Mission & Overview
The three missions of our land grant institution are education, engagement, and discovery. As clinical professionals in veterinary medicine, we find ourselves involved in all three missions. As teachers, we participate in didactic education as well as in the clinical education of veterinary students, interns, and residents. We are engaged with our community in our professional practice, as well as in delivery of continuing education to veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and pet owners. Discovery follows as new information always leads to new questions, which need to be answered to benefit the companion animal.
The Mission of Iowa State University’s, College of Veterinary Medicine’s, Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Program is to help improve the well being of homeless companion animals through education and discovery.
In the first twelve months of the third year of funding, the Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Teaching and Research Program at Iowa State University has once again been very successful! We continue to connect more actively with the sheltering community in Iowa and the surrounding states. We have addressed issues that affect adoption guarantee shelters, traditional shelters, and animal control units; continuing to work with all of these groups.
We began our year by selecting three outstanding Class of 2007 senior students to travel to exceptional adoption guarantee shelters and participate in externship programs. All three have completed their externships and have brought back experiences that would not have been possible without our Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Teaching and Research Program. The focus for these students is not on the traditional spay/neuter programs but on other aspects of sheltering which veterinarians must understand in order to make a difference in animal adoption and quality of life. Because of the allotment for externships in our budget, we were able to select three additional students from the Class of 2008 to experience the Maddie’s® Externship Program. One of these students has now completed their externship and the others will complete their experience by February of 2008. For other senior students who desire to experience shelters not previously connected with Iowa State University, our cooperative shelter list has grown to include low-kill and adoption guarantee facilities.
In January of 2007, we strengthened veterinary medical education at Iowa State University though our Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Course. We scheduled three exceptional internationally known speakers and several outstanding community contributors. All of the invited speakers were well received by the students and were very informative as they shared their knowledge and skills with the students. Of the 35 students, 32 were freshman, two sophomores, and one was a junior. The classroom was open to all students and members of the community. Maddie’s® also sponsored seminars for the Student Organization of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians with the university and sheltering community in attendance as well. As Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Director, Dr. Baldwin continues to present animal sheltering, animal welfare, and bioethics issues in other classes. Associate Director Petersen continues to bring additional energy, experience, knowledge, and skill to our program.
Maddie’s® Summer Scholars Program continues to be instrumental in engagement. We completed two very important projects for our Maddie’s® Summer Scholars, whose work began in May of 2007. One of the projects dealt with evidence based medicine, and determining whether the use of L-lysine is effective in minimizing clinical signs or preventing upper respiratory disease in cats in shelters. The other dealt with determining environmental and group health risk factors for feline upper respiratory infection in shelters. The cooperating shelters were within our local community. One has an adoption rate compatible with adoption guarantee. All of us learned a great deal about shelter environments, management styles, and upper respiratory infection in cats.
Both Drs. Petersen and Baldwin are members of the Iowa Federation of Humane Societies. In early winter Dr. Baldwin became a member of their Board of Directors. We continue to collaborate with and contribute to this organization. In addition, we participated in several other very significant engagement events over the last year. We submitted a proposal to the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine, to present at the infectious disease special interest group session, at their 25th Annual Forum in June. The proposal was accepted! The proposal, directed at populations, included infection control procedures for routine, emerging, and exotic pathogens. This two hour presentation and discussion dovetails nicely with shelter medicine and with Dr. Petersen’s project: “Infection Control Manual for Veterinary Students and Animal Shelter Veterinarians”, supported by the Maddie’s Fund®. Another contribution to education and scholarship was the submission of a book chapter by Dr. Baldwin on “Canine Kennel Cough Complex” to the editors of the forthcoming book Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters.
Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Teaching and Research Program at Iowa State University is involved in two other extremely important events for shelter medicine: development of a specialty of shelter medicine, recognized by the AVMA, and establishing residency training guidelines for the specialty. In January of 2007, a core group of educators, consultants and shelter directors met to develop a curriculum of study that would delineate what experts in shelter medicine do which can then be used for training in the specialty of shelter medicine (DACUM). We were pleased to be at the table for this extremely important event. The meeting to establish residency training guidelines is being planned for January of 2008 and we are excited to once again be represented. We are proud that we currently have one graduate from our veterinary college in a shelter medicine residency at Colorado State University, one of fewer than a dozen veterinarians who have entered such a program, and a senior student applying for an internship in shelter medicine. We also are pleased to see that another of our graduates was featured in the October 07 Veterinary Medicine Journal, a Special Report focusing on the euthanasia problem and how practitioners can help. Another extremely important engagement and educational experience for us was a site visit to a shelter in the Quad Cities area. We were able to determine the cause of an unusual disorder that the shelter was experiencing and a senior student shared this information in a college wide presentation during Senior Grand Rounds.
Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Senior Student Award, given to a member of the Class of 2007 for demonstrated commitment to Shelter Medicine and the adoption guarantee philosophy was given at an awards ceremony in May. We are pleased to continue to offer this award. Our student Shelter Medicine Organization is officially registered with the Association of Shelter Veterinarians. They continue to hold fundraisers for our local shelters. Finally, our Feral Cat Alliance, a partner organization of the Shelter Medicine Club, continues to work to decrease the feral cat population in central Iowa while giving students an extremely important experience for leadership and community service.
