A veterinary technician is one who serves as the extra pair of hands to the animal doctor in an animal clinic, hospital, zoo, animal shelter, and so on. They are the ones who take on the role of the nurse, anesthetists, and laboratory and radiology technicians not forgetting the one who administers jabs and medications along with a bit of the front desk work.
On average, a typical day in the life of a veterinary technician can be one that is exciting and tiring at the same time. Let’s put you in their shoes and have a day at work. First, you would give patients or animals that come in the routine checkup of temperature, basic vaccinations, cutting their nails and so on. Then, you proceed to listen to the veterinarian and do the next step which is various medical tests such as drawing blood and preparing tissue samples.
Following that, if there are previous records of the patient’s history, files will be brought out and a few tests would be conducted, as a vet tech, your duty would be to call out previous conditions the patient may have had and help the veterinarian with whatever procedures he would need to conduct. Moving on, you would need to take x-rays and conduct laboratory running procedures and administer medication orally or topically. You then talk to the owner of the patient and fill in an information chart with general things like food intake, behavior, weight, clinical signs of pain and discomfort and so on.
If there is a surgery to be done, you would be allowed in with permission to do general things like prepping, assisting, monitoring anesthesia, recovery, cleaning instruments and packing surgical packs. After that, you would get to clean up wounds and give specialize nurse care. If the patient requires overnight observation, it would be your responsibility to keep them comfortable and at ease in kennels or cages.
In addition to that, when you’re about to leave for office, always ensure you’ve got an extra change of clothes in the office. As your job requires you to deal with animals, you may never know what would happen so expect the worse and be prepared for accidents f all sorts.
In a nutshell, you can see that as exciting and interesting as being a veterinary technician is, it comes with a great deal of responsibility as well. So if you’re ready to take on the challenge, go for it. After all, the experience is totally worth it.
For more information about online veterinary technician programs and veterinary technician requirements, visit VeterinaryTechnicianCareer.com.
