Jun 21, 2013
Around 2011, I decided to produce educational veterinary videos for www.toapayohvets.com as "Be Kind to Pets" Educational Videos are more useful for the younger generation of vet students and pet owners in Singapore. A video is worth a million words to the young ones.

Most of the young ones don't have time to read and sleep if they spend their time on social media and streaming movies. 

I collaborate with my interns to produce the veterinary videos. By being hands on, I strongly believe they will learn more than just being an observer at the veterinary practice, as observation is the common practice for veterinary interns in the Western-education based veterinary studies.

I gave the interns my concept, sometimes dialogue and the theme, e.g How does a vet treat kennel cough? Video. They do the writing and editing so that the videos are not boringly my voice or point of view. It takes a thousand times longer to produce an educational video as compared to writing a case study but the educational value of a video is a million times more useful and I hope more entertaining. The videos are not perfect but it is better to produce a hundred imperfect videos and learn from the failures and errors rather than create one perfect video.

Today I review my youtube analytics for May 21 2013 to June 19, 2013 and the following are the results:

TOP 5 VIDEOS
1.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmTYP8T95V4  690 views 768 minutes. Kennel Cough Video Produced in Nov 18, 2011.

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IktlG2Rkac 162 views  103 minutes. Oro-nasal Fistula Video Produce in Jan 20, 2010

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AWHpWYWgy4
Carnaissal Tooth Abscess Video 

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCxQdlVP4s
Closed pyometra  & toxaemia


My favourite video is still the Kennel Cough Video which is at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmTYP8T95V4

I gave the concept and a briefing of kennel cough to my associate vet and one intern. He roped in his friend who is experienced in video production. The intern acted as the dog owner. The experienced friend videoed and produced.  I left the Surgery so as to let them be free to act, keeping my fingers crossed that the final movie would be great. The angles, voice over and acting were great.

The only thing that the video did not capture was the "kennel cough" of the puppies. The pug puppy did have kennel cough but was recovering. There were no other cases and the interns worked for 3 days only.

Kennel Cough in puppies will sound like an "old man's cough" frequently heard in the 1950s as tuberculosis was more common. However new puppy owners in Singapore will know the cough! This is the top viewing video in May to June 2013, showing that kennel cough is of great interest to new puppy owners or that the video was produced 2 years ago and so garnered more viewings.

My 2nd favourite video is done by an intern from Raffles Institution. It was produced with a good narrative from the point of view of a young lady in the 2nd year of Junior College and who wants to be a veterinarian. The video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvku1Ix4Bxc&feature=youtu.be

Being a small animal vet is my 3rd favourite video prepared for a talk in Raffles Institution. It held the attention of the students, not an easy thing to do with the younger generation as this generation has a short attention span. The video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUSnC14GtVQ&feature=youtu.be
 
 

I thank all the young interns for their creativity and efforts to collaborate with me to produce educational and entertaining veterinary videos. These videos are not perfect as there may be some grammatical errors in some videos. It is better to for the vet interns to learn by co-producing the educational videos rather than by observation as a bystander beside the vet and writing case reports which can be boring. I hope all my interns will achieve their dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

P.S. Some videos produced in June & July 2013 are as follows: