drawing blood from animals is an elementary yet important skill of a vet. Though this time the blood sample would be taken from human beings, the principle behinds is similar, and the procedures include making sure there is no residue air inside the tube, angle of needle inserting is appropriate and the head of the needle is facing upwards, etc.  I have to say that I was super nervous when it was my turn to draw blood from my groupmate since I was so afraid of causing any pain or discomfort on her by the moment when the needle was being inserted into the vein of my groupmate. At last, fortunately, both of us were safe and I successfully collected the very first blood sample in my life! The sample was not going to be examined. This was really a valuable and unforgettable experience for me, and I hope that I would not be that nervous next time when I am going to draw blood from animals!

-Linda Lau