Community Practice

What to Expect at Your Appointment

Our Community Practice team creates a respectful, educational, and supportive environment to care for your animal while empowering our student veterinarians in their future role as primary care veterinarians and active community members.

Although choosing to visit us might be a greater time commitment, you can expect that a team of clinicians, interns, and student veterinarians will collectively care for your pet – extra eyes and ears can catch important health issues and shared knowledge can help solve them.

Most patients can expect the following when arriving for their appointment:

1. A fourth-year veterinary student will greet you, review your pet's medical history and perform an initial exam.
2. The student veterinarian may take your pet back to the Community Practice area to discuss their exam with the veterinarian.
3. A veterinarian will then complete a second exam and medical history in order to review what the student veterinarian has found.
4. Together the veterinarian and student veterinarian will create a plan for your pet's care.
5. The student veterinarian will present you their plan and speak with you about costs. It is also likely that the veterinarian will come and greet you. If it is important to you to meet the doctor during your visit, please let your student veterinarian know. Our team will work with you to make decisions about how Community Practice will care for your pet.
6. Any agreed upon care is then performed or scheduled.
7. The student veterinarian may follow up with you via phone to check in on the status of your pet.

Note: The length of time of your appointment can vary. Providing you and your pet with the best possible care is of the upmost importance to us, therefore your appointment may take a little longer than you are accustomed to. In general, an appointment for a wellness exam will be an hour. This allows us the time to completely review your pet's health history, evaluate your pet for any concerns and discuss our findings with you. Please let us know if you have any time restrictions. We can arrange drop-off appointments for your convenience.

Preparing for Your Appointment

If this is your first time visiting our hospital, please bring any medical records to your appointment (e.g., vaccine records) so we can better understand the health of your pet.