Vistancia Animal Hospital partners with West-MEC to train future vet techs

PEORIA, Ariz. - West-MEC veterinary students are getting hands-on learning today. The school has teamed up with a local animal hospital to get the students for the workforce.

Local perspective:

It was a busy morning for these West-MEC veterinary students. They and a few contest winners are working alongside staff members here at Vistancia Animal Hospital.

"One of the things that the funky does every year, they do an essay contest: ‘Why I want to be a veterinarian,' and they open it up to all school-aged kids so they have students here from grade school all the way through high school and what we’re doing is a live kind of hands-on experience with the kids," Brandeice Garza, an instructor at West-MEC, said.

Students are being put through seven real-life scenarios here at today's clinic. Like this one, where a dog swallowed a sock.

"I’m beginning to end," Garza said. "Why a patient would present to the veterinary clinic, and then they are following that case in the point of view of a vet, veterinary technician and doctor, so they go into the room, they get that history with the doctor and kind of the presenting complaint why they’re here, and then they go on to diagnostics and then that treatment plan whether it be surgery or bandaging or all the things in the middle."

Doctor Jason Long of the clinic says he loves this training day and being able to work with the upcoming generation of veterinarians and techs. He says this hands-on learning is priceless for these students.

"I see the whole picture," Long, the medical director of Vistancia Animal Hospital, said. "Do I really wanna do this? I really want fluids on me, but I really wanna have to interact in this way with stuff. I don't really particularly like to do. It's the whole picture, and they're getting the whole text from healthy pets to the very sick ones and also make up their mind a little bit, see what they're really getting into."

This clinic also works with the West-MEC to hire students right out of school.