If you’re in veterinary school, you might have already used AI to help explain a concept you were stuck on or turn your notes into practice questions. And as you move into clinical rotations and eventually practice, you’ll start figuring out how to use AI when there’s a real patient in front of you. Getting familiar with veterinary-specific AI now can give you a head start.
ScribbleVet is a veterinary-specific AI scribe that’s free for veterinary students. Get free access now.
How Are Veterinary Students Using AI?
A 2025 study of 604 veterinary students found that more than 90% had at least some knowledge of or experience with AI, and most students used it primarily for school. Among students who answered questions about specific uses, 84.7% said it helped clarify concepts, and 74.6% said it helped generate exam prep questions.
A separate 2025 study of veterinary students at UC Davis found that nearly 60% expected to use AI in their future veterinary careers. Students were also pretty clear about the limits: more than 87% agreed that AI-generated responses should be verified, and about 70% agreed that human judgment should override AI-assisted decisions.
What Can AI Help With in Veterinary Medicine?
Veterinary AI can help with everything from medical documentation and client communication to reviewing patient histories and supporting clinical decision-making.
While many veterinary students are already familiar with AI, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve used tools built specifically for veterinary medicine. Nearly half of the students in the Frontiers study had little or no experience with veterinary-specific AI, even though many were interested in its potential clinical applications.
ScribbleVet is a good example of veterinary-specific AI in practice, since it’s built around documentation and communication. It can listen during an appointment or call and turn the conversation into a structured medical record for you to review and edit, summarize long patient histories, and help with follow-up through client emails and referral letters.
Using an AI Scribe in Veterinary School
At the University of Florida, the veterinary teaching hospitals have implemented ScribbleVet to help clinicians spend less time turning conversations into medical records and more time on patient care and teaching.
But one benefit they didn’t necessarily expect was how useful those recordings could be for learning. Students and clinicians have gone back through them to review how they communicated with clients. Andrea Miller, BS, CVT, assistant director of operations, described looking for places where a client may have misunderstood part of a treatment plan or where a question could have been asked more openly.
For students, it’s become a practical way to build and refine client communication, history-taking, and recordkeeping skills. It also gives them a chance to look back at what they could do differently next time, whether that’s asking a better question or explaining part of the plan more clearly.
ScribbleVet isn’t the only Instinct resource that’s free for veterinary students. See what else you can access while you’re in school.
From Veterinary School to Practice
That experience can also make the leap into practice a little easier. There’s already a lot to learn in those first months as a veterinarian. You’re getting used to managing your own cases, talking clients through decisions, and figuring out how to keep the day moving. The less time you have to spend worrying about the record waiting to be written, the more attention you can give to the patient and client in front of you.
That’s one reason UF explored AI scribing in the first place: to give clinicians some of that time back. ScribbleVet users report saving more than 78 minutes per shift on documentation. For a new graduate, that means less charting to catch up on while you’re still getting used to the pace of practice.
Get Familiar With Veterinary AI Before Graduation
Veterinary AI is going to keep changing, and the ways you use it probably will too. But some of the skills will stay the same: writing up a case clearly, paying attention to how you communicate with clients, and using AI to save time without letting it do the thinking for you. Getting comfortable with ScribbleVet as a student gives you a chance to practice those skills before you’re using them every day in practice.
