Chapter 04: Speeding Through to Private Practice
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Description
Dr. Tinkey observes that if she were able to repeat her high school and college experiences, she would “slow down.” She notes that she worked very hard in college, taken heavy course loads and winning an acceptance to veterinary school during her sophomore year. She also married and divorced, which influenced her decision to join the Mission Bend Animal Clinic (’83 – ’89), a pet animal practice, as she was a single mother.
Dr. Tinkey sketches the lessons she learned in private practice then briefly notes that she opened her own practice in 1984.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_01_20160531_C04
Publication Date
5-31-2016
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Path; Personal Background; Professional Path; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Experiences Related to Gender, Race, Ethnicity
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, that’s very cool. Can I ask you to shift gears a little bit? And talk about the evolution of your interests. High school. What was college like for you?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
College was a blur. Going through high school, I knew I had a real affinity for the sciences. I was in this small very nurturing high school environment. It was very much a you can do anything you set your sights on kind of environment.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Good for your confidence?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Absolutely. And so went off to A&M. And like I said, in the first year must have decided well, I’m going to try for veterinary school. And getting into veterinary school is pretty challenging. I had great grades. And if I could do something different -- and there aren’t a lot of things I would do differently really -- but if I could do something different, I would just slow down a little. Because enroll at A&M, and I say it was in my freshman year I decided I wanted to go to veterinary school, but maybe it was a thought that I wanted to do something fast. Because from day one -- maybe the college credit thing is different now. But I enrolled in 19 college credit hours. Well, a full course load was somewhere between 15 and 18, 19 was a lot, 19 was a really lot for a first semester freshman. And I had done so well in high school. I tested out of a few. So the deal is I was like, “I’m going for it. How many prerequisites do you need to apply to veterinary school? Oh, you need two and a half full years’ worth. I’m getting that stuff done.” So I carried these incredibly heavy course loads. I went to summer school. Long story short, most people actually apply to go to veterinary school sometime in their junior year and most of my classmates had actually gotten a four-year degree. Halfway through my sophomore year, man, I was applying to veterinary school. I had all my prerequisites done and I thought I’m going for it. And of course I do remember people like, “This doesn’t happen. You are not going to get accepted to veterinary school at the end of your sophomore year.” But I did. So after two years of undergraduate work I was in veterinary school.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So how did that work? You did the two degrees concurrently?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
So interestingly, if you look on the walls of my office, my BS is in something called veterinary science. My degree plan was in a degree called biomedical science. If I had finished my traditional four-year degree at A&M, I think my degree would have been in biomedical science. But when you have someone who fulfills most of those credits or at least half of their credits with veterinary school courses, the degree is veterinary science. So I have a BS in veterinary science, and then a doctor of veterinary medicine.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting. Wow. Not that you’re an overachiever or anything.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I really wish I would have taken more basket weaving or philosophy. And it’s something I intend to do, honestly, whenever I retire. I’m going to just take college courses that I want to take. Because I really didn’t -- I don’t know why I was in such a --
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Make sure you slow down during that too.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Exactly. I don’t know why I was in such a hurry. But yeah, so the college experience was really a blur for me because of that. My husband now, he’s my second husband. I actually got married very early. So I got married just as I was getting into veterinary school. My son was born in veterinary school.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And your first husband’s name and your son’s name?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
My son is Michael. My first husband’s name was Edward. And we were married a very short time. So that was a pretty big learning experience for me. That was like mm, you can have it all, but you can’t have it all in three years. So really it was a blur, because all those things happened by the time I graduated from veterinary school. Of course I was a single parent with a child. I really really just wanted to earn a paycheck again. And my thought still was I’m going to get out and be this traditional veterinarian, and that’s what I did.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So what was your move at that point?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
So when I was graduating from veterinary school, I had thought about it. Again I don’t think I would have done a large animal or equine or mixed animal practice anyways, but part of the reason that I decided I need to go into a pet animal practice, and I need to go somewhere more urban, was because I was a single parent. And I said, “I can’t go somewhere where I’m going to be getting called out at night or have a lot of after-hour emergencies. I’m going to need to go into a place where there’s a starting time and a stopping time. And anything that’s happening after hours, maybe there’s an emergency clinic.” And most of the big cities, that’s how it worked.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So how old was your son in ’83 when you graduated?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Three.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
He was three. Wow, so little guy.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. Little guy. So I interviewed and got an offer here in Houston from a veterinary practice here in Houston to be associate veterinarian. And I was asking my husband the other day. I’m like, “Do you remember what we made when we got out of veterinary school?” He was like, “I think we made like $25,000 or something.” But we were rich, right? I felt rich anyway. So I got out, got a job, went to work.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And this was the Mission Bend Animal Clinic.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yes. Exactly.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why did you choose that particular practice? Did you have other options at that time? And what was your thought about choosing this particular practice?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Honestly, I liked the practice owner. My remembrance is I’d gone through several interviews. I think I had a couple of different offers in a couple of different cities. And I’d never lived in Houston before, didn’t know really much about Houston. But it met a couple of my criteria, being big enough. I wanted somewhere big enough that the practice I went into you weren’t required to do a lot of after-hours work or emergencies. And the guy I went to work for, James Rutledge, was just a nice guy. Just a really nice guy. And at the time he hired me, I was his expansion. He was a one-man practice expanding to two men. He had been out of veterinary school a little while, but he was still a pretty young guy. So he was someone I could relate to, looked like it was going to be a really good learning environment for me. That’s what I remember. I don’t remember having this well thought out strategic plan. I was like, “I like that guy.”
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
You were with them for six years, ’83 to ’89. So what were the big lessons learned over that period? There must have been lots.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
There were a lot. I think I would have learned this anywhere, but it was great working for Dr. Rutledge. The biggest thing I think anybody needs to learn is you’ve got all this theoretical knowledge, but you have no practical application. So learning to think clinically, to think diagnostically, to develop a systematic standardized method for examining an animal and eliciting a history and beginning to determine what your steps are, that’s a big one. Because like I said I remember the first day walking in. I think there was a sick cat. I’m like, “OK, what do I do?” And it’s there, you just got to develop it. So that was huge. I remember one of the early cases. I think James, the guy I worked with, his thought was oh, great, I’m getting this newly graduated veterinarian, and they’re going to have all this knowledge that I don’t have, they’re going to have the latest and greatest. And to some extent I think that was true, but I distinctly remember we had a case, a dog. It was actually his case. We could not figure out what was wrong with this animal. The dog would come in deathly ill. We’d put an IV catheter, put the dog on fluids. Couple days later the dog would be great. We’d send the dog home. Over a period of five or six days it would be great for a couple days, then it would crash and burn and come back in. And I remember we could not figure this out. And so finally we called A&M to get a consult. The person on the phone diagnosed the dog in two minutes. We both felt so dumb. But the learning experience was you got to know what you don’t know. And that was the other important thing that I learned from practice. You’re not going to fix everything. And one of the most important practice tools is knowing when either you need to refer or you need a consult. Because you just don’t know. Yeah, just everything. Managing real money for the first time, and just getting into that. I loved school, school was great. But school is not real life, because you’re in a service for four weeks, and then you switch to a different service for four weeks. So if you don’t necessarily like somebody, four weeks later you’re not going to have to deal with them anymore. And so I think just getting into this is life now. And you get up and do the same thing every day, and that’s what you do, that’s your duty, and that’s what you do. I think that takes a while to mature coming out of school too.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure. And the whole interpersonal piece. I know in your essay -- Legends and Legacies, you talked about my gosh, this sick animal has a human being that brings it in, and I have to deal with that. And then having a boss and maybe if you dealt with money issues, dealing with bank people. There’s all that stuff that is pretty new.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Absolutely new. And as a student, you bring that up, the skill set. Later in life I owned and ran my own business. And setting a fee schedule and talking to clients about ‘this is what it’s going to cost and what do we do if we can’t afford that,’ they didn’t teach that at all in school. And so that was a learning experience too, and a valuable one. You have to learn that you can’t do everything for free. There’s a fee involved. There’s going to be times when an owner has to make a really hard decision that’s really fee-based, because they can’t afford what the animal really needs. And so you have to find a way to have a business discussion that’s filled with compassion at the same time.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Which is what happens with humans too in health care.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. You wouldn’t think so, but I think yes, more and more.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And that can be a very hard thing for people to get their heads around. And it’s also one of those experiences you don’t normally have unless you’re plunged in the middle of it and have to get the practice.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I feel so bad for people, because you’re right, there’s no real practice. And if you’re in the middle of this and trying to deal with it, I do think the tendency is for people to say, “Well, cost shouldn’t be a factor, why are we even talking about this?” But resources are not unending and you do have to make some decisions about how you’re going to expend those resources.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Exactly. And I’ve been in situations and certainly witnessed situations where a patient has asked a question about how much is this going to cost, and the doctor says, “Don’t worry about it,” it’s like we do need to worry about it. Does that mean it’s free? I don’t think so.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Exactly, right. I haven’t been involved in this, but I was listening to I think a report on the news or reading something about patients going through a very costly therapy, whether it was cancer therapy or transplantation or whatever it is, and coming out on the other side. And yay, hooray, they’re a survivor. But they’re bankrupt. And the quality of life hit that they have. They’re not coming back to the life they knew at all.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And the medical expenses don’t end when somebody’s called a survivor. There’s survivorship care.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Right. And I remember thinking about it, thinking oh my God, because if somebody says, “Oh, you have this really bad disease and it’s going to be this struggle,” that’s what you think about. You’re just like, “Oh, I can do this, I can beat this, I’m going to survive.” And then you finally do, and then you’re like, “Oh my God, what happened to my life?”
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 04: Speeding Through to Private Practice" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1224.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1224
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