All Members Community

Hello Everyone,

I am wondering if there are any core groups apart of this community that offer large animal preclinical services?  I manage two core facilities for the university, one that is mainly a pharmacokinetic core facility working with rodents and swine and another large facility for our college of veterinary medicine in which we offer large animal surgical services and data collection for folks on campus as well as industry. My nursing staff also farm themselves out across campus to support projects in other cores that do not have the staff to do what always needs done.   I am interested in speaking to others in the community about the make up of these core facilities.  What type of subsidy the university provides, and all in all how hard it is to find qualified people to work in these facilities.  Here are our university several of our animal cores are really struggling with finding candidates willing to relocate to our area but also what the university is offering currently is compensation is a little rough.  My pharmacokinetic facility is a core of currently a half time person and the other core actually splits 2 full time people between 3 facilities.  It can be challenging.  What creative recruitment ideas have you been able to come up with?  Do you just take students and train them to what you need?  We also have issues with our IACUC and training to put people on protocols currently can take up to 3 months or longer.  By the time you put a student on they leave or have so little time between classes it is impossible.  

Like I said I am looking for others in this group who have some similar issues or maybe the same types of experiences.

Thanks,

Robyn

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Robyn McCain
Perdue University
West Lafayette IN
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Hi Robyn,

I am the Business Manager of the Animal Resources Core at Nationwide Children's Hospital. We offer large animal preclinical services along with rodent and other USDA-covered species. Out institute provides around a 25-35% subsidy for the entire core. We do struggle to find qualified employees at times. We have been successful with networking at AALAS, working with local vet tech schools, and using a staffing firm (Actalent). Our training team is internal, but for our vet techs the onboarding can take some time for them to be 100% independent.

Happy to set up a call or email (samantha.adkins@nationwidechildrens.org) back and forth if you have further questions!

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Samantha Adkins
Business Manager, Animal Resource Core
Nationwide Children's Hospital
Columbus OH
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