My simple point is this - would you rather have a recently graduated veterinarian that has been allowed to practice skills on patients for a whole 4 years, or one that has only had 12 months of limited experience dealing with live animals?  These skills are not magically granted to us when we receive our diplomas - everything takes practice.

As a current veterinary student, I can testify that our hands-on experience is very limited during the first 3 years of the curriculum.  We learn how to do the basics (physical exams, drawing blood, etc.) very early on with the school's teaching animals, but get very little practice before our 4th year.  This just leaves 12 months for us to develop every skill necessary to become a proficient, licensed veterinarian when we graduate.  We take boards in our 4th year, and if we pass, graduation is our only hurdle before being sent into the world to practice.  Don't get me wrong, we are fully prepared, but it does take a long time to become more efficient at these skills, and having more time to practice with supervision before graduation would be of great value.

After reading several of the community comments, I believe that many people are under the impression that veterinary students years 1-3 are completely unknowledgeable, and this is not the case.  Our education of course improves with the advancing curriculum, but really has no effect on how good we are at performing a basic physical exam on a patient - this is something that comes only with practice and repetition.  Many students are licensed veterinary techs already, and most have already spent countless hours working in a veterinary clinic observing licensed vets through high school and college.  We know HOW to do these things, we just need practice, and one year is not enough.  With the current legislation, we are not allowed to perform those skills that we have been taught in classes, practiced in labs, and been evaluated on, during our summer jobs working at vet hospitals.  By allowing all veterinary students to practice on animals we would greatly improve our skills while still being supervised by a veterinarian, so that animals have even better care once they are solely our responsibility.  This is not an opportunity for students to be negligent and mess around and is something we all take very seriously.  In most cases, the veterinarians would absolutely notify the owners of a student working on an animal, and we are insured under the school or the practice in the unlikely event of anything going wrong.  No veterinarian would allow a student to perform ANY procedure (physical exam or spay surgery) on an animal if they did not think we were qualified to do so. Before each veterinary student starts school, we take an oath to help animals and do no harm - and passing this petition will better allow us to fulfill that oath.