Swine Clinical Competencies

This course is an introductory course for students who want to learn more about swine production and medicine. The objective of the course is for students to practice the core clinical competencies in swine necessary for a day one veterinarian. As students repeat the course, they will have the opportunity to partake in more advanced competencies. Each student will complete 4 laboratory shifts which are 7 hours long and available during the day, nights and weekends according to students’ schedules. During the shifts at the facility, students will be required to monitor the farrowing rooms for sows in labor and attend farrowings as needed. They will assist with dystocias as well as routine piglet care such as castration, processing, weaning, and vaccination. Students may also participate in other husbandry tasks such as feeding, vaccinating sows, breeding sows, ultrasounding sows for pregnancy, and collecting boars. Students will be given a list of core competencies broken out into levels 1-4 in the areas of pig handling, swine husbandry, production records, sample collection, clinical reasoning, treatment and prevention, biosecurity, communication, and regulatory. As they repeat the course, they will move to a different and more advanced competency level. The first time they take the course students will attend a 2-hour orientation to the facility during their first shift and complete a 1 hour online orientation. After the first credit they will have the opportunity to take 2 online modules (2 hours each) including a short research paper on a swine topic of their choosing. Competencies will be incorporated into online modules as well as in person tasks completed during the lab hours. Students will be graded on their participation in labs, completion of the online materials and success in achieving the listed competencies. 1 Credit Hour