CHALLENGES IN YOUR DISCIPLINE

Before being admitted into the university, I thought that the veterinary medicine career, my discipline, had fewer approaches. Nevertheless, when I entered to study, I expanded my concept of the career. By this I mean there are a lot of areas to practise beside the minor clinic or the production of mayor animals, like investigation, veterinary epidemiology, parasitology, etc. To my mind all this subjects makes from this discipline an important participant in diverse areas, like technology, social matters and education. It changed my point of view from the veterinary medicine, now I see it like a very complete career, because I can focus this for help humans too.

In the case of technology, I feel that it improves while there are economic interests. Take, for example, when people are interested in operated their pets, we can find advances in veterinary surgery staffs. Otherwise for complicated diseases owners prefer the euthanasia before pay for complicated treatments, the opposite happens in human medicine. In another example, we can find anti-rabies and anti-parasitic vaccines, because they’re dangerous zoonotic diseases that can infect humans, increasing the demand of a solution. But, we don’t find the same efficiency for the Feline Distemper, who is a virus that hasn’t a direct medication for it elimination; we just find a complementary treatment. The same happens in investigation, it’s slow and sometimes primitive because veterinaries don’t have the appropriate technology to work…the prices are too high, etc. With these examples I’m referring that in veterinary the technologies advances are poorly if we contrast with the human medicine, however they can improve with a better inversion and interest in meet the development of the non-human animals. So this is the challenge, mainly improve the advances in investigation’s technology to offer effective treatments and increase projects to investigate Chilean species.
In social matters, the development of this discipline covers many areas. In the city always has exist the conflict with the abandoned dogs, they haven’t owners and attack or bite people, increase the dogs’ population and have contagious infections. The veterinary medicine has the tools to do a population control realizing sterilizations, to eliminate parasites and virus. Also, our faculty and university has volunteer works in summer and operatives in the year, where students go to rural places for help families that hasn’t the resources for control the health of their cattle and domestic animals. In my view, it’s an important social role especially in the last point, due this discipline improve the life quality of the cattle and the family, who lives from these animals. The challenge is to get the better tools (medicaments, transport, etc) to do the work in the best conditions.
To continue with the last area, the education is actively participating in this discipline. Rural families learn how to care their animals and themselves, especially when they receive the information with respect and affect. The veterinary, apart of treat with cows, dogs, cats and horses, has to deal with the owners and try of educate them about the cares from their animals. The universities should prepare their students for these situations, to have a good tact with the persons and teach about the importance of educate them about the animals.
These are in my view, the most important challenges in my discipline. Although the veterinary medicine had advanced a lot, in my opinion it continues being devalued. Maybe if we beat these challenges, people will be more conscious of our work, improving the image of this discipline.