Penn Foster Veterinary Assistant program

In November 2005, I started taking a correspondence course at Penn Foster to be a veterinary assistant.  I didn’t really know if the program had any value or credibility (it’s hard to trust places which offer classes in such diverse areas as “gunsmith” and “floral design"), but I figured it would be a good chance for me to try out the distance education concept to see if I liked it.  Surprisingly, I ended up being impressed by the Penn Foster program.  Even though my course was only a certificate course and it didn’t necessarily have much real-world value, I thought the classes and teaching materials were professional and challenging.  All 38 modules were graded using open-book tests, but they still required a high degree of understanding of the materials.  I’ve taken biology, anatomy, and physiology classes many times, so a lot of the material was just review for me, but I feel I learned a lot in the modules about actual techniques used in veterinary practice (restraint methods, instrument sterilization, bandaging methods, anaesthesia basics, etc.).  From the small amount of time I’ve spent in a vet clinic, I’d say that these materials were up-to-date and accurate.

My complaints and criticisms of the course are problems inherent in the “distance learning” concept.  The course materials were sent by media mail (until I called and complained about it), so delivery was slow at first.  I ended up paying for the entire course ahead of time, in-full, just to get them to send me ALL the lessons at once so I could truly work at my own pace and in the order which interested me.  While most of the materials were interesting, the required “course options” seemed thrown together haphazardly and were of limited value.  For example, when I selected an optional module about cats, I didn’t expect that I’d end up learning about “breeding cats” and “showing cats”.  The optional modules seemed like a complete waste of time, nothing more than “busywork”.

My biggest concern was that it was next-to-impossible to have contact with an instructor to ask questions.  There was no way that I found to email an actual person with questions—I was limited to using the generic “contact us” form on the Penn Foster website, and as of yet, I haven’t received answers to any of the three questions I asked.  The questions I asked related to my other complaint: some of the test questions were vague and confusing, and at least three of them were completely incorrect.  On more than one occasion, the text would contradict the supposedly “correct” answer on a test, yet there was no real person I could confront about this.

I don’t know how useful the course would be if I was to use it to seek employment, but I may end up using it as a jumping-off point to take Penn Foster’s Veterinary Technician degree program.  This program has just been accredited by the AVMA, and it’s supposedly a lot more professional.  I’ve read that there are message boards where you can interact with instructors, and online classrooms/chatrooms with mandatory sessions each week.  My tests would be supervised by a proctor, and I’d have required interships at veterinary clinics where I’d have to learn certain tasks.  If I want vet tech training here in Nevada I only have two other choices: “Pima Medical” on the other side of town, and the community college, where I’d have to complete the program on a fixed schedule and couldn’t start until the fall of 2007.  I also haven’t heard anything good about the community college program—the one vet I asked about it said that the students don’t seem to learn anything of value, so that’s not really a glowing review!  I just love learning, and I’ve been taking classes off and on since I graduated from high school twenty-two years ago, so the vet tech classes would be just one more thing to keep my mind busy, and to enhance my employment opportunities.

Oh, the point of writing this entry (besides its information value) was to say that I’ve finally finished the veterinary assistant program, and I should be receiving my certificate in the next couple of weeks.  38 modules of material, 755 test questions… I finished with an average of 97.4%.  The radiology module gave me brain cramps, and it was very difficult, so I don’t relish the thought of encountering it again in a vet tech program.  I’d wanted to complete the program more quickly, but with the occasional batch of foster kittens, Flippy’s surgery, mortgage agent school, regular work, etc., it ended up taking me 11 months.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/14 at 10:05 PM

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  1. Well done, indeed! The nice thing about the internet course is that you won’t have to worry about applying or transferring coursework should you end up back East.

    Posted by Diana  on  10/15  at  03:18 AM

  2. Congratulations!

    Posted by prajantr  on  10/15  at  08:59 AM

  3. Congrats! That’s quite an achievement and especially so because you had a lot of other stuff going on!  Hope it leads you somewhere you want to be.

    Posted by Ruth  on  10/15  at  03:28 PM

  4. Congratulations!!

    I’d be worried about doing this online because the hands-on part is so essential to the career. But I know you got a lot of useful stuff out of it.

    Lol- the verification word is “college”.

    Posted by Georg  on  10/16  at  01:01 PM

  5. "Veterinary assistant” is really just an OJT job, so a course like this truly isn’t required for a person to be hired.  An assistant is usually the assistant to a technician, so most of the reading materials for this course said things like, “As an assistant you won’t be doing blood draws, but it’s important that you understand the process so you can properly aid the technician”.  Then it would go on to describe the process and technique.

    As for the vet tech course, it has 400 hours of required clinical work, and I’d have to find a clinic and supervising vet to teach me an alloted list of tasks, and to confirm I’d mastered them.  In a way, the online course might actually be better than the community college course here, where I’ve heard that they’re still having problems getting approval to buy animals for dissections.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/16  at  01:15 PM

  6. Sounds like you did a great job with what the course offered.

    A friend is taking online UW college courses and finding that even with forums, discussion boards, and a teacher available, she has encountered one teacher who encourages too much chatting in the forums, so when my friend has a question, there are over 60 messages to weed through to find the answer; the teacher just says “I answered that in the forum.” But that’s only one class out of the many she’s taken.

    When you mentioned dissections, I remembered why I stayed out of medicine.

    Posted by Victor Tabbycat's Mom  on  10/17  at  10:20 AM

  7. Purdue University has a distance option for their vet tech course.  You do have to work with a vet pretty closely, though, since the exams have to be proctored by a vet and the hands-on stuff also needs to be supervised by a vet.  I’ve thought about it to round out my 2 engineering degrees from there—why go anywhere else, just because I live a couple thousand miles away now?

    Posted by kabbage  on  10/23  at  05:30 PM

  8. Even with the Penn Foster program, all my tests will have to be proctored and my 400 hours of “hands-on” training will have to be done in a clinic here in Las Vegas, supervised by a vet.  When it comes down to it, I think distance learning is fine for this type of program as long as there’s lots of local clinical training.  There are many vet techs who’ve only had OTJ training, so the “book learnin’” is just a bonus for me.

    Purdue sounds great, but not in my budget smile I found a highly-recommended distance course from a college in Texas, and the program costs a total of about $12000.  I’m sure Purdue would also be pricey, although I’m sure the education would be excellent.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/24  at  10:44 PM
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