When counting the ways the University of Georgia’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital has advanced the practice of veterinary medicine, one must consider the career of Dr. Nicole Northrup. Northrup came to the University of Georgia’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital in 2000 to build the veterinary oncology service. She was the first veterinary oncologist to practice in Georgia and South Carolina.

 Since then, Northrup’s career has advanced along a parallel track to that of the hospital, which relocated 10 years ago from main campus to its current location on College Station Road. With Northrup at the helm now as director, the modern hospital is a state-of-the-art facility that serves Georgia and surrounding states.

A native of upstate New York, Northrup received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1994 and completed her residency training in oncology at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine Harrington Oncology Program in 2000.

“I wanted to be a veterinarian as long as I can remember,” Northrup says. “I am grateful to have a career that is this rewarding. I get to help animals and their families, and, at the same time, the next generation of veterinarians and veterinary specialists prepare for their careers.”

Northrup once aspired to be an orthopedic surgeon. Because oncology was not offered at Cornell at the time, she didn’t encounter the specialty until during her internship at the Animal Medical Center in New York City. At the time, her father was fighting cancer and receiving chemotherapy. Northrup saw possibilities for sick animals in the techniques physicians used to treat her father’s illness. Her career focus began to shift.

“I like helping animals feel better,” she says. “What I found during my internship was that with surgery, we would see the patient and do the surgery, and if it was successful and they got better we didn’t get to see them again. Surgery was the end of the relationship.  I didn’t find that as rewarding as oncology, where we get to know our patients and their families as we support them through diagnosis and treatment.”

Northrup sees oncology as a field that offers hope. “Every day after diagnosis (of cancer) is an important day, so we work to make that a good time. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about oncology, that our patients are sick and suffering, but for most of our patients, they’re happy animals living with cancer, and that’s our goal. I really liked that aspect of it.”

Dr. Nicole Northrup in 2008 examining a cat in the oncology room at the original veterinary teaching hospital on main campus.

As fate would have it, Northrup began taking a wider focus on hospital operations within a couple of years of her arrival in Athens. Serving as section head, assistant hospital director, and then as interim director during her tenure, Northrup has had a hand in the development of more specialties outside of her own as the hospital has grown.

When she arrived at UGA, the teaching hospital was still housed in the main CVM building. “The original teaching hospital was built for large and small animal medicine and surgery. Since that time, veterinary medicine advanced considerably, resulting in the VTH being able to provide many more services and therapies for all species.”

Like human medicine, veterinary medicine evolves continually and keeping up with new technologies is a priority for Northrup. The VTH has upgraded its imaging capabilities on the small animal side with the installation of a new C-arm x-ray machine that captures moving x-rays. This will allow the hospital to expand its offering of advanced minimally invasive interventional procedures such as cardiac catheterization, pacemaker placement, stenting of airways and urinary structures, repair of liver shunts, and other procedures where real-time imaging is key.

On the large animal side, the VTH plans to improve its diagnostic capabilities with the installation of a standing CT scanner that will provide cross-sectional and three-dimensional views of the head, neck, and limbs of horses without general anesthesia. A fund-raising campaign in support of a standing CT is underway.

Dr. Nicole Northrup leading a tour of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital in the summer of 2024. (Lawton Harris/UGA CVM)

Beyond new equipment and therapies, Northrup is eager to work with the CVM administration on issues like the shortage of rural veterinarians, especially for large animal care.

“There is a well-recognized shortage of rural and farm animal veterinarians. We (the CVM and VTH) are working on increasing availability of services to animals in need of care by recruiting and hiring faculty in farm practice. In addition, our Large Animal and Production Medicine teams work every day to encourage and support student interest in careers in these areas.”

Like the clinical side of veterinary medicine, the teaching of veterinary medicine is changing, and newer schools are moving to a distributive model of instruction where students rotate through hospitals and clinics off-campus rather than learning in a dedicated veterinary teaching hospital.

“At UGA, we are very fortunate to have a veterinary teaching hospital, particularly this teaching hospital. It is a beautiful facility,” she says. “And we have state-of-the-art equipment. Most importantly, though, we have dedicated and talented people here, truly an excellent team. I think our model will still stay very relevant and we will continue to be leaders in veterinary medicine, teaching the next generation of veterinary professionals, and advancing veterinary medicine.”