If the CDC's Ebola guidance and protocols for healthcare workers are

[kestrel91316]

117. Hmmm. A vet finally dishes out what we've been on the receiving end of for well over a century as a

profession, and a nurse gets all snippy.

We're just supposed to sit down, shut up, and know our place, right? Vets have been slandered and insulted by the human medical profession as long as I've been in practice and far longer than that. It's not usually overt - it tends to take the subtle or not-so-subtle implication that we aren't "real" doctors (oh yes we are) and that we just go down to city hall to buy our licenses right out of high school.

It's 20 times harder to get into vet school than medical school. We have to learn 20 times as much material in the same length of time, and are expected to be capable of real world practice the second we graduate - only a small minority goes on to internships and residencies. If you were stuck on a desert island, trust me, you'd want to have a veterinarian there with you rather than almost any physician.

From cardiologists trying to dictate my pharmaceutical choices in treating a chronic immune-mediated disease, to nurses saying that vaccinating cats for anything including rabies is stupid and unnecessary, to having to watch the poor dog of a surgeon suffer for years with an untreated (and highly operable) perineal hernia until its poor urinary bladder became incarcerated, necrotic, and then ruptured..................I've seen a lot from you folks. The ophthalmologist who actually put amoxicillin pediatric suspension into his cat's eyes instead of its mouth (because why would you want to follow verbal instructions or read a label??), the nurse who said "I want to see the MAN doctor", and the pharmacist who let a treatable malignant tumor on a cat's face grow from being highly resectable to so large the cat had to be put to sleep............not very impressive.

I'm done with giving human medical professionals unearned respect. Each and every one has to prove themselves to me individually now. Just like everyone here says vets have to.