2023 Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month

2023 Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month’s theme was Empowerment. The campaign ran over May each year and was launched back in 2005 by the BVNA to spread the word to, those not only in the veterinary profession but also pet owners, about the importance of Veterinary Nurses (VNs), their role and how much they indeed do!

If you have ever been to a veterinary practice with your pet, you would have encountered a VN, but you are probably not aware of how much responsibility and workload they have.

A Veterinary Nurse’s role is a varied one

Zoe Blake Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month 2023

One aspect of the VN role I enjoy is supporting pet owners. This can be offering preventative advice. Supporting owners in the way they can enhance, care, and enable their pets to have a long and healthy life. From simple one-step ideas to encouragement and education.

Being a VN offers a very varied workload, no days are the same and every animal is unique. Policies and legislation change as does our knowledge of animals and their behaviour, so we always have to be learning, from studying online to attending courses and lectures.

As VNs, we are multi-talented and multi-skilled

Veterinary Nurses are:

  • Counsellors – consoling pet owners, offering advice, comfort, or aiding grief.
  • Radiographers – taking X-rays and carrying out various tests
  • Monitoring animals that have been anaesthetised
  • Running nurse clinics –about diets, worming, senior healthcare, and grooming
  • Teamwork – we help run the practice, taking bookings, paperwork, prep work, answering calls, booking in, sorting appointments, cleaning and more
  • Preparing pets for surgery
  • Performing minor surgical procedures
  • In training – learning on the job, completing qualifications but also training juniors and those who have just come into the profession
  • Taking blood samples and attaching cannulas
  • Lab technicians – completing internal blood samples to preparing external testing
  • Anaesthetist – completing complex nutritional and fluid calculations such as gas flow rates and medication
  • Aiding any emergencies and triage
  • Amazing!

To be a VN you need to be a good all-rounder

Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month 2023

From booking into surgery, and monitoring to after-care, VNs can help facilitate an umbrella of care and improve the outcome. Having been in the profession a while (!) I have seen puppies grow, attend their regular appointments, grow into great family pets, and help them into their senior years and sadly their last appointment. I’ve also nursed animals at home from the practice I worked at when there was little or no hope of recovery, for example, I nursed a puppy with Parvo back to better health and a rabbit that had hypothermia and was comatose made a full recovery and the owner’s young daughter wrote me a thank you note with a pot of hand-cream.

Fun fact

I have never been bitten by a dog whilst being a VN. It’s all about reading body language, and knowing how to handle an animal with some patience and care.

Advice to the new VNs

I used to attend career fairs and encourage young adults to start as Veterinary Nurses. Ideally, if you can get work experience, that would be a great place to start to really understand the role, as many people think it is cuddling the animals when a lot of it is hard work, setting up, cleaning up etc. (see above) however it is very rewarding and 30+ years of still being in the role shows that to be true.

Future of Veterinary Nursing?

Staffing levels are a challenge as is burnout due to COVID. Large corporations are taking over veterinary practices and that feels like a concern as it can be more about profits and targets than pet care. People can also forget that Veterinary Nurses are people too and can be very quick to judge or complain especially when there are complex medical procedures or difficult diagnoses.

However, being a VN has given me a confidence and long-term wish to study and learn. After over 20 years in the profession I completed with Distinction, my Advanced Diploma in Applied Animal Behaviour, Feline, Level 5. When I was 16 I would have never envisaged that!

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