Dr. Natalie Punt on betting on yourself and winning!
When Dr. Natalie Punt isn’t taking a leisurely horseback ride on one of her horses, she is busy changing the world for the better. Dr. Natalie Punt’s life has been an adventure. Through her numerous studies, which include everything from studying the anti-cancer mechanisms of the naked mole rat to looking at pediatric leukemia, she found a love for the veterinary world.
Today, Dr. Natalie works as a veterinarian in a small animal hospital, and is changing the world in a whole new way—through a practical app that could help save lives. Dr. Natalie noticed that customers often had an awkward experience when trying to move their pets from one vet to another.
At best, the customers would have a giant folder of information on the pets that had to be lugged around. At worst, they didn’t have this information at all, with vital life saving advice locked away in a file somewhere. In emergency situations, this could mean the difference between life and death.
Dr. Natalie invented an app to help with this situation. Called mPet. This unique app can not only help store medical information of pets so that it is easy to give to emergency or other vets, it can also track chronic illness.
The app can help track “Quality of Life” days for dogs in Hospice, helping to make sure that the animals are comfortable through their final days.
Dr. Natalie, like many veterinarians, has her concerns about the veterinary industry. She is worried that as pet populations expand, there won’t be enough veterinarians to serve animals comfortably. The Council of Education (CoE) limits class sizes, and many states are reluctant to go to the expense of building new veterinary schools that enable students to learn comfortably in.
Without enough students to one day become veterinarians, there may not be enough vets to service populations of pets—and that’s a detriment to their medical needs.
The best solution would be to lobby governments to pressure them into building more schools, or to donate to a charitable foundation that would do the same thing.
Dr. Natalie has worked on many research projects over the years, and is no stranger to stress. One of the best pieces of advice she has received came from one of her favorite veterinary professors, a virologist at Scripps University. They told her, “Learn to work through stress and anxiety- embrace it and make it your friend. You’ll regret the times you avoided new opportunities because they appeared stressful at the beginning”.
It ended up being some of the best advice she has ever received. She has since worked through several stressful experiences. By learning to work through her stress, she has been able to work on several research projects that ended up being worthwhile.
By learning to deal with her stress, she can now look back on the many research projects she has helped with, and smile knowing she got through them thanks to this advice.
Dr. Natalie continues to learn and grow every day, and hopes to continue providing wonderful service to the animals she loves. Follow her on Linked in: Dr. Natalie Punt