Post-Graduate Veterinary Education - Residencies and Internships - Becoming Very Popular Among New Vet...( SCHAUMBURG Ill. Oct. 15 /- Post-g...),Health

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Post-graduate education has never been more popular among recent graduates of veterinary schools in America, according to recent studies and reports published by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

In the class of 2008, almost 40 percent of graduating new veterinarians reported that they were going into advanced education -- 89.2 percent of those into internships and 6 percent into residencies. These statistics, as well as other interesting details-average educational debt for veterinarians is now $119,803-are in AVMA's veterinary student survey published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA), http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/ref/10.2460/javma.233.7.1067.

"The percentage of students seeking advanced education has been increasing over many years. However, when we look just at the past 5 years (2003 - 2008), those seeking advanced education after graduation has increased 51.7 percent -- now that is dramatic!" Says Alison J. Shepherd, MBA, senior manager of market research at the AVMA.

In 2003, only 26.3 percent of veterinary graduates went into advanced educational positions. Shepherd explains that the trend seems to be accelerating.

"Internships have quadrupled and residencies have doubled in the past 20 years," says Dr. Michael S. Garvey, a Pennsylvania veterinarian who runs the Veterinary Internship and Residency Matching Program, in an AVMA article, http://www.avma.org/press/releases/081015_postgraded.asp. In the article, in-depth coverage is given to the growing pains that the veterinary profession is going through to adapt to this new trend.

It's clear that there are currently more student applicants for post-graduate work than there are positions, with post-gr
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