Christina Oddo

No matter who you are or what career path you’ve chosen, everyone has made an error at work at one point or another. While some mistakes may not seem as dire in other professional settings—missing an appointment, sending an email to the wrong recipient, losing your temper when faced with a challenging situation—errors in the medical field can come with heavy consequences.

In this digital world of ours, online reviews play a significant role in generating new business. This holds particularly true in the medical field, where a decision to interact with a business (in this case, a veterinary clinic) carries significantly more weight than the average transaction. Unlike walking out of a coffee shop with a watery mocha or a burned croissant, a negative experience at a veterinary office often causes significantly more distress than a ruined breakfast.

April 9-15 is National Dog Bite Prevention Week. This year, we’re focusing on bites that happen at the practice. Getting nipped at by anxious canine patients is a potential hazard of the job for veterinary team members, and knowing what to do in the wake of a dog bite is crucial. We created this article to educate the practice team on what to do if a bite happens during handling or treatment—because quick action is important when it comes to bites.

The moment of realizing that you made a medical error often feels like a nightmare. Is it fixable? What will happen to the patient? How will the client react? How could this error have even occurred? This inundation of questions can be paralyzing, but remaining calm and level-headed is the key to navigating medical mistakes to the best of your ability.

Many veterinarians will go their whole careers without receiving a complaint against their veterinary license (also known as a board complaint). However, in the last several years, incidents of license complaints have increased dramatically due to curbside service, increased patient loads, and other factors produced by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19, however, is not entirely to blame. The increase in license complaints is also partly due to increased public awareness and the fact that clients h

We hear about the importance of striking a healthy work-life balance all the time, but what does that look like in action? Finding this balance looks slightly different for everyone, but certain tips and tricks are helpful across the board. One of the most important things to remember is that work-life balance is a moving target.

It’s easy to dismiss social media as thoughtless, harmless fun, but when apps overlap with the workplace, employees—particularly those in medical professions—can get themselves into hot water. In 2022 alone, two separate social-media-gone-wrong stories made national headlines, and both occurred at hospitals. Though these incidents occurred in the human medical industry instead of at veterinary practice, veterinarians can still learn a lot from these cautionary tales.

As recently as 1975, women made up only 5% of the veterinary profession.1 By 2010, however, women made up roughly 50% of the profession; and today, approximately 61% of practicing veterinarians in the United States and 80% of American veterinary school students are women.2 This increased female presence in the veterinary field didn’t happen randomly, nor overnight. Several trailblazing female veterinarians and scientists paved the way for the women of today to pursue their dream of working with

Like most American kids, my childhood knowledge of Africa was barely enough to fill a thimble. We were taught about a land with jungles so thick and green that they almost shone black, and glittering fields of red rocky soil that were full of gems, or oil. Of course, there were also the animals: monkeys, who we loved the most, but also elephants, lions, antelopes, zebras, rhinos, parrots.

The morning of my first ever foray is blessed with a surprise rain. It’s more of a thick mist than a shower, like invisible hands are catching the drops and cupping them in midair for a moment before letting them plummet to the earth. Despite the drizzle, at least fifteen people are standing in the cratered parking lot of Schiller Woods. Baskets in hand and clustered in groups of twos and threes, they chat amongst themselves and nestle in the black-green-brown comfort of their raincoats. They're an eclectic looking bunch, but their separate conversations all swirl in similar directions.

Between conducting business and pursuing personal entertainment, our reliance on the internet is at an all-time high. Whether it’s keeping up with our favorite shows, following the news, logging on for virtual meetings or taking a livestreamed yoga class, having an online presence has become nothing short of an almost constant necessity. Yet for many of us, our virtual lives aren’t something that we devote much thought to.

No matter how long we spend lying in the grass and gazing up at the dome of the night sky, it’s hard to imagine a world outside of our own. We learn about stars and planets, galaxies and Milky Ways, but from where most of us stand, it’s hard to see anything but pinpricks of light and scattered constellations that glimmer from thousands of light-years away. What do these celestial bodies look like up close? How much of the universe is left to discover?

As is the case with most stories that have 900+ pages, The Mists of Avalon is a book you could do bicep curls with. When all five pounds of it showed up in the mail (note: buy this book at a shop unless you’re okay with paying a small fortune in shipping), I walked into the kitchen with it and one of my roommates apologized. “That sucks,” she said, actually wincing. “What class is making you read that?” After struggling to explain to her why I was voluntarily reading a book the size of a small dictionary, I went into my room, took a deep breath, and dove right in.

To all the cinephiles who are pulling out their pitchforks and preparing to skewer us for daring to suggest that any of the following movies should be books instead of films: put your weapons away, because that is NOT what we’re advocating. Whether it’s for their sweeping panoramas of the Pacific Northwest, their gloriously convoluted plots lines, or their generally morbid themes, we love these movies not only for their stories but for their brilliant cinematography.

Growing up, I used to drown in fantasy books on a daily basis. I would curl up in a corner of the treehouse in my backyard or lay in the bathtub until I was more prune than person and I would submerge myself in places that didn’t exist (and the impossibly fascinating people who populated them). Eventually—and always against my will—I would be yanked out of the story to eat dinner or get ready for bed but all the while, I‘d still be wandering ancient forests and fictitious mountain tops and hoping that someday soon, I’d wake up to discover a magic power or divine guardian of my own.

Cursed sports teams. Deep dish pizza. Al Capone. The Sears Tower. Every year, millions of people flock to Chicago from all around the globe to experience one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. However, many of these tourists might be surprised to find out that the humbler parts of Illinois offer just as much excitement as the Windy City. From rocky bluffs where Native Americans roamed to the impressive tomb that protects the remains of Abe Lincoln, Illinois is overflowing...

Set in a Seattle summer sometime in the 1970s, Black Hole follows a cast of high school seniors as they cope with The Bug- a painful, stomach-curdling disease that’s passed through saliva. The afflicted develop horrifying side effects that they attempt to conceal for as long as they can, but everyone infected with The Bug eventually ends up in the same place: deep in the woods, in a camp of misfits and outcasts who have no one to rely on but each other.

It’s a slogan found on bumper stickers, t-shirts, posters and mugs, but if you’re in the middle of trying to organize a student trip to the Big Apple, you might be feeling a little differently. Thanks to its history, charm and undeniable charisma, the bustling metropolis of New York City is one of the most frequented locations in the entire world. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the trickiest cities for first-time tourists to navigate.