Over the past decade or so, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University has moved away from conventional protocols in the use of animals in our veterinary student teaching program (e.g., in anatomy, surgery and clinical skills courses), to alternative ones. This started with the elimination of terminal procedures for our core surgery teaching laboratories and continued with the implementation of the client donation or willed body program for anatomy and some surgical and clinical skills training.
With the elimination of terminal small animal surgery elective laboratories a few years ago, we completed a transition of our veterinary medical curriculum to one that strongly encourages that healthy animals involved in the teaching program not be subjected to invasive or terminal procedures. This program was a first for a US veterinary school.
There are some exceptions to this guideline. Healthy animals are used for teaching examination, restraint and medication techniques. An elective bovine surgery course is conducted on owner-leased animals with the owner's consent and approval. The surgery performed (omentopexy) helps prevent future digestive problems; this surgery is not commonly performed as a preventive measure in most practices. Students also are taught to perform common animal husbandry procedures, some of which are invasive. Further, there are occasional laboratories in which animals destined for euthanasia after being in a research protocol, or during which large animals selected for cull and slaughter are anesthetized and subjected to procedures, after which they are euthanatized while still under anesthesia.
The history of this transition is described below:
Formal anatomy training at Tufts involves dissecting several species of animals – dogs, horses, and cattle - in the first year. Informal opportunities exist throughout all 4 years to observe and study normal as well as abnormal anatomy during treatment and examination of patients in the hospital and wildlife clinic, and in pathology.
Dogs– In order to supply cadavers for the anatomy laboratories in the first year, Tufts University has established a client donation program whereby clients of the teaching hospital who are faced with euthanizing their dogs for medical reasons may elect to donate their pet for veterinary student training. This groundbreaking program benefits clients as well as students. Students are provided with the case record, so they can begin to integrate clinical material with didactic learning at the earliest possible time in their training. They are reminded, through use of a loved, client-donated pet, of the importance and strength of the human-animal bond. Clients who choose to participate in the donation program have the satisfaction of knowing that their thoughtfulness will help train a future generation of caregivers. All dogs used for anatomy training have been obtained through the client donation program since 1998.
Horses– Horses for the anatomy laboratory are purchase from a local dealer, in lieu of being shipped many hundreds of miles to slaughter. A board-certified anesthesiologist performs the sedation and euthanasia of the horses prior to embalming for the laboratory.
Other Species– Small numbers of other species used for anatomy training are acquired from a variety of sources. They are all destined for euthanasia or slaughter locally. A board-certified anesthesiologist performs the sedation and euthanasia prior to embalming for the laboratory. Currently, one cow and one pig are prepared as prosections for all students to study; goats are dissected by small groups of students.
Prior to 1989, the foundation of surgery training at Tufts was a required small animal surgical procedures laboratory for third year students, in which students performed a wide variety of surgical procedures using purpose-bred live dogs that were euthanatized at the completion of the laboratory. In 1989, in response to a request from 12 members of the class of 1990, the school began to offer an alternative laboratory in which students practiced on client-donated cadavers instead of live dogs. Despite the results of a study that did not find any difference in ability to perform surgery without assistance, confidence, willingness to perform surgical procedures, or quality of work between new graduates who had participated in the alternative training and those who had participate in the traditional program1, the surgery faculty were concerned that students taking the alternative laboratory did not have the experience of induction and maintenance of general anesthesia, that normal anatomy in cadavers was often difficult to appreciate, and that there was not an opportunity to develop skills in hemostasis.
From 1993 through 1995, the school offered an elective course in which students spayed or neutered feral cats provided by a Boston humane organization. Based in part on the success of that program, as well as an unpublished study showing improvement in surgical training of veterinary students who perform multiple spays versus those in the traditional non-survival laboratory, it was decided in 1994 to substitute the sterilization of female dogs waiting for adoption at local humane organizations for the non-survival core surgery lab. For those students who were interested in additional surgical experience, a shortened version of the original [non-survival] small animal surgical procedures laboratory was still available as an elective. This consisted of a full day of abdominal surgery using live, purpose-bred dogs that were euthanatized at the end of the laboratory, and a half-day of orthopedic surgery using the cadavers.
A large animal surgery elective uses heifers obtained from a local dairy herd. The heifers undergo a prophylactic omentopexy to prevent displaced abomasum. Following recovery, the heifers are artificially inseminated and returned to a production setting.
The non-survival component of the small animal elective laboratory was eliminated in the academic year 2000-2001 for a number of reasons. The most important of these was that the surgery faculty felt, based on years of experience with the elective laboratory and the success of the Spay Laboratory, that the value of the learning experience provided by the course did not justify the sacrifice of healthy dogs. In recent years, the number of students choosing to take the live animal component of the elective laboratory has decreased substantially, indicating that our students as well as our faculty were progressively perceiving the course to be of limited value.
At present, no animals are sacrificed for surgery training of DVM students at Tufts in either core or elective courses. New learning opportunities, designed to strengthen hands-on surgical experience are being developed. A suturing laboratory has been added to the second year Principles of Surgery Course, and efforts are underway to increase the number of dogs each student spays in the Spay Laboratory. An elective orthopedic surgery laboratory, using either cadavers from client-donated pets euthanatized for medical reasons or bone models, will still be available in the third year. We are also expanding opportunities for seniors to gain additional surgical experience on-site at local and regional spay-neuter clinics.
1Pavletic MM, Schwartz A, Berg J, Knapp D. An assessment of the outcome of the alternative medical and surgical laboratory at Tufts University. JAVMA 205(1) 97-100; 1994.
Animal Use for DVM Training in Clinical Procedures
Clinical skills laboratories are held in the first and second years, and veterinary procedures laboratories are conducted in the third year. During these laboratories, students observe and learn to perform a wide variety of procedures that are either part of normal animal husbandry, or are necessary to prevent, diagnose and treat disease in a wide variety of domestic, farm, and wildlife species.
In some cases, the procedures are part of the normal physical exam, palpation, and restraint of the species. For farm animal species, whenever possible, preventive medicine techniques such as intravenous, subcutaneous, and intramuscular injections, passage of a stomach tube, and artificial insemination are coordinated with regularly scheduled herd-health visits. In no case are healthy animals sacrificed or subject to major invasive techniques to teach these procedures. Cadavers from animals that died or were euthanatized for medical reasons are used for any procedures that are highly invasive, e.g., dentistry, equine nerve blocks, bone marrow aspiration, chest tube placement, thoracocentesis, and transtracheal aspiration.