Calendar of Events

By: Katherine Smith, DVM

Description: This lecture will introduce “Guidelines for the Prevention of Pain, Agitation, Delirium, Immobility, and Sleep Disruption in Adult Patients in ICU” from our human medicine counterparts and use this as a basis for our discussion on how we can improve the ICU experience for the veterinary patient.  It will focus mainly on anxiety/agitation and sleep deprivation, with a goal of understanding the science of their deleterious effects and real solutions on how to mitigate their occurrence.  This lecture is designed for all levels.

Course Objectives:

1. PADIS guidelines in human medicine – what are they and how can we use them when thinking about veterinary ICU patients
2. Anxiety and agitation – recognition, physiological side effects, and what can we do to address it
3. Sleep – physiology of sleep and sleep deprivation, how sleep disruption may affect outcomes, strategies to maximize better sleep in our patients.
4. Immobility and other forms of suffering that we can better address in our patients.

Speaker Info: Dr. Katherine Smith received her DVM from Louisiana State University (2009), a small animal rotating internship at the University of Georgia (2010), and an ECC residency at Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists (2013), receiving her board certification in emergency and critical care in 2014. She was in private practice in specialty hospitals until 2020 when she transitioned to doing only locum work, allowing her to practice across the nation spanning from Hawaii to Massachusetts. She loves teaching, infectious diseases, and feline medicine (to be honest, she loves anything to do with cats in general). Dr Smith also has a special interest in improving our patients’ ICU experience by more thoroughly addressing anxiety and sleep needs.

By: Bobbi Conner, DVM, DACVECC

Description:Fluid therapy is one of the most commonly prescribed treatments for sick veterinary patients. Its ubiquity does not, however, mean that we know all we need to know about the benefits and dangers of fluid therapy. In recent years, some new research has put a spotlight on trends in fluid therapy in medicine and as a result, some long-held recommendations have been questioned. In this discussion, we will review current recommendations for fluid therapy. Whenever possible, veterinary-specific literature will be cited and discussed; when necessary, recommendations that have been extrapolated from human medicine research and guidelines will be clearly presented. We will focus on practical application of the available research, identify and highlight the remaining gaps in our collective knowledge, and we’ll attack some of the most persistent controversies and myths involving fluid therapy. The session will be interactive and case-based.

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

1. list the benefits and risks of intravenous fluid therapy in any patient.
2. list the indications for fluid therapy and as well as the indications for discontinuation of fluid therapy.
3. choose the most appropriate fluid type for their patient’s needs.
4. describe the earliest signs of potential fluid overload in a small animal patient.
5. identify at least two resources to aid in complex fluid therapy administration cases.

Speaker Info: Dr. Conner obtained her DVM from Michigan State University in 2007, after which she completed a rotating internship at University of Illinois in 2008, followed by her residency in Emergency & Critical Care at NC State in 2011, when she became a diplomate of ACVECC. She worked at the vet school at University of Pretoria in South Africa for a short while in 2011-2012, then joined the faculty at University of Florida from 2012-2020. Since the summer of 2020, she has been developing the emergency & critical care program at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. She is passionate about teaching and learning and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Educational Psychology. Most of her current research involves identifying best practices in education and communication.