Our presence in Philadelphia provides Penn Vet and its students impressive advantages.
Because we are located in a metropolis with millions of people -- and their millions of animals -- we never lack patients. Our urban clinic, the Matthew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital, is in the heart of the University City section of Philadelphia and draws an enormous caseload of varied small species. The Ryan Veterinary Hospital is one of the busiest veterinary teaching hospitals in the country, seeing more than 31,000 small-animal patient visits a year. Of those visits, approximately 13,000 are through our Emergency Service, which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is staffed by emergency medicine clinicians and emergency/critical care specialists, as well as nursing specialists in emergency/critical care, augmented by on-call specialists.
Penn Vet’s facilities serve as referral hospitals for veterinarians in private practice and in private specialty practice, just as large urban medical centers attract the most challenging patients from private practitioners and smaller community hospitals. The effect is that there's an amalgam of types of patients and variety of problems.
The innovative core/elective curriculum allows students limitless choices. Seniors can select one of five distinct clinical areas: small animal, mixed (small and large) animal, large animal, equine, and food animal medicine. We also recently added a Shelter Animal Medicine Program to the curriculum.
The huge biomedical research complex that comprises the University of Pennsylvania greatly enhances the teaching that students receive and their opportunity to participate in cutting-edge research in countless disciplines. Few universities have professional schools in veterinary medicine, medicine, dentistry and nursing, as Penn has, and fewer still have them on a single campus.
Our superb faculty members are committed to educating veterinary leaders of the future. The diversity of their academic backgrounds works to our students’ advantage -- their varied and unique perspectives bring a fullness to education. Visiting faculty, from institutions across the country and around the world, further enhance this diversity.
Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the United States. It offers professional sports, art museums and galleries, and restaurants representing every imaginable cuisine. Philadelphia, in the heart of the New York-to-Washington corridor, enjoys a vibrant, lively atmosphere distinctly its own.