|
AAVN Member Spotlight
Lisa Puryear Weeth, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition)
Interviewed by Ashley Self
How long have you been an AAVN member? I don’t recall the exact year when I joined as a student member. I graduated vet school in 2002, so it would have been around 2000. I have been a dues-paying member since 2002.
What company or organization do you work at right now? The short answer is that I work for myself (Weeth Nutrition Consulting). The more nuanced answer is that this includes regular consultant work with members of the pet food industry and a full-time (40+ hr) Clinical Nutrition practice at Metropolitan Animal Specialty Hospital in Los Angeles. I also serve on the WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee and as part of the AAVN Executive Board (not paid work for either organizations, but still work).
What are 2 things that you really like about your current job? Even after 20+ years as a veterinarian I still enjoy working with animals and their people.
I work with a great team of veterinarians and support team members that make my days at work, even the tough ones, less daunting and even a bit of fun.
What has been your top professional achievement? I consider my #1 professional achievement to be bringing Clinical Nutrition into a private practice setting. After finishing my residency in 2007 I started a Clinical Nutrition department at a large referral hospital in New Jersey from the "ground up". Nutrition as a clinical specialty in veterinary medicine is still not as widely available as Dermatology or Internal Medicine but, over the last 16 years, I have been joined by a number of my colleagues who have started Clinical Nutrition services of their own across the US and Canada.
Please describe the best animal nutrition-related experience you've had in your career: I don’t know that I can pick a “best”. I’ve had a number of cases where the health status of the animal looked dire. Where owners and primary care veterinarians were not planning more than a few weeks, or maybe a few months out, but we defied the odds and the patient lived years longer than expected. I love being able to take a complicated medical condition and then distill it down to the impactful changes that the owner can make at home so that their individual dog or cat gets the right combination of nutritional and medical support. One of my favorite patient cases was an Australian Shepherd named Gertie that I met shortly after moving back to Southern California. Gertie had gone into acute on chronic renal failure at 13 years of age and was hospitalized at a local specialty hospital for fluid therapy and supportive care. She was discharged with a creatinine of 3.5 mg/dl and a grave prognosis. She also had documented food allergies and none of the therapeutic diets would work for her so she needed a home-prepared diet formulated specifically for her. Gertie lived another 5 (!!) years before her arthritis progressed to the point that her owners decided to say good bye. She would come in for her annual check-ups with me, tail wagging, slightly over ideal body condition, and looking the picture of good senior health. As long as you didn’t see her blood work, her creatinine level never really dropped below 3.2 mg/dl.
Who has made the biggest impact on your career in animal nutrition? There are actually two people who share that designation for me, Drs. Sean Delaney and Andrea Fascetti. Dr. Delaney was one of my mentors as a veterinary student and he was the person who encouraged me to apply to the UC Davis residency program in 2004; Dr. Fascetti then fixed me on my path when she took a chance on an atypical candidate by accepting me. At the time I had a toddler at home (my now 20-year-old daughter who was born the month after vet school graduation) and had gone into general and emergency practice after graduation rather than an internship. I also had some novel (at the time) ideas about what I wanted to do with the training once I finished. My plan was to bring Clinical Nutrition back to pet owners and general practitioners and help them improve patient care and animal health one diet change at a time. While this may not seem daring now, it was unproven territory and no one, including me, knew whether I could make a lasting career out of it. Dr. Delaney and Dr. Fascetti supported my dream and pushed me to be the best clinician and Veterinary Nutritionist I could be.
What do you hope to see as part of the future for animal nutrition? I hope to see Clinical Nutritionists integrated into every specialty hospital in the US and Canada.
If you could work with a nutrition colleague in your practice for a week, who would you invite to join you? Do I have to pick just one? Could I instead give you a list of 52 names and have them each visit for a week over a one-year period? There are so many amazing Nutritionists both as part of AAVN and in our sister organizations in Canada and Europe and I would love the opportunity to spend more time with each of them.
Please share something about yourself that none of your nutrition colleagues already know. I love traveling and travel planning! I think in an alternate life I could have been a travel agent or tour group planner. I am currently planning a 10-day trip to Germany and The Netherlands for this summer after my son’s high school graduation and a 16-day trip to Egypt and Jordan next year for my husband’s 50th.
AAVN members, we would love to highlight YOU and your work in an upcoming issue of the e-newsletter. If you're interested in participating in this new feature, please e-mail us at aavnexecutive@gmail.com
| 
