Hygiene and slaughterhouse internship

To help students find suitable internships, the Institute of Food Safety and Food Hygiene provides information and contact details of potential internship companies. You can find the information in the Blackboard Community “Course Overviews Veterinary Medicine”.

Note: To go directly to the Blackboard Community, please first log in to Blackboard at Freie Universität Berlin with your access data and then click on the link above “Course Overviews Veterinary Medicine”.

Seal of quality “Tierärztliche Ausbildungspraxis” of the Federal Association of Practicing Veterinarians

To ensure the quality of student training, the Federal Association of Practicing Veterinarians (bpt), together with students, veterinary training institutions and the Association of Veterinary Faculties, has developed quality standards that a practice must meet in order to be awarded the “Tierärztliche Ausbildungspraxis” seal of quality by the bpt and to be included in the directory of practices as a recognized training practice.

In the interest of quality assurance for extramural internships, all Veterinary Medicine educational institutions are required to comply with the necessary quality standards as part of an accreditation by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE).

The following are considered essential elements of quality assurance:

• the conclusion of a training agreement between the veterinary medical educational institution and the internship site,
• the definition of learning objectives and documentation of the achievement of these learning objectives (logbook),
• quality monitoring through mutual evaluations and feedback options, and
• a one-time didactic training course for internship veterinarians lasting at least 4 hours on predefined topics.

The veterinary medical schools have given a great deal of thought to how we can implement these quality standards together with the training veterinarians, without this resulting in an unreasonable additional workload for the internship sites. As a result, the five Veterinary Medicine educational institutions in Germany have largely harmonized the formal elements (internship agreement and evaluation questions) and initiated suitable continuing education programs with low-threshold access and ATF recognition. These documents/offers are available to training veterinarians in a specially designed online portal. It is a Germany-wide portal that is used uniformly for extramural internships at all German training institutions.

This service center is accessible only to your training veterinarians (not to students). All internships must be processed through this VMFT service center starting in the winter semester 2024/25.

Only in the following cases internships can continue to be managed without using the VMFT service center:

• if the internship veterinarian does not speak German,
• if a written internship agreement already exists and/or the internship has already started, or
• if the internship veterinarian strictly refuses to use the portal even after intensive persuasion.

The last point takes into account our intention to avoid the loss of internship positions due to the uncooperative behavior of individual internship veterinarians, especially during the introductory phase. However, please do not give in lightly here. Ultimately, using the VMFT Service Center will also provide you with legal certainty in important areas (e.g. accident insurance, assurance of certification after completion of the internship, etc.).

Please feel free to use our information letter for your internship veterinarians “The VMFT Service Center for Training Institutions: Your Service Platform for Extramural Internships” to convince your internship veterinarians to use the VMFT Service Center.

The “Guidelines for an interview before an internship” of the Federal Association of Practicing Veterinarians contains relevant topics that you should discuss with the internship supervisor before the start of your internship.

Note: The guidelines mainly contain recommendations for curative practice. Use the appropriate questions and also find out how you should proceed if you see a possible violation – e.g. in the area of hygiene, meat inspection or animal welfare and your supervising veterinarian is not in the immediate vicinity. In some companies, specific equipment, e.g. cut-resistant gloves or helmets, must be brought. Therefore, inquire in good time.

The School of Veterinary Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin provides its students with catalogs of learning objectives for extramural internships. These catalogs include important activities that students should be able to perform under supervision during their internships. The catalogs of learning objectives serve as a guide for both students and internship supervisors for the respective internship. Due to the different structures and priorities of the internship companies, not all of the listed learning objectives can be achieved during the internship.

In order to impart a high proportion of first-day skills, the department recommends implementing at least 80% of the learning objectives listed for the corresponding internship.

The learning objectives of extramural internships can be found in the catalog of learning objectives for the Veterinary Medicine degree program. The catalog of learning objectives for the Veterinary Medicine degree program can be found in the Blackboard Community “Course Overviews Veterinary Medicine”.

Note: To go directly to the Blackboard Community mentioned above, please first log in to the Blackboard of Freie Universität Berlin with your access data and then click on the link above “Course Overviews Veterinary Medicine”.

The learning objectives catalogs form the basis for the documentation of internships using logbooks and for the evaluation of internships by students and internship supervisors, as required by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE).

In accordance with §§ 54 to 62 and Appendix 6 to 12 of the Regulation on the Licensing of Veterinarians (TAppV), the internship agreement is to be used for the mandatory internship required for students in the Veterinary Medicine degree program. It is created by the internship veterinarians in the VMFT Service Center. If your internship site refuses to use the VMFT Service Center, a PDF of the internship agreement can be printed out and filled out by hand using the form provided here.

If the internship site has its own form for the internship agreement, then in principle their form can also be used. Please read this form carefully. Unfortunately, using a third-party form does not automatically result in a training agreement with Freie Universität Berlin, since we only tacitly join the agreement between the intern and the training institution when our form is used (§11 of the internship agreement).

Even though a written internship agreement is not legally required, it is highly recommended to clarify mutual expectations and ensure reliability in the implementation of internships.

Please always submit a copy of the internship contract together with your evaluation, your internship certificate and – where applicable – your logbook to the library. (If your internship veterinarian uses the VMFT service center, their evaluation will be submitted directly online).