Here at Goddard Veterinary Group, we are lucky enough to provide veterinary care to a large number of pets across our practices and veterinary hospitals. We have teams of amazing veterinary professionals working every hour of the day, every day of the year to cover all your pet’s needs – from flea prevention to emergency care.
You might think this means we are reliant on vets for all our patient care – if it’s an emergency surely the vet is the key person to employ? While the vet is the face you may see most often, and are obviously very important, the real power behind the scalpel is the Registered Veterinary Nurse (RVN).
We are very proud to employ so many great RVNs and, as it’s Vet Nurse Awareness Month in May, we wanted to share all the great things about these cornerstones of the veterinary team. You may see #VNAM and #OurProfessionMyResilience and if you do, please click on them to see what vet nurses are up to. You see, we really value our vet nurses for the care they bring to you, your pets, and the veterinary team.
What’s in a name?
Before we go on to all the roles the vet nurse undertakes we just want to clarify what we mean when we say ‘vet nurse’ or ‘RVN’ we mean someone who is registered with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) as a veterinary nurse. Just as all our vets are on the MRCVS register all our vet nurses are on the RVN register.
This is very important as the registration for vet nurses is relatively recent – it only became a compulsory register in 2015 – replacing the previous List and Register that had run alongside each other since 2007.
The RCVS has also protected the title ‘Veterinary Nurse’ meaning that those in a veterinary practice cannot refer to anyone as a ‘Veterinary Nurse’ or ‘RVN’ if they are not on the register.
We feel this is important as it provides the same level of protection as seeing a vet when seeing a vet nurse and as they do so much for your pets we know that peace of mind will be important to you. When we say vet nurse, we mean VET NURSE!
Different roles
As we mentioned earlier, you may find vet nurses appearing in a variety of roles across our vet practices. We like to make sure our vet nurses can follow their passion and expand their skills so you may find them undertaking roles in:
Theatre
- “scrubbed in” to support the vet
- Assisting with anaesthesia
Medical care
This list can be very long but vet nurses help with…
- Administering medication
- Feeding patients who can’t eat for themselves
- Monitoring a patients progress after treatment
Puppy parties
- Socialising new members of your family
- Sharing helpful information on correct feeding
- Advising on the importance of flea and worm treatments for young pets
Feline friendly
We’re proud to have our nurses push forward with making practices feline friendly
- An accredited scheme, vet nurses make a real difference with helping your cat have a stress free vet visit
Nurse consults
A consultation is not just for seeing a vet. A space and time to speak to a vet nurse can help with:
- Weight management
- Behavioural help
- Post-operative care
A vet nurse is not just for clinical work
Outside clinical work, we like to keep our vet nurses busy and you might find them training our student vet nurses, helping with case administration, and managing teams.
We hope you will agree that we are right to be proud of our vet nurses and we know that they bring an added value to the care of your pets. They bring the “added value” to our vet teams and to your pet care that is often hard to quantify.
This May, if you’re in one of our practices you’ll most likely meet one of our vet nurses and it would make their day if you asked about their valued role in your pet’s care.
Don’t forget to tag us on Facebook or Instagram when visiting!