PODCAST Bonus Episode with Dr. Laurie Hess
Season 5 | Bonus Episode
A Veterinary Journey: Dr. Laurie Hess on Avian Medicine, Exotic Pets, and the Merck Veterinary Manual
Transcript
Joe McIntyre (Host): Welcome to the Merck Manuals Medical Myths Podcast. On this show, we set the record straight on today's most talked about medical topics and questions. I'm your host, Joe McIntyre, and we're taking a brief break from medical myths for a minute to introduce Laurie Hess, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and the new Editor in Chief of the Merck Veterinary Manual. After graduating with a B.A. in Biology from Yale University, Dr. Hess earned her veterinary degree at Tufts University, she then completed an internship and a two-year residency in avian and exotic animal medicine and surgery at Schwarzman Animal Medical Center in New York City. Dr Hess co-lead the Avian and Exotic Pet Service at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center for nearly a decade, and she subsequently established the Veterinary Center for Birds and Exotics in Westchester County, New York, in 2010. Dr. Hess is also the author of the book, “Unlikely Companions: The Adventures of an Exotic Animal Doctor, (or What Friends Feathered, Furred and Scaled Have Taught Me About Life and Love)”. The book highlights her unique experiences as an exotic animal expert, with Dr. Hess, often on the front lines with pets and sometimes their demanding owners.
On our last episode, we talked to Dr. Hess about the signs and symptoms of avian flu. If you're new to the Merck Manuals Medical Myths Podcast, be sure to check out that episode and any others on your favorite podcast platform. On this episode, we will talk to Dr. Hess about her background, lessons learned during her illustrious career and expectations as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Merck Veterinary Manual. Dr. Hess, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Laurie Hess: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
Host: It's great to have you. So, I want to have you talk for a little bit. Tell us more about your background. What got you interested in veterinary medicine in the first place?
Dr. Hess: Well, like many of my friends and colleagues, I wanted to be a vet my whole life, ever since I was 15 years old. I grew up in New York City, so I started working as a volunteer in my local small animal hospital. I didn't really know that I wanted to work with birds and exotic animals until much later in my career, but I had a crazy family. I had a mom and dad and brother. We lived in an apartment on the eighth floor of a high-rise apartment with all kinds of animals, birds and cats and dogs and fish, and we were a little crazy, but my family is very supportive of me becoming a veterinarian.
Host: I'm sure they're all very proud. So, during your career, you've experienced, I'm sure, a number of situations, some wilder than others, and I believe a number of valuable lessons learned. Have there been any that have stuck with you during your career?
Dr. Hess: Actually, there's one story that I like to share with people, because it really did shape who I am as a veterinarian. It was something that happened to me just a couple of weeks out of graduating from veterinary school. I was working during my internship, as you mentioned, and I was the night doctor, basically, the one doctor who was on all night long, running what was the largest animal hospital in the United States at the time. It maybe still is now. But in the middle of New York City, the only doctor taking care of 100 plus pets who are already in that hospital and then anything that came in the door that night. So it was a hot July night, and I walked in very nervously as a new vet into an exam room and saw that there was a man standing there with two bags, one containing a very, very large cat, not like a lion or tiger, but something definitely larger than a house cat, and then another little gym bag. And he was wildly screaming in a language I couldn't understand, but he was really, really disturbed. And I looked at him, and I looked at the cat, and I said, “it's okay, calm down. The cat looks okay”. And he said, “No, no, no”. And he took the gym bag, put it up on the table, tore it open, and in the bag was a little monkey who was unconscious. The monkey had an IV-line dripping fluids into one arm, and then the other arm was missing its hand. It was just kind of a bloody mess from about the elbow down, and he proceeded to explain to me that the cat had bitten the monkey's arm off, and he wanted me to take the arm out of the cat and put it back onto the monkey. Now, having been a veterinarian for just a couple weeks, I was not prepared for this situation, and I immediately began to freak out. It was about two or three o'clock in the morning. I politely stepped out and I called my supervisor, who was very understanding. She said, just take precautions because we know that many primates can have illnesses that are transmittable to people. And so I suited up, like in the movie Outbreak, with the whole thing on and walk back in. A little disturbing to the to the gentleman, but I took the cat, I did an x-ray, and I did see the monkey's hand. It was very tiny. It was passing through. It was almost at the other end of the cat. And I explained to him, the cat was going to be fine, and really there was no way to salvage the monkey's hand. But what I realized from this experience was this was one of the most unusual and probably the most unprepared I'd ever be for a situation, for something like this. And I realized that if I could retain my composure, and help the animals, which I did, and unfortunately, the monkey ended up having a serious illness and passing away. But we tried to help the monkey, and the cat was fine. And I got the man some peace of mind. If I could get through that at the start of my veterinary career, I could really get through anything. And so I've never had anything quite that crazy, but it was an interesting way to start my career.
Host: Yeah, it sounds like a TV show. I guess there's no bigger challenge to make sure you can handle the stress test early on than that. So maybe over the past few years, things have been a little less crazy than that, but I'm sure there's still plenty of wild stories you have to tell.
Dr. Hess: That's why I have a book.
Host: Exactly right. Exactly right. We'll get to that in a minute. You are only one of about 100 board-certified avian specialists in the world. Is that correct?
Dr. Hess: That's correct. Yes.
Host: Now, can you tell our audience, what does that exactly entail? What does it mean to be a board-certified avian specialist for your winged patients and those who care for them?
Dr. Hess: Sure. So not many people really know this, but to be a specialist in any field of Veterinary Medicine it is not like it is in human medicine. In human medicine, it's expected that you go to medical school, you do an internship, and a residency, and often a fellowship, and then you tend to specialize. Even if you're a family practitioner, you go through additional training. In veterinary medicine, it's a little different. There are not enough internships or even residencies for people to become specialists all around the world. It's very competitive. You can theoretically just graduate from veterinary school and go out into practice. It's very hard to do that because usually you don't know enough. You go from book learning to real life, and it's very hard. So I was fortunate enough to achieve a one-year residency, as you mentioned, and then a two-year residency in avian and exotic animal medicine, and so to become a specialist, typically, you have to do some sort of residency. There are ways to do it through years and years of practice. But after that, as an avian specialist, you have to write some publications. They have to be accepted. Once you pass that stage, you have to take a test, and the test involves knowing birds all the way, from the tiniest of hummingbirds to the largest of birds like ostriches and emus and everything in between and passing that test, and then every 10 years, I have to recertify that specialty. So I'm actually doing that now, and fortunately, I don't have to take the test again. I have to show that I've kept up with my knowledge and continued education, etc. But because it's such a long haul, and it's such a rigorous process. Not many people choose to do it, and that's why there are so few of us. What it means for my avian patients is that I have a certain level of knowledge about birds and an understanding of their disease and their anatomy so that I can provide that additional care to them. And other veterinarians who are great may not have that. They may do the initial steps and then refer to me for more specialized care.
Host: So do you get patients, and obviously those who care for them from all over the country who come to you as a specialist and say, “Hey, I have this exotic bird that’s sick or needs some help,” and you can kind of help them out. Is that how that works?
Dr. Hess: That’s how it works. I mean, we had to limit it. My animal hospital is in New York, so we try to take local patients, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania. I was at one point getting emergency calls from Puerto Rico and other countries. But really, to help most animals, I have to see them. So I really try to explain, you know, I refer to my specialist friends, and the Association of Avian Veterinarians has a great network to do that, but yeah, we do get quite a few calls, and it's hard because you really do want to help everyone, but you can't.
Host: Yeah, for sure. Now let's switch gears just a little bit and talk about your new role as the Editor-in-Chief of the Merck Veterinary Manual. When was the first time you heard about the Merck Veterinary Manual?
Dr. Hess: I heard about the Merck Veterinary Manual years ago when I was in vet school. In fact, it played a pivotal role in my passing my New York state board exams. It used to be that the New York State Board exam was an in-person exam. I think they stopped doing that, and maybe my class was one of the last ones, which was many years ago. I think it was too expensive for them to do that. But it used to be that you finished school, and then when you studied for your boards for about a month, and then in New York State, they brought you to basically a big room, a big gym. I think it was actually at the University of Pennsylvania, where they held the test, or it may have been at Cornell. They brought in animals over three days, and there were hundreds of people there, and you were brought in in small groups of like eight to ten people at a time to be asked questions, and then you'd sit around and wait for the next question. And I remember very distinctly being very, very nervous and sitting in this big gym, waiting, waiting, waiting. And someone said they brought in pigeons. So we all had our Merck Manuals with us and were frantically flipping through our Merck Manuals to read the pigeon section. And so the Merck Manual is always there with me. The Merck Veterinary Manual is a great resource, and it has been my whole career. Now, it's a website and an app which is great, and it's right at our fingertips and right on my phone, and it's a great resource for everybody, but it's been a big part of my life all the way from even before I finished veterinary school.
Host: I'm sure many of our listeners are not vets; they're not doctors. They're mainly consumers. Would it be valuable, or is there any ability for a consumer to read the Merck Veterinary Manual, or should they always turn to professionals like yourself instead of trying to care for their pets by themselves?
Dr. Hess: That’s a great question. The first part of the answer is that yes, there's some great information. It's in the pet owner section of the Merck Veterinary Manual, again, available online and in the app, and it is a great, trusted source. Because, unlike other sources that you could find on the internet, if you Google something, we know that all the information on the Merck Veterinary site is written by veterinarians and reviewed by veterinarians. So it's reliable. It's not just something that someone picked up from a website, and it's not unreliable, and it is kept current. Certainly, if you have a sick animal, you should always go to your veterinarian and never try to treat the animal yourself. But if you're just trying to get some general information and learn about disease or care of a pet, the Merck Vet Manual is a great resource.
Host: Great. Now, you're also obviously the new Editor-in-Chief of the Merck Veterinary Manual, which is exciting, but what gets you excited the most about this new role?
Dr. Hess: Well, as I mentioned, the Merck Vet Manual has been something that's been a big part of my career as a resource my whole life, and I'm really excited now to give back to my profession by contributing to the education of new vets, younger vets, even vets who've been out for a while, who want to brush up on some diseases or learn about new things. We try to stay current, so we're constantly rewriting the veterinary content of the chapters in there. So, you know, veterinarians can turn to that information and remind themselves of things they may have learned years and years ago. We do cover large animals and small animals, and exotic animals and zoo animals. So, there's a really huge breadth of knowledge. And I'm just really excited in this part of my career to be able to give that education back to people who are learning as my legacy to veterinary medicine.
Host: Now, we mentioned this at the onset of our conversation, but you are also an author of a book talking about your career and your adventures as an exotic animal doctor. Tell us about why you decided to write that book, what sorts of stories maybe are in it, about your personal and professional life. And lastly, where anyone interested in reading it can find it.
Dr. Hess: Sure, it was kind of something I never planned to do. I had one of my clients whose pet I was treating said, “You know, you have such interesting stories and I write books.” We started to talk. And it turned out she ended up not being the most honest of people, but I found out as I looked into this, there were people who were really interested in all the stories I had. These were all like cocktail party conversations, like my monkey story. And as I began to write them, and I was working with another author who helped me write the book. She's fabulous. I had a lot of stories, and my career has always been very intertwined with my family life. I have two now-grown sons. In the book they're young, but they're in their 20s now, and they're both interested in medicine, not veterinary medicine, unfortunately for me, but human medicine and nuclear medicine, but they were a big part of my career in supporting me as a veterinarian. And we all love animals. We always had lots of pets. So it's a fun, light read for someone who loves animals, loves interesting and funny, silly, sometimes touching and emotional stories. And it's also a little bit of a look into my life as a mom. So it's a lot of fun, and if you're interested, it's available on Amazon.
Host: Dr. Hess, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. It was a pleasure learning more about you, your new role as the Editor in Chief of the Merck Veterinary Manual, and also about avian flu. As we close out, I'll let you leave our listeners with a final word.
Dr. Hess: Medical knowledge is power, so pass it on.
