Hospital and Ambulatory Internship

Kentucky Equine Athlete Hospital is seeking motivated interns who are excited to experience a well-rounded internship experience in all facets of equine practice, including surgery, sports medicine/lameness, ambulatory, emergency and critical care and advanced diagnostic imaging.  Our services range from routine ambulatory practice to emergency and critical care cases to high quality surgical and sports medicine cases including advanced imaging and cutting-edge lameness treatments.

Philosophy of Internship: We believe that an internship should allow our new veterinarians the opportunity to increase their skill level, case knowledge and have continued exposure to all areas of equine practice to adequately prepare them for a successful career in private practice or a surgical/medical residency. We aim to provide our interns with a supportive environment to work with mentors, work independently and work as a team. Throughout the year, interns will gain more primary case responsibility, but will always have a senior clinician available as backup for consultation and assistance. The goal of this year is to provide a well-rounded hospital and ambulatory internship that will instill the confidence needed to become a successful equine practitioner.

Internship Duties: Our interns will rotate through hospital and ambulatory rotations throughout the year, with emphasis on their area of interest if applicable. Interns will provide ambulatory services for clients including but not limited to routine health care, medicine and emergency workups, with increasing primary case responsibility as they advance in their internship. While on hospital rotations, the intern will scrub into all surgeries for the week and provide post-surgical care and assessment for these patients, as well as assist practitioners with lameness, radiology, anesthesiology, reproduction, advanced imaging, video endoscopy and laboratory testing. Construction on our new hospital will be completed in Fall 2024, at which time interns will rotate through an emergency and critical care rotation, which will include triaging emergency cases, scrubbing into surgeries and postoperative management of critical cases. Each in house case is assigned to an intern who is primarily responsible for the case and is overseen by a senior clinician.

Practice Information: Kentucky Equine Hospital is located in Simpsonville, KY – the heart of horse country and on the outskirts of Louisville. Our hospital was founded by Dr. Wes Sutter in 2020, with the internship established shortly thereafter. Our practice consists of 7 full-time veterinarians, including two surgeons (one boarded and one board-eligible) and two ACVSMR boarded practitioners, as well as three veterinarians certified in chiropractic and acupuncture. Our facilities include one surgery suite with an induction/recovery stall, standing surgery suite, 30 stalls, MRI, nuclear scintigraphy and PET scan. Construction of our new hospital will be completed in Fall 2024 and will provide two additional surgery suites with 4 induction/recovery stalls, one additional standing surgery suite, a standing CT and 6 outpatient/advanced imaging stalls. A large number of elective surgeries are performed weekly with an increasing emergency caseload as the new hospital is completed and a large ambulatory case load. Our caseload covers a variety of disciplines including racehorses, eventing, show jumping, dressage, Western performance, saddle seat show horses and pleasure horses. Dr. Erica Tolar, DACVO also maintains her equine ophthalmology patients out of our hospital and provides advanced ophthalmologic procedures, surgeries and hospitalized care.