Veterinary student placements – Currumbin Sanctuary Wildlife Hospital

Currumbin Sanctuary Wildlife Hospital regularly hosts both domestic and international vet students for practical experience.  We will generally accept only two students at any time and we will take students on a ‘first in’ basis.

Australian/New Zealand Students : Only clinical students (final years) will be accepted, students will only be accepted for a minimum of two weeks. We strongly encourage students to try to stay for four weeks, students staying for a longer period of time are able to apply what they have learnt and truly benefit from their visit.

International Students : Only one international student will be accepted at any time and only for a minimum of eight weeks.

Clinical students

Our vet department admits over 5000 wildlife cases every year and cares for the 1500 captive animals in the Sanctuary.  The role of the clinical vet students will be to assist the vets and nurses with triage, diagnostic work up and surgery.  It is expected during your stay that you will develop a basic knowledge and be able to perform the following;

- Examination of wildlife species – in particular birds and reptiles, examination techniques will be taught and students will be expected to be able to perform an examination and make a triage assessment of wildlife cases admitted.
  
- Anaesthesia of wildlife species – birds, reptile and mammals.  Anaesthesia methods will be shown and students will be expected to be able to perform anaesthesia on simple cases under the instruction of the vets and nurses.
   
- Medications : students should develop a knowledge of the common medications used in wildlife, know the dose rates and be able to accurately calculate the dose, including calculating dilutions for small doses.  The students should also be able to administer oral and injectable medications under the instruction of the vets and nurses.

- Pathology : An important role of the clinical students is to perform post mortems, where possible all wildlife cases are given a post mortem, some cases will have histopathology performed and students are encouraged to perform in house cytology, staining and faecal examination to help determine a diagnosis.

- In house lab work : Much of our diagnostics are performed in house – after being shown students will be expected to be able to perform a PCV, total protein, blood smear and faecal float examination.

While we can’t expect students to become proficient at all the above within a short work experience visit, the senior veterinarian’s final assessment for the university will be judged on the progress and effort each student has made throughout their placement.

Please ensure that you remind the senior veterinarian to fill out your university assessment on your final day of placement.

Photos :  We encourage students to take photos of procedures, cases, post mortems etc, and ask that you help us by downloading any good photos into our photo database – we can show you where and how to save the photo’s.

It is important that clinical year students assist the nurses with the general husbandry and care of the animals when there are no specific veterinary procedures being performed. You will get the most out of your visit to our Veterinary department by putting more in, the vets and nurses will be more inclined to teach students that show enthusiasm and help out with the dirty jobs.  Remember the staff won’t have time to teach if they have to spend their time doing all the cleaning.

New wildlife admissions can occur throughout the day, if you are keen, make sure you let everyone know you don’t want to miss out on cases even if it is a lunch break or it’s way after 5pm

Tasks: We generally ask the students to write a short article for our website on a particular case or particular disease.

General information

Accomodation: The only truly budget place that we have found to be ok is the YHA youth hostel at Coolangatta airport - http://www.yha.com.au/hostels/print.cfm?hostelid=47&nopriceflag=0

It is about a 15 minute bike ride (they hire the bikes at the hostel)

It’s a fair walk but students have walked from there every day.

There are many other accommodation options as this is a tourist area – probably best to do a google search.

If you do stay elsewhere, public transport to the sanctuary would have to be by bus, the sanctuary is on the Gold Coast highway which makes getting buses reasonably reliable.  See the following website for bus time info http://www.transinfo.qld.gov.au/

What To Wear : We do very limited consulting with the public, so there’s no need to get dressed up.  Best to wear whatever is comfortable for you, casual clothes are fine, most of our work is in the vet hospital, although we do sometimes go out into the sanctuary to treat larger animals.  Always wear covered shoes and is best to bring a hat.

What to Bring

- If you have a laptop it may be a good idea to bring it with you, we only have a limited number of computers and we do encourage students to write short articles when there is spare time.  We may be able to provide you with some digital notes on wildlife.

- If you have any wildlife or avian/reptile notes/books it may be useful to bring them along so that you can research cases.

- Camera – we encourage students to take photos of cases, surgery and post-mortems.  In return we ask that students file their good photos into our photo database.

- Of course the nurses expect chocolate or cake on your final day of placement!!

Where to Come : The wildlife hospital is beside gate F on Millers Drive, Currumbin; this is at the back end of the sanctuary.  Gate F is approximately 300 m along Millers drive opposite the park, the hospital is a large Queenslander style building that has signs on the fence.  Our standard day is 8am-5pm, although veterinary staff  regularly work much longer hours.  On your first morning you will need to do a workplace health and safety induction which will be at 9.00 am – as such it is best to arrive at 9am on your first morning. Only street parking is available along Millers Drive.

If you get lost just go to the front entrance of the sanctuary and the staff at the turnstiles will be able to contact us and give you directions.

How to apply

All enquiries and applications should be made by email to the Wildlife Hospital Administration Officer: dkennelly@cws.org.au   Please send a full list of dates that you are available in order of preference – this will make it much faster to place you.

Keep in mind that we are far busier during the summer months and students get exposed to a greater range of cases during this period.  The winter months are much quieter with less wildlife being admitted but we are generally busier dealing with the sanctuary captive animals and working on preventative health programs during these cooler months in the middle of the year.

As places fill quickly it is best to book well in advance.