The Veterinary Specialty Hospital of San Diego - North County is a specialty referral hospital located in inland North County of San Diego. We also have a location in north coastal San Diego (Sorrento Valley). The staff is composed of two full-time and one part-time board certified internists, two full-time board certified surgeons, two part-time board certified neurologists, one full-time and one part-time board certified medical oncologist, one full-time board certified radiologist and two board certified radiologists at our Sorrento Valley hospital available for wet-reads over the phone, and one full-time board certified dermatologist.

Additionally we have a part-time pharmacist on-staff, and a board-certified dentist is on site part-time. We have two board-certified emergency critical care specialists at our Sorrento Valley facility who provide training for our program, and we expect to have a full-time criticalist at our facility prior to June 2020. We also have a part-time anesthesiologist that provides consultation, instruction, and case management for our facility.  Our laboratory is a full-service lab located adjacent to our location in Sorrento Valley, and we have two full-time clinical pathologists, one full-time anatomic pathologist, and one pathologist that consults and reads cases remotely.
UC Davis has their Southern California satellite located at our San Diego facility, including a
nephrology/urology/hemodialysis service and two cardiologists, one of whom sees cases part time at our North County location. We work closely with the two board-certified internal medicine specialists and the cardiologists who run these programs.

In addition to general rotating interns, we currently have a strong house officer program at both locations, with surgical, oncology, neurology and dermatology specialty interns, five internal medicine residents and a dermatology resident who rotate through our North County location, and two emergency and critical care residents at our Sorrento Valley facility.

Internship-trained emergency clinicians support the interns in their coverage of the emergency service. We also encourage continued advancement of our technical staff and have three veterinary technician specialists; one full-time neurology VTS, one full-time emergency and critical care VTS, and a part-time cardiology VTS.

The Veterinary Specialty Hospital - North County is located in a state-of-the-art, 11,560 square foot facility, which we are planning to expand via a 5,700 square foot expansion expected to begin construction late 2019. Specialty equipment includes a videoendoscope, bronchoscope, laparoscope, digital radiology unit, on-site CT scanner, digital fluoroscopy unit, ultrasound with color and power doppler capability, Holter monitor, event monitor, temperature- and humidity- controlled oxygen cage, multi-parameter patient monitors, operating microscope, an in-house extensive laboratory with bedside electrolyte, coagulation testing and blood gas capability, biologic safety cabinet, K-laser, nerve stimulator/locator, and full service 24 hour emergency and critical care service. Each of the two operating rooms is equipped with a multifunction bed-side monitor with capabilities for arterial blood pressure monitoring, pulse oximetry, capnography, and ECG. With our expansion, we will have on-site MRI, a physical rehabilitation center, additional operating room, and a serenity room for employees. Additionally, we have access to MRI, radiation oncology, linear accelerator, electrodiagnostic unit, ventilator, diode laser, and CO2 laser at our nearby Sorrento Valley location.

Intern rotations include internal medicine (care of and procedures on hospitalized cases assisting staff internists), surgery (assisting staff surgeons in examinations/procedures, care of inpatient cases), and emergency medicine (primary-care day emergency as well as evenings/swing and weekends alongside staff emergency clinicians). Overnight emergency is not routinely scheduled, but a few shifts may occur during the year. There are also in-house elective rotations through neurology (assisting our neurologists in examinations/procedures, surgeries, and care of inpatient cases), medical oncology (examination and care of cancer patients, assisting staff oncologist with treatment plans), dermatology (examination and care of dermatologic patients and client communication), and cardiology (seeing appointments and procedures with UC Davis' cardiologists). There are also opportunities to rotate at our Sorrento Valley location for electives in nephrology (seeing appointments and participating in care of nephrology and dialysis patients), dentistry (seeing appointments and participating in care of dental patients), radiation oncology (examination and care of cancer patients, assisting radiation oncologist with treatment plans), clinical pathology (reading cytology slides, interpretation of laboratory tests such as CBCs, chemistry panels, urinalyses, urine cultures, etc), and ophthalmology (seeing appointments and procedures with our ophthalmologist). Interns with exotic or wildlife interest are able to schedule offsite elective rotations in these areas. Interns are on-call during their surgery rotation for emergency surgery/anesthesia coverage.

Didactic teaching includes in-house daily service rounds, as well as a formal two to three times weekly lecture series, monthly grand rounds (presented by interns and attended by all staff doctors), and weekly radiology rounds which are attended live or via videoconference with our Sorrento Valley facility. Interns attend bi-monthly pharmacology rounds with our board-certified pharmacist, and bi-monthly cytology rounds with our board-certified clinical pathologists via live videoconference microscopy.Interns are expected to prepare and give one lecture to technicians at our monthly CE meetings, one Grand Rounds presentation, and one Emergency rotation presentation. Interns attend a monthly emergency and critical care journal club, and when able (depending on scheduled rotation) attend surgery journal club, internal medicine journal club and dermatology journal club. Interns will also be able to attend association-sponsored Continuing Education lectures in San Diego.Veterinary Specialty Hospital of San Diego has had an internship in place since 1995-1996, however the dedicated program at our North County facility is newer, and the first class completed the program in the summer of 2017. In the program at VSH North County, interns are primarily located at our North County facility, with opportunity for elective rotations at our Sorrento Valley facility.

Interns have 10 days for Paid Time Off (vacation, sick time, and continuing education) during the year. There is a good benefit package including health, vision, dental, FSA, HSA, 401k, and pet insurance (for two pets).
Interns are expected to be highly-motivated, committed, energetic individuals who desire to strengthen their education.

Strengths of our program include a large amount of one-on-one time with the specialists, our team-centered hospital culture, intimate class size, and flexible ability to schedule elective time. We are located in the beautiful area of North County San Diego, close to the beach, other recreational areas, and cultural opportunities.