It was probably the “bought several medications for cats at the regular pharmacy” that clued him/her in.
At one point, my spouse and my dog both had bottles of Tramadol in the medicine cabinet, and if I remember correctly they came from the same pharmacy in the same dosage (except spouse took it every 4-6 hours and doggy every 12).
While not all human meds are safe for animals, and humans generally don’t need heartworm pills, many of the products sold at 1-800-petmeds will be familiar to any family practitioner: beta blockers, insulin, glipizide, SSRIs, amoxicillin and other antibiotics, thyroid pills, prednisone, etc., etc., etc.
An anecdote- An acquaintance of mine has a relative who is a Veterinarian. When she was young, her parents allowed him to treat her for a minor health problem. The antibiotic he used caused permanent tooth discoloration- a trivial concern in animals, but rather major for a person. So in her case, the answer is “Not that good”.
As an adult, the problem was fixed with rather expensive and extensive dental treatment.
Nowadays, vet schools are something like 80 to 90% women. The reasons for this are unknown and currently being studied.
(My BFF’s son wants to be a veterinarian. This has been pointed out to him. )
There are many drugs that cannot be used in people that are used in animals (and vice versa; for example, penicillin is largely inert for most people but will kill guinea pigs) and thyroid hormone dosing is 10 times higher for dogs, taking weight into account, than it is for people.
In Stephen King’s “The Stand”, the first doctor to arrive in Boulder is a veterinarian. Of course, in a post-apocalyptic world, heart bypasses, etc. aren’t going to be performed, at least not for a very long time, but a DVM could certainly set a bone, perform a c-section, take out an appendix, etc.
They have specialties, just like people doctors. I recently found out that one of my high school classmates is a veterinarian who works at a large dairy farm in Wisconsin; his specialty is the digestive system of the cow. My cousin is a veterinary pathologist (he worked at a small animal practice for a while, and didn’t enjoy it) and there’s even a place in Chicago that specializes in radiation therapy for cats. Most of their work is done on hyperthyroid felines.
My friend’s son is interested in being a zoo veterinarian, and has worked at a local zoo the past couple of summers, primarily cleaning up animal crap. He knows that unless he got a job at a large zoo, he would probably be a contract worker with a primary practice elsewhere, and that he may not make all that much money.
I think the question really boils down to what kind of doctor shortage we’re talking about. Vets have medical training and medical experience, but normally operate in a different context and don’t have experience working on other humans. So if we’re talking about a city being magically whisked back to pre-human times or a post-apocalyptic wasteland and we don’t have a human doctor, I would expect a vet to be a vastly better choice than some random other person. They will be doing some OTJ training on people and will make some mistakes, but that’s life in the zombie apocalypse. I’d also expect the vet to be better at handling dental problems than a regular MD would, since vets actually do dental work routinely. I definitely would expect them to be able to do the stuff in the OP except maybe a heart attack.
If I’m in a natural disaster and have something like a broken arm or bullet wound, I’d expect a vet to be able to patch it up. If it’s not a simple break (especially if it’s in a hand or face) then I would probably get a human doc to check up on it after the emergency, but I’d trust the vet’s treatment in that kind of case. I would expect that a vet would do a reasonable job of treating chronic hypertension or diabetes, but would wait for a human doctor if there wasn’t an immediate life-threatening condition.
I wouldn’t expect a vet OR a regular MD to handle something like a triple bypass or other complicated surgery, those are extremely specialized and require very special equipment.
When I worked at the grocery store pharmacy, at least once a week, a customer would approach the counter with a sheepish look on their face, and say, “You’re probably going to laugh at me, but do you fill prescriptions for animals?” We would say, “We sure do, and that’s not a dumb question at all. Veterinarians are licensed doctors, too.” We would enter it into the computer as “Fido (dog) Smith” and in our case, most of those prescriptions were for insulin and syringes.
The weirdest one I saw was Bactrim suspension for a pet duck. It was to be put into its water bowl.
There are pharmacies that specialize in veterinary compounding; there’s a very good chance that any big city will have one, usually a hole in the wall that may not even have an obvious storefront because that’s all they do. Some pharmacists are pursuing this because they don’t have to worry about insurance reimbursements, although that may be changing with the increasing popularity of pet health insurance.
I just had one of my dog’s teeth extracted, by a woman who is a veterinary dentist. I think she is kind of a floating dog dentist, going around to different practices in the area doing cleanings and extractions one day a week. She’s at my place on Thursdays.
I read a little bit about dog dentistry before he had his procedure. I’m pretty sure that dog teeth and jaws are vastly different than human teeth and jaws. And gums, too. Grady had a canine out and there is a maaaaassive space there because the tooth is maaaaaasive. Our canines are relatively larger than other teeth but not INCHES. Grady also has 30 stitches in his jaw now from the extraction and there was zero chance of “dry socket”. His teeth will not be shifting due to the loss of one - but if you had your canine out, they might.
Also, they put animals under anesthesia when they do dental work. Even just cleanings.
Anyway, just an anecdote about dog teeth versus people teeth, and how much different the work is for human and animal dentists.
My dentist is a very competent and educated woman but I don’t think I would drop her in to a doggie dental extraction. She would have a leg up on a lay person coming in to the job but it would seem that there is MUCH for her to learn before she could be a competent veterinary dentist.
ETA: I also wouldn’t expect my regular vet to be good at doggy dentistry. Just like I don’t expect my GP to be good at human dentistry. So I am not surprised that veterinary dentistry is a specialty. So is general surgery, physical therapy and cancer treatment.
When I was a kid, our family (well, the dog’s and cat’s vet) told us a story about a little old lady who brought her pet goldfish in because it was swimming funny. Well, rather than breaking the old lady’s heart by telling her that her fish was dying, he told her to leave the fish overnight and he would see what he could do. He spent most of the evening scouring the various stores (back then you could buy goldfish lots of places, including Woolworth’s) until he found one that looked just like the dearly departed. The next day the old lady came in and picked up her fish, good as new…
I’ve had vets treat diabetes, asthma and epilepsy in a range of animals … I’m sure they would need to update their knowledge of drugs used in humans but the mechanisms are fairly similar.
Given animal models are the beginning for human treatments, most veterinarians would have a decent understanding of treating humans.
I used to be involved in training GPs … after watching some incapable of getting a scalpel together with a blade or fumbling taking out stitches … give me my vets!!
Worldwide shortage of doctors … I know quite a few vets I’d be quite happy to turn to for basic treatment. Antibiotics, stitching things up, basic surgery, cold/flu, xrays, initial diagnosis and referral to specialists - vets could be way better than many other options!
I can’t explain this, but my wife’s dosage for Tramadol is the same as my Golden Retriever mix, even though the weight difference is significant. In fact, Tramadol has been re-classified(?) lately because it came to someone’s attention that people were calling in to the vet for “refills for the dog” and taking it themselves .
Wouldn’t a vet have enough general thinking skills and general medical knowledge to do appropriate research and find out the right dosage for a human? If a vet examines a human and determines that painkillers and antibiotics are needed but doesn’t know which ones are currently approved and what the best practices in dosing are, couldn’t he look that up in a Physician’s Desk Reference or something like that? That wouldn’t be as good as being able to pick the best drug and dosage based on professional experience, but one would expect that it would probably do in most emergency cases.
Do veterinarians use the PDR? Pharmacists sure don’t, except as a doorstop.
My first thought was “look it up online” but if we were in a situation where there is no online, there are lots of books on the market that will contain that information.
There is an equivalent tome, studied by a young vet that impressed Mrs. Plant (v.1.0)
We took her dog, stings or a snake bite on the muzzle. The guy picked the dog up and stepped on the scales to find her weight. I think Mrs. Plant (v.1.0) was in love.
Oh, also for the out there hypotheticals - if our doc shortage is because we’re stuck in a fantasy or science fiction scenario with aliens and/or creatures to deal with, I think a vet would actually be better at handling near human and far from human patients. They’ve got more practice dealing with different metabolisms, sizes, and the like, and there isn’t going to be focused knowledge on elves in the PDR for the regular MD.
Vets treat hypertension and diabetes, probably asthma and epilepsy and hepatitis. They don’t treat them as extensively as a human would be treated – that’s what I meant by “high-end”, that the extent of treatment goes much farther for people than for animals, since, you know, we care more about people.
(the first human drug I bought for a cat was for hypertension)
As I said, a vet can’t legally treat people, so unless it were some sort of emergency, I would go to the guy who isn’t breaking the law. He might have better ethics in other ways, too. And of course, doctors are human specialists, and vets aren’t. But in a pinch? Sure, I’d trust a vet for a lot of medical stuff.
I reached that conclusion when the vet told me it was the same drug humans take, and I should shop around, but might find the best price at a regular pharmacy. Because I bought a human dose, I had to chop it up. I don’t taste medications intended for others.
Not that I disagree with your broader point, but I take my cats to a vet who only does cats (although he used to be a large animal vet for a zoo) and on the vet’s advice, my old-lady cat gets a baby aspirin a couple times a week. It seems to help her arthritis quite a lot.
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