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I hear a great deal of confusion from pet families about the role of veterinary internal medicine specialists. Much of this confusion seems to come from trying to map human medicine definitions onto veterinary specialists. For example, my personal physician—the doctor I see for routine care such as flu vaccines, cholesterol monitoring and the occasional minor illness—is a board-certified internal medicine specialist with expertise in primary care. In veterinary medicine, however, board-certified internal medicine specialists (like those at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center) do not typically provide routine care. Instead, they have additional training and skills to diagnose and manage complex medical conditions. In today’s blogpost, I will use the examples of pancreatic diseases to illustrate what a veterinary internal medicine specialist does and why their expertise matters.