The Role of the Veterinary Student in Teaching Hospital Infection Control

Posted on December 2, 2009

By Bradford P Smith, DVM, DACVIM, Professor Emeritus

I recall the summer between my second and third years in veterinary school way back in the 1960s, when I worked in the clinic on the large animal treatment crew. The other students had gone home or to some job off campus, leaving a few of us to help run the clinics. In those days we had very few of the pharmaceuticals we can draw upon today, and many of the horses were receiving intravenous tetracycline. One day my classmate and I arrived at 6 am and found several horses with severe diarrhea. We called the head clinician and he came right in. “Boys” he said gravely, “this looks like Salmonella!” The school had no proper isolation facilities and the problem only got worse as the summer went on. I remember thinking that this was a fertile area for clinical research and improvement.

Now every veterinary facility has a hospital infection control program of some type. Papers have been written and protocols established. Meetings on the subject have been held. There are even book chapters covering large animal biosecurity and infection control ( see Morley and Weese, chap 46 in Large Animal Internal Medicine, 4th ed , pub by Elsevier, 2009). As a veterinary student who participates in activities in the clinic, and probably visits private practices to gain experience, you play a role in these programs, and thus must be familiar with them. Often you can even suggest improvements when you see a hole in the plan.

Biosecurity and infection control plans aim to protect the animal patients and the people working on them. Often the results of ignorance or carelessness are not apparent for days, but can nonetheless be devastating.

You should know the basic ways in which disinfectants work, understand hand hygiene, respect and utilize appropriate barriers (restricted access to certain areas, gloves, gowns, eye covers, respiratory protection), use sterile procedure for placing catheters, clean up after using an area, and be careful about clothing and footwear when leaving the clinic. Several tragedies have occurred when veterinarians or veterinary students took pathogens home to their child or own animal on their clothing.

It is surprisingly easy to ignore infection control and mimic others with bad habits. How many veterinarians have you seen holding a syringe or needle in their mouth? One veterinarian I know was working on some cows and holding a syringe of xylazine in his mouth. He told me that the next thing he could remember was lying there with cows walking over him, but he could not move. He had apparently absorbed the xylazine through his lips! That story did not end in tragedy, but it could have. Another person took Salmonella home to his infant son on his clothing! That one came very close to ending in a disaster. Change clothes and sanitize your hands before going home.

Every individual in the clinic should read and respect the biosecurity and infection control plans where they train or work. Take the issue seriously. And read some of the literature available, so that you can be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.