In November, I was in the “Necropsy” block, in which I only have to participate once for the entire clinical rotation year. This is the only block where I would not meet any animals alive. The jobs here consist of two parts.

First, to examine the biopsies taken from surgery grossly and microscopically, so as to deduce the possible pathological differential diagnosis behind. Second, to participate in the necropsy of dead animals and examination of the pathological changes in order to find out the causes of death. When I was a child I used to be a TV drama fan, and the forensic doctors that appeared in the dramas looked so serious and made me really fancy towards the sector.

Unbelievably, I was now doing the same kind of things! During necropsy, we needed to seriously observe the gross characteristics of each organ. After trimming of those organs into slides, microscopic observation of cellular morphologies is followed. Summarizing all the findings we had got, causes of death could be possibly deduced.

Although clinically we might probably not be able to meet those pathological vets, literally they play a vital role in aiding the clinical vets to make a diagnosis based on those pathological findings on the pathological report!

－Linda