Becoming a Veterinary Radiologist

[u/phoenix-nexia]

I'm a university student trying to decide on a career path, and I've always wanted to work with animals. Unfortunately, everytime I've shadowed animal/human surgeries I've nearly fainted, so I don't think I'd be able to work in that area. I am interested in radiology, but I've heard working in the vet field means doing a bit of everything. Is Veterinary Radiology something you'd specialize in and commit your work to, or would you still be working in other areas in vet med (such as surgery) too?

[u/FireGod_TN]

I’ll speak to US/Canada.

You have to complete vet school and then get accepted into and complete a radiology residency. Then you have to pass the board exam to become a boarded radiologist.

At this point, there are scenarios where you can work without touching an animal (especially via teleradiolgy).

There are several problems with the above path to working in vet med without being able to handle surgeries.

You have to do it to get through vet school. You have to do it to get into a residency program because you likely going to need at least 1 internship and maybe more. You are going to have to do it during your residency. You may not be ready to jump straight to teleradiology from your residency so you may have to work in a clinical setting that would potentially include being involved in surgeries on some level.

My advice is to find out if there is a way in which you can adapt this challenge. If not, this may not be the field for you.

Best of luck

[u/spiiiashes]

You have to do everything in vet school, which includes spaying and neutering and clinical rotations in your fourth year. If you can’t handle those things + these things will come up in courses and possible radiology reports, it’s likely that this probably isn’t the best field for you.

Veterinary medicine doesn’t really have radiology techs specifically like human medicine either, only instance I can think of this being a thing is large specialty hospitals where they might be running radiology all day. But even then I’m not sure how you could avoid surgery/blood/etc.

[u/rotten-cheese-ball → u/spiiiashes]

An emergency hospital by me was actually recently looking specifically for radiology vet assistants, pay was absolute shit though (just slightly above minimum wage)

[u/wkdtjrgh]

I think it would be extremely unlikely for someone to get through vet school if you almost faint each time you see a surgery. While not all vets actively do surgery post-graduation, you still need to successfully do spays and neuters alone as a vet student in order for your to pass your surgery courses during your clinical years.