Equine Internship 2024

Are you looking to fast track your career in equine veterinary practice? You want to be fully prepared for life as an equine vet, and want to be appreciated and nurtured? Read on: our friendly close-knit tier 3 equine hospital team is seeking a graduate to work with us for 12-months, starting in July 2024.

We aim to help you develop all the skills you need to be a well-balanced, competent and safe set of hands in your future career, with particular focus on RCVS day 1 skills. Benefits include:

• Structured training, one-to-one training and lots of hands-on practise in:

  • Horse handling, drug dispensing, communication skills.

  • General anaesthesia, sedation methods, diagnostic local analgesic techniques including regional nerve blocks, intra-articular injections and epidural anaesthesia.

  • Patient care, including clinical examination, supply of medications, fluid therapy, nasogastric intubation, rectal examination, bandaging technique, basic foot trimming and shoe removal.

  • Diagnostic tests, including routine blood laboratory work and respiratory cytology, taking radiographs, basic ultrasound technique including clinic-based seasonal fertility scanning.

• Opportunity for scrubbing in to surgery both in- and out-of-hours, some fully-supported simple ambulatory calls in the second half of the internship, as well as opportunities for clinical research through practice clinical audit.

• No stress trying to find somewhere to rent. Accommodation is provided on site with a locked room in the restored original Cotts' farmhouse with heating, electricity, broadband internet and council tax included (no bills). Private lounge (shared with the other intern), TV, woodburning stove, well-appointed kitchen, personal fridge-freezer, shared washing machine and drier. Use of a car and fuel for local use in and around Pembrokeshire. A dedicated on-duty telephone.

• A starting salary package of £30,000, with benefits including private health care, pension, RCVS annual retention fee, professional indemnity insurance, £1000 of paid CPD over up to 5 days, 21 days paid holidays, fully funded 12-month working visa for EU graduates, cycle to work scheme.

• Have sufficient work life balance to enjoy living and working in an area of outstanding natural beauty, where most people can only come on holiday! Plentiful opportunities for outdoor activities including horse riding, walking, cycling, climbing, surfing, coasteering, kayaking, sailing, photography, drawing and painting, running, the list is endless.

Who we are: Cotts is an RCVS-accredited Equine Hospital in South West Wales, the only one of its type in Wales. Situated on the edge of a coastal National Park and area of outstanding natural beauty, we provide ambulatory equine services to Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, south Ceredigion, Swansea and the Vale of Glamorgan. We also provide a referral service for emergency surgery and intensive care, and all elective internal medicine, orthopaedic and surgical cases. Cotts provides veterinary cover for nearby Ffos Las racecourse, where you can regularly attend. We currently employ 20 full time veterinary surgeons, including board-certified specialists in surgery and internal medicine. We pride ourselves on being a friendly close-knit team - friends as much as colleagues. Further details about the practice, staff and facilities can to be found on our website, www.cottsequine.co.uk.

Your key attributes:

• Willingness to learn and play a full team part in all the activities of a 21st century equine hospital: sometimes injecting fetlocks or taking x-rays, sometimes cleaning the floor, tidying up, or not getting quite enough sleep.

• Membership of the RCVS, or a veterinary degree making you eligible for membership of the RCVS.

• We encourage and support applications from graduates from wherever you have graduated from in the world. We have welcomed and employed vets from Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland, Estonia, Italy, Romania, Netherlands and Belgium in the past. *Note that though we welcome applications from anywhere in the world, many vet degrees require a further examination to be taken before being able to gain RCVS membership.

• We supply and fund a UK work visa and refund the RCVS membership fee, but you need to apply directly. Part of the language requirements now include achieving a score of at least 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in one of the listening, reading, writing and speaking components of the academic version of International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Or, achieving an overall average score of at least a grade B in the vet version of the Occupational English Test (OET) with a minimum C+ in one of the listening, reading, writing and speaking sub-tests.

• Try before you commit: spend a few weeks/months with us with free accommodation to see if this is a job or career that you like. We are confident that you'll like working here, but if it isn't what you wanted in reality, then no worries. *Note that the working visa is Cotts-specific, meaning that overseas vets leaving employment early in this scenario would legally have to leave the UK and apply for new jobs from home.

Application process: For informal enquiries please email for the attention of Richard Coomer, enquiries@cottsequine.co.uk. Formal applications should include your current CV and letter of intent, also marked for the attention of Richard Coomer to enquiries@cottsequine.co.uk. Two references should be supplied and candidates may also provide supplementary letters of recommendation or any other information they feel pertinent. We will then contact you to arrange a zoom meeting, followed by a mutually convenient time to see practice, during which time you will also be interviewed.