What Does a Veterinary Technician Do?
Veterinary technicians are also known as veterinary technologists and animal health technicians. In short, we can call them “vet tech”. They are trained to perform routine laboratory and clinical procedures under the supervision of the licensed veterinarians.
They usually work in veterinary hospitals and clinics, zoos, grooming salons, animal shelters, boarding kennels, stables, biomedical research centers, livestock management companies, veterinary pharmacies, educational institutions, etc.
In general, a veterinary technician’s role is quite similar to a nurse. The technician provides necessary assistance to the animals as well as to their owners. As an animal health technician, it is very important that he or she must be an animal lover. He or she must be kind-hearted, patient, caring and gentle as the job requires high level of animal interaction. Most of the time, the job is related to comforting sick or frightened animals.
Many people, including the pet lovers, do not know the duties of a veterinary technician. In the point of view of most of the people, veterinary technicians are the assistants to the veterinarians. In fact, veterinarian technicians are not the same as veterinary assistants. They are professionals who have undergone formal training and obtained certification and licensing. They have a very wide job scope.
In common, the animal health technicians assist the veterinarians to conduct physical examinations to the animals in order to determine the nature of their illness or causes of the injury. Below are some of the typical duties of the veterinary assistants:
- Perform various medical tests for animals such as urinalysis, blood count, etc
- Take blood samples from the animals
- Collect animals’ urine
- Prepare tissue samples and perform skin scrapings
- Record the patients’ temperature, pulse and respiration
- Take X-ray and process radiographs
- Assist the animals with dental work, for instance, cleaning teeth
- Analyze the test results
- Diagnose the health conditions and diseases in animals
- Provide nursing care to sick and injured animals
- Remove stitches and give injections to animals
- Administer medications
- Provide counseling to the pet lovers/owners of the animals
- Perform daily administrative tasks; for instance, maintain treatment records, check the inventory, etc.
Besides, the veterinary technicians also play very important roles in assisting veterinarians during the surgery. Their tasks include:
- Providing the correct equipments and instruments to the veterinarian during the operation
- Ensuring the monitoring tools and supporting equipments for surgery are in good condition and functioning well
The tasks of a veterinary technician are not only limited to those stated above, but vary from one to another, depending on their employers and their working places.
Some of the veterinary technologists are required to perform researches in medical related fields. Some of them involve in conducting researches in gene therapy and cloning under the guidance of veterinarians, physicians or scientists.
It can be concluded that veterinary technicians provide a wide range of assistance to the veterinarians in all areas related to the animals and the main goal of this profession is to promote animals’ health.