Chapter 06: A Chance Opportunity to Work at MD Anderson and Earn Specialty Certification
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Tinkey explains how a client who brought a monkey into the veterinary clinic led her to call Ken Gray at MD Anderson. Dr. Gray later contacted her to talk about a job opportunity. She explains what attracted her to take a job with MD Anderson in ’93.
She next explains that Dr. Kim Vargas had been named chair of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery the year before. Tinkey explains her role –to help with a study that Dr. Kian Ang was conducting on 100 rhesus monkeys.
She also talks about looking for opportunities to publish and sketches the requirements she had to meet for board certification. She explains that Dr. Gray provided her with protected time to study for the certification exams.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_01_20160531_C06
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 - Joining MD Anderson/Coming to Texas; Joining MD Anderson; Professional Path; Overview; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Working Environment; The Researcher; The Clinician; Mentoring; On Mentoring
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
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
And I was doing a good job balancing them. But getting tired. And out of the blue, literally out of the blue -- well, I’m trying to remember how this all happened. It was pretty much out of the blue. I think what happened was this. I had this really crazy client who had a bunch of exotic pets. Some I would work with and some I would recognize my level. Like when she brought me the snakes, I would say, “You know what? I really don’t know enough about snakes to treat your snake. I’m going to refer you to a colleague, a friend.” But she would bring stuff in. And I looked out in my waiting room one morning, and she’s sitting there with a monkey. I didn’t even ask where she got the monkey. But I had worked with monkeys when I was at Baylor enough. I certainly wasn’t an expert. In fact looking back now I’m thinking oh, man, if I hadn’t had the expertise in monkeys, I would have probably passed out. But enough that alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head. I’m like, “I remember that monkeys have viruses and diseases that are not good for people.” So long story short, I called somebody. And I think the person I called was Ken Gray here at MD Anderson. I think because Fran Doepel had left Baylor, and I wasn’t sure who was still there. For some reason I still had Ken’s number. And Ken was the chairman of this department at the time. And I think I called him and I said, “Hey, this lady has this monkey.” And I think he asked me what kind of monkey. And when I told him he said, “Ooh, this is not great. Just refer her to an experienced exotic animal vet.” And I did that. That must have somehow put an idea in his head or something, because it wasn’t very many weeks or months later that literally out of the blue Ken called me and said, “Hey, I remember you from when you were at Baylor. I’m veterinarian at MD Anderson. We’re looking for a clinical veterinarian. Would you like to come down and talk to me?” And I even remember on the phone that day I said, “Well, gosh, Dr. Gray, I’m in practice, I actually own my own practice now, I’m a solo practitioner. I really don’t think it’s feasible for me to consider selling this practice.” And I remember him saying, “No harm no foul, but just come down. Why don’t you just come down and have lunch with me and look around, hear what I’ve got to say, and then we’ll go from there?” And so I did. And coming down, I told you why I didn’t pursue lab animal -- it wasn’t that I didn’t like it. In fact I did like it, and the intellectual stimulation of the being in that research environment where there’s always a new challenge was very appealing to me. But not having the infrastructure to be able to really learn about that field was what led me to leave Baylor. And so I had that on my mind when I came down. And I remember him walking me around, and a couple of things impressed me right off the bat. The first thing was he wasn’t the only veterinarian. I think I was talking to him in -- might have been very early part of ’93. Like January or February of ’93 maybe. So he was a board-certified lab animal vet, but he had another board-certified lab animal vet working with him. And he also had two veterinary pathologists in the department. And I think I remember even in that very first -- call it an interview, although I didn’t think it was an interview. But he thought it was an interview. That very first interview, I remember saying, “I’m interested in lab animal medicine but only if I can be a lab animal veterinarian.” And him saying, “We can get you there.” I remember him telling me, “I got board-certified while I was working here at Anderson. This other lab animal vet,” her name was Karen Vargas, “she got board-certified while she was working here at MD Anderson. We’ve got these two veterinary pathologists. They can help you with the pathology sections of what you need to know on the exam. We can get you there.” And I just remember driving home that day and talking to my husband and saying, “Golly, this is the opportunity I wish I’d found in ’87, ’88. Man, it’s such a bad time, and what are we going to do with the practice? And can we sell it?” And here’s the serendipity part. In fact it must have been January or February because my younger brother had gone to veterinary school. And he had only been out -- I can’t remember what year Matt graduated from veterinary school. I think it was about five or so years after me. So maybe ’88 or ’89. So he’d been out practicing. My parents had relocated back to Illinois. And so he went to the University of Illinois. And so he was working in a suburb of Chicago. And we were talking. It was February. And a lot of his younger days he had spent in Texas. And I remember saying, “Yeah, I’ve got this opportunity but I’ve got this practice,” and my brother saying, “Oh, do you want to sell your practice in Houston, Texas? Because it’s like 20 below here and I’m there.” So long story short, my brother came down and bought the practice, and by October of ’93 I was here as a clinical veterinarian. Yeah, hand of God. You could not work that out if you tried.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Things really fell into place. So what was your role? Tell me about stepping into this place and what you were doing.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
So when I came, Ken had been named chair of the department I think shortly before I came. Maybe the year before I came. And when somebody gets the chairmanship they usually get some goodies along with it. You get some resources. And so one of the things he was trying to do was build the veterinary faculty. So when I arrived here part of the reason they hired me is because they had also gotten, I think just the year before, a very large NIH grant. The department hadn’t. There was a physician, a radiation therapy physician, named Kian Ang. Dr. Ang died a few years ago.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I’ve heard his name, yeah.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
But Kian Ang was here, and he had just received a very large NIH grant to study radiobiology of the spinal cord. And he was going to do that in monkeys. And when I arrived here there were 100 monkeys here. And basically they had just gotten this 100 monkeys. And I think Ken was saying, “How am I going to take care of 100 monkeys?” So when I arrived he had just hired another veterinarian, Doug Cromeens. Doug was in the department for many years. And Doug actually died suddenly of a heart attack in 2002. But Doug had been here maybe about a year or so. And then they hired me. And I actually worked for Doug as a clinical veterinarian. And one of my responsibilities was taking care of these 100 monkeys. And mainly I worked on -- here in the lab animal field, like if you were a practicing veterinarian and I said large animal, people would think of horses and cows. But here in lab animal, when you say large animal, people think of things like pigs and dogs. So I took care of the dogs, the pigs, and the primates those first few years. And we were busy. We were busy. And that’s really what I did. I knew one of the things that I had to do to become certified, eligible to take the lab animal boards, was to publish a paper. I didn’t have any publications at that time. So my first few years I was a clinical veterinarian, I took care of all the large animals, did experimental surgery, and looked for an opportunity to publish a paper.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Before we get to that piece, what kind of experimental surgery were you doing?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
So a lot of the experimental surgery, gosh, I can’t remember the investigator’s name now at the time. But when I first walked in the door I remember the research tech’s name was Frank. But we had someone who was doing a lot of work. Golly. We had chronically catheterized dogs. I’m trying to remember what he was even working on. And I was so new, I can’t remember now. But I know we were running 24-hour monitoring of heart rate and blood pressure. And so to do that we did experimental surgery to implant those catheters. So I would do a vascular cut-down, run in the indwelling pressure monitor, and put in the indwelling ECG pads. And so I did a lot of that surgery on those dogs. And that’s not something you do in practice. So I had to learn that.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I noticed on the list of things that you were doing, catheterization is on. I assume that that is something that is pretty ubiquitous in research on animals.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yes, it’s not necessarily a hard surgery. It’s just if you’ve never done it you have to learn to do it.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So what are some of the issues that can arise with catheterization that you were trying to address with this surgery?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
You mean of the catheterization itself?
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. The experimental surgery, I guess I was confused. Was the experimental surgery focused on the catheterization process? Or was it something else?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
No, the catheterization process was just to instrument the animal so they could get the data. Like I said, I know we were doing 24-hour monitoring of heart rate and blood pressure. So I think my remembrance is that the guy was working on some type of therapeutic or drug. And I don’t know if it was a TNF-alpha derivative. But one of the side effects I remember was it caused severe hypotension. And so we were needing to monitor the dogs so we could correlate the time of drug administration to the time of the hypotensive episode and then giving therapeutics so that the blood pressure was returned to normal and that kind of thing. So I was really just the mechanic if you will, applying the instrumentation so that then we could monitor.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So when did that situation change? So assistant veterinarian from 1993 to 1998. And was that the year you were board-certified?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yes.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. Was it cause and effect there that you changed status at that point?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I thought I’d gotten to be assistant professor before ’98 but maybe I didn’t. I can’t remember now to tell you the truth.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
No, 1998, it says assistant professor, yeah.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Assistant professor, OK, OK. Yeah, so that was pretty much cause and effect.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about the board certification process. How did you do that?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
And then I need to rewind before ’98 too a little bit. So the American Board of Veterinary Specialties defines minimum eligibility criteria for any of the -- I don’t even know how many there are now -- maybe 13 recognized veterinary specialties. So everybody’s a veterinarian coming out of veterinary school but then you can specialize in things like veterinary surgery, veterinary ophthalmology, veterinary dermatology, veterinary internal medicine, veterinary neurology. And laboratory animal medicine is one of those specialties. So there’s a minimum required experience component. And there’s usually also for most of the specialties a publication component minimally. Some of the other specialties have some other requirements. Lab animal medicine is still even now today one of the specialties where you don’t necessarily have to do a formal residency. You can. If you go through a formal residency that’s recognized by the American College of Lab Animal Medicine, it allows you to shorten your experience time requirement. If you don’t, they require you to get six additional years of experience. They’ll give you credit for one year if you’ve been in practice. So I had a five-year experience requirement. For my 10 years of practice they were giving me one year of credit. But then I needed to have five years of experience working under a board-certified laboratory animal veterinarian. And minimally I needed to have at least one first author publication that met their criteria. And so most of this was self-study. Like I said, the firs couple of years I didn’t even really worry about it. I was just working, getting my feet wet. I knew it was going to be at least ’98 before I could even take the exam. And then starting in about ’96 is when I really got serious. And there were some groups, it was a very beginning group online, but there were lab animal training groups. Some of the residency programs would host meetings once or twice a year for people who were not going through residency but just working to take their boards, and would bring you in and do a four-day crash course in here’s the texts you need to be reading, here’s the journals you need to be reading, here’s some mock exams, here’s what you need to know. And so I started attending a couple of those in ’96 and just asking people. There were several board-certified lab animal vets in the Medical Center by that time. So I just met with a bunch of people and said, “What am I going to need to know? What texts am I going to need to study to get ready for this exam?” So I had a list of texts. I went to a couple of exams in ’96 and failed. I mean mock exams. Went to a couple of these prep courses and came out of there thinking oh, I’m in really big trouble here, because I know nothing. So it was good. They always gave mock exams. I think on one of the very first ones -- it was casual, but maybe there were 15 or 20 people sitting around in a room. And I remember this experience. For about two hours it was the practical portion they were simulating, where they would put Kodachromes, slides up, and maybe either ask a question, identify the structure, what is this important to. And everyone in the room knew everything except for me. I remember that experience, coming out saying, “Man, I have a lot of work to do.” But it was good because I knew I had a lot of work to do. So I was working full-time ’96. That year mainly I spent not with any real protected time. I was just reading on my own. In ’97 I remember I went to Ken and said, “I’m going to apply to take this exam in ’98, I think I really need to kick up my studying. What will you do for protected time?” And the deal he made me is really still the deal that I offer the veterinarians that are working in the department now that want to take their boards. He said, “Well, how many hours a week do you want to study?” And I said, “Twenty.” And he said, “I’ll split it with you. If you’ll devote 10 hours of personal time, I’ll allow you to take 10 hours of work time and study with it. You have to be here on site. You got to be available for emergencies. But if you want to shut your office door and take two hours and study, that’s the deal that I’ll make you.” And I said, “OK, good deal.” So for about a year that’s what I did. I came in. I was working I think an 8:00 to 5:00 shift. And so I came in at 6:00 every morning. And 6:00 to 8:00 was my two hours and 8:00 to 10:00 was his two hours. So I just started studying.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So you really were on an 8:00 to 5:00 kind of schedule? You weren’t putting in hours and hours extra like can often happen?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
No. Probably maybe two or three days a month inevitably when stuff goes wrong it’s Friday at four o’clock. And it was pretty controllable and pretty knowable. I knew we were going to have a surgery scheduled and that might run late. So that was really nice.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, that’s a good situation. So those 10 hours per week really did mean something in that situation. Yeah, excellent.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah, absolutely.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So obviously you passed the exam. Flying colors?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, yes. Well, I’m not sure it was flying colors. But I passed. That was a tough test.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That was good enough.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 06: A Chance Opportunity to Work at MD Anderson and Earn Specialty Certification" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1226.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1226
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