Banfield "pet nurse" position?

[dyachei]

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I worked at a Banfield in their student program last summer. I asked a lot of questions about their organization. I worked for a charter group, which meant that they were a franchise owned by a veterinarian. He still got to make his own business decisions. One of the most common issues I kept hearing about was the inability to do anything with vaccines, but this was not the case. The docs at this particular hospital were able to choose based on their own preferences and beliefs. The only areas where corporate pushed their own products over everything else were flea control and skin care (shampoos, etc). Only the flea control actually bothered the vets. I learned a lot and was able to take in clients and make preliminary diagnoses with the vet before we would enter the exam room together (as part of the student program). I learned more about how to read radiographs and how to interpret lab work than I expected. I actually thought the wellness plans for puppies and kittens were pretty good. For about the cost of the spay/neuter, you also got deworming and vaccines. I wouldn't buy the adult plans if animals didn't need dentals though.

In all, it was a good experience. One of the vets there had a husband that worked at a non-charter branch and hated it because of how involved corporate was.

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

I too had my doubts after doing some research and hearing a lot of complaints but I have worked for two private practice vets and I have to say that every place has its ups and downs.

Even though Banfield may have some issues, the local vets do too. These were both family owned with spouses or parents also working there, so you'd think it would be a warm caring place to work right? Nope. There was a lot of politics and people on a power trip, usually whoever wasn't the doctor but a family member in an office manager position.

That is why I applied at Banfield and because I wanted the training. I had my interview today and they want me to come back tomorrow for shadowing. I am a little worried though because I think someone is competing with me. They told me that myself and another girl would be shadowing tomorrow (there's only one open spot). I also have a local vet that interviewed me today too and they are haveing me come in for a "working interview" day after tomorrow. I am trying to figure out what I will decide if Banfield offers me the job tomorrow.😕

Honestly, I think I will take it because of what I said above and because the local vet is another situation like before it seems. I have just had enough with the family politics for now.

The only reason I was considering the local place was because it would be more hours and probably higher pay.

 

[jpeterman13]

It's not easy staying in business in general, but lots of offices do alright and don't seem to come off as being shady.

It all depends on what you consider shady. Some people consider offering to express anals as shady. I don't think that doing things like offering flea preventative is shady. Some are just insidious so they're not an abrupt. It's that initial shock that makes an impression on people IMO.

Only the flea control actually bothered the vets.

OH YES! FirstSheild isn't a great flea/tick preventative. It's a bit too "runny" and I think that a good portion of it just runs off. Also, the warning that it's not a medication for cats is probably 2 mm tall (cat with a cross through it). It contains permethrin...so when people don't pay attention to what we tell them and think that they are pulling a fast one by "splitting the dose" btw their dog and cat--it's bad news. I'm glad to see that others have had positive experiences at Banfield. I also work for a charter practice, this must be a significant factor in the differences between Banfields.

Good Luck to all who are interviewing!

 

[BarnyardPunch]

It all depends on what you consider shady. Some people consider offering to express anals as shady. I don't think that doing things like offering flea preventative is shady. Some are just insidious so they're not an abrupt. It's that initial shock that makes an impression on people IMO.

Why would offering to express anals be shady? Can't imagine many people who have animals that actually need it done want to do it themselves. I've had people beg to have it done at vaccine clinics. "Can't you just do that thing... you know the one with his butt. PLEASE?!?" I especially love when they're slightly embarrassed about it too.

And I agree that offering a flea preventative is not shady at all. Only discussing one option and being obnoxious about providing a script for someone who wants to buy elsewhere is though.

I'm glad you're having such a good experience this summer. Makes me wish the Banfields around here didn't suck so much.

 

[CorporateFatCat]

I recently interviewed at a Banfield. To tell you the truth, I might of taken the job if something the interviewer said didn't stick with me. I went into the interview on the fence. I've heard some not so great things about Banfield, and after working for a mobile pet vaccination clinic, I kind of swore off companies providing vet care primarily to make huge profits. That and these companies seem to care more about moving patients though an assembly line rather than treating them as patients and clients. Of course, I also heard that they train their nurses and do it well. I was also looking forward to getting some ca-ching in my wallet 🙄.

Anyway, what she said was: "Oh. You're from Davis? I'm surprised because people there don't think very highly of us."

That and she mentioned that one of my tasks as a Pet Nurse would be to push the Pet Plan or whatever it is. She didn't really go on further to explain why one shouldn't consider Banfield respectible, and that bothered me. Customer service is big with them, which I think is a good start as long as they follow through.

A friend of mine referred to the doctors as "robo-vets". I thought it was kind of harsh, and I DEFINATELY DON'T BELIEVE THIS APPLIES TO ALL THEIR VETS. I also know what she means, though. Anyway, at this point in my life, I'd like to take a job that I can stick with for at least 6 months and can work closely with the DVM. I did not see this happening with Banfield.

They offered me back for an orientation, but I turned it down. I'm just not really into the business. Hopefully you guys get a good experience or at least learn some useful stuff!

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

I went back for shadowing and got the job offer at Banfield. I met the doctors and staff and have to say I am impressed so far. There was some mentioning of wellness plans but they told me that I should educate clients about what is offered (the puppy one looks like a great deal) but not be pushy about the plans. They weren't that worried about it. They are going to pay me more than I asked for and the hours will be great so I am very pleased. They are going to train me in all areas-my previous experience will help in the training.

 

[nohika]

I have a phone interview (hopefully) tomorrow, since the lady was out of the office when I tried to call her back. I'm really hoping I get the job...or even just move to the next step, especially since the "head honcho" at my current job just called me to talk about "work". I have to call her back tomorrow. Craaaaap. Sucks being low man on the totem pole.

Did anyone here do a phone interview at all? I've never done one before and I'm uncertain what to expect (for my current job it was a call to come in and fill out the hiring paperwork and that was that, but this is human healthcare...).

Ugh. Two important phone calls tomorrow...nothing more exciting to stress about.

 

[VeganSoprano]

A phone interview is usually just preliminary stuff to make sure it's worth their while to have you come in for a real interview. Take it seriously and be professional about it, but don't stress about it. Disqualifying answers would include things like "I'm deathly allergic to cats and dogs and can't be in the same room with either one", or "Hang on, I need to take this other call, it's my parole officer".

 

[jpeterman13]

A phone interview is usually just preliminary stuff to make sure it's worth their while to have you come in for a real interview. Take it seriously and be professional about it, but don't stress about it. Disqualifying answers would include things like "I'm deathly allergic to cats and dogs and can't be in the same room with either one", or "Hang on, I need to take this other call, it's my parole officer".

"Are facial tattoos acceptable? Also, I can't work mornings, nights or weekends. I'm asking $24/hour."

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

I have a phone interview (hopefully) tomorrow, since the lady was out of the office when I tried to call her back. I'm really hoping I get the job...or even just move to the next step, especially since the "head honcho" at my current job just called me to talk about "work". I have to call her back tomorrow. Craaaaap. Sucks being low man on the totem pole."

I don't know about the phone interview because they skipped that in my process but the in-person interview was a lot easier than I expected. There were no hard questions or trick questions. It was kind of relaxed. And the biggest surpise to me was that it was only 15 minutes long and we were done. There was no mention of salary at that time, not until after the shadowing during the job offer. There were also no questions about specific previous jobs, like "Why did you leave?" or "Tell me about your supervisor". It was just questions like, "At this last hospital where you worked, what part of the work were you involved in?" Just experience questions. The only attitude question was just asking me how I feel about working in a more corprate environment.

Hope this helps out in either of your interviews. I don't expect every Banfield to be the same but it might be similar.

 

[twelvetigers]

Just because I see dangling quote tags all the time, here's an explanation of how they work.

When you quote someone by clicking the 'quote' button below their post, you get something that looks like this**:

(QUOTE=twelvetigers;658496) Hey hey we're the monkeys! I like bananas! What's that smell? Blah blah blah blah. The end.(/QUOTE)

Now, if all you want is the part in which I proclaim a love for bananas, you can erase the rest of the message. BUT! If you erase any (or all) of the two crucial parts

(QUOTE=twelvetigers;658496)

OR

(/QUOTE)

It will NOT WORK!

If you accidentally delete part of it, you can go back in and add it. So if purplemoonmarie went back into her post and added the /QUOTE tag after the part from nohkia, it would work as expected.

This is how a quote should look, FYI.

I'm not complaining about any mistakes, just wondering if everyone understands how it works since I see broken quotes a lot. We all had to learn what all the little buttons and stuff did at one point in time! 🙂

**Please note that I'm replacing the brackets with parenthesis so that I can post this as an example without making quotes myself, if that makes sense.

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

I'm not complaining about any mistakes, just wondering if everyone understands how it works since I see broken quotes a lot. We all had to learn what all the little buttons and stuff did at one point in time! 🙂

Thanks. I am trying it- hope it works so I don't look like an idiot. 😳

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

Yay! 🙂 thanks again

 

[nohika]

Thanks, guys! The lady comes back tomorrow and I'm really hoping this goes through...just lost my "old" job because they discovered they could pay someone with 15 years experience my salary too so it was more worth it to do that. Sigh. Hated that job anyways.

If this doesn't go through I think I'm going to shoot for a vet-assistant program near my home that literally the school pays the clinic that wants to hire you to train you on-the-job.

Edit: Question...I'm in WA, which is typically more restricted on what non-techs can do. What kind of things could they potentially train me in, out of curiosity? I'm not sure where to find the restrictions...

 

[VeganSoprano]

I think you can do quite a bit. There are a few skills that are restricted (cystocentesis is one), but you can definitely draw blood and place peripheral IV catheters. You should have plenty to keep you busy for a little while at least.

 

[nohika]

I think you can do quite a bit. There are a few skills that are restricted (cystocentesis is one), but you can definitely draw blood and place peripheral IV catheters. You should have plenty to keep you busy for a little while at least.

🙂 I'll keep you guys posted - I'm going to call her later once she gets in and hopefully find out how things are going to go.

 

[Hopefully2013]

Ok, so, I saw this post asking about Banfield, and then while I was looking on craigslist I saw they had posted a job ad looking for petnurses and petnurse assistants...

So I went to their website, to look at qualifications and such, and while they prefer a whole bunch of stuff (degrees, medical training, anything basically) the only requirement for the PetNurse Assistant job was a high school diploma. So I thought "Hey, I've got one of those! Why not?" and sent in the application yesterday. Thinking maybe, if they're posting on craigslist, they're desperate. And the job ad was posted five or six days ago.

And they called me today wanting to set up an interview! I'm excited. This summer I'm working at a local pizza place as a cashier 👎 it would be most helpful to get a job in a vet clinic, no matter what people's opinions of it are.

So thank you OP for making this post because I would otherwise not have thought to apply there.

 

[deleted266066]

Ok, so, I saw this post asking about Banfield, and then while I was looking on craigslist I saw they had posted a job ad looking for petnurses and petnurse assistants...

So I went to their website, to look at qualifications and such, and while they prefer a whole bunch of stuff (degrees, medical training, anything basically) the only requirement for the PetNurse Assistant job was a high school diploma. So I thought "Hey, I've got one of those! Why not?" and sent in the application yesterday. Thinking maybe, if they're posting on craigslist, they're desperate. And the job ad was posted five or six days ago.

And they called me today wanting to set up an interview! I'm excited. This summer I'm working at a local pizza place as a cashier 👎 it would be most helpful to get a job in a vet clinic, no matter what people's opinions of it are.

So thank you OP for making this post because I would otherwise not have thought to apply there.

:-D You're welcome! I'm just glad the forum here is so helpful because I didn't know anything about Banfield before all this happened. I'm in the same boat with no paid experience in a clinic (despite a bunch of other experience volunteering/shadowing/paid as a lab tech), so nowhere would even interview me here because I'm not a CVT!


I'm kind of learning that I value the experience of a job more than the pay at this point... so that's something useful I have obtained from working as a lab tech . My dad doesn't get it, but I think my boyfriend is starting to realize that feeling fulfilled >>> money in terms of what makes me happy, and me being happy means less complaining that he has to put up with haha! Thanks for all your help everyone, and good luck to everyone else looking into working for various other clinics!

 

[Hopefully2013]

It's too bad you didn't get to at least interview for the shelter job 🙁 but at least you got the Banfield job!

I have literally nothing - no experience, no hours shadowing/volunteering, nothing. My experience on my resume is two years of being a full time babysitter (at a job which did include taking care of the family's pets), and being a camp counselor for summer camp at a stable. So I think they might just be desperate if they looked at all that and called me up anyway, and in less than 24 hours.

Which is fine by me because if they're desperate they might be willing to hire someone with not only no experience, but who they must realize is going back to school 7 hours away this fall (surely they looked at my resume, which has my school and my major and my graduation date for good measure, something not required but I'm not going to deceive anyone - In two months I'll be gone and that's that).

 

[nyanko]

**Please note that I'm replacing the brackets with parenthesis so that I can post this as an example without making quotes myself, if that makes sense.

And as an explanation for you, you can use noparse tags if you want to illustrate code without it formatting. 😉


[plain][quote] i want 2 b a vet bc i like puppies [/quote][/plain]

I feel so meta putting a noparse block inside of noparse tags.

 

[twelvetigers]

Hah. Well lah-dee-dah!

 

[summerbailey]

:-D You're welcome! I'm just glad the forum here is so helpful because I didn't know anything about Banfield before all this happened. I'm in the same boat with no paid experience in a clinic (despite a bunch of other experience volunteering/shadowing/paid as a lab tech), so nowhere would even interview me here because I'm not a CVT!

I have an interview with Banfield on Monday and a private clinic on Thursday, and I was wondering what kind of questions they asked you during the interview if you don't have lots of experience? Besides my dogs, I just recently started volunteering with a no kill shelter last month, and that's all my experience. To be honest I am really surprised I ended up getting 2 interviews at all, and I'm pretty nervous about my lack of experience...any advice?

 

[deleted266066]

I have an interview with Banfield on Monday and a private clinic on Thursday, and I was wondering what kind of questions they asked you during the interview if you don't have lots of experience? Besides my dogs, I just recently started volunteering with a no kill shelter last month, and that's all my experience. To be honest I am really surprised I ended up getting 2 interviews at all, and I'm pretty nervous about my lack of experience...any advice?

For me, they mostly just asked the regular retail type questions; "tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer" deal. Others were things such as... "what could you contribute to our clinic as an employee?", "what is one of your weaknesses?"

I have been asked these questions at every interview I have had in retail/restaurant/and a couple practices. I wouldn't prepare a memorized set of answers, but I would go ahead and come up with a couple things you'd like to talk about for each question. With a bunch of interviews under my belt now, I just kind of went in and talked without having prepared anything and it worked fine, but I already knew which scenarios I would discuss should they need to be addressed.

Otherwise, no questions about what skills I have; they emphasized that they would teach me pretty much everything. They did ask what other animal/veterinary type organizations I was involved with, I guess to make sure that they understand why you want a position at a vet clinic in the first place 🙂

I think they really just want to make sure you seem responsible, intelligent, and eager to be there. Good luck!

 

[Hopefully2013]

Haha, I was thinking at work how I should ask what questions they asked, and I got on and someone had beat me to it!

Sounds like it will be very similar to my interview at the pizza place, which was my first interview ever... I'm glad I have at least one interview under my belt at least.

 

[PurpleMoonMarie]

Does anyone know how often Banfield pays their employees- weekly, bi-weekly? My first day is this week and I am just curious. They haven't mentioned this yet and I don't want to be the one to bring it up. 😉

 

[der2002]

has anyone heard of this?

http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=15884

 

[Hopefully2013]

has anyone heard of this?

http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=15884

That's dumb. If he was so completely unsatisfied with the way they ran it WHY does he want his job back? Especially since he did give 90 days notice that he was going to quit anyway.

I'm not saying whatever he described didn't happen. It may have. We have no way of knowing other than he says it did.

But it's not something to judge the whole chain on, I think. It sounds like what others in this thread were saying, that all the Banfields are different.

 

[Hopefully2013]

Well my interview... was... well... not really an interview.

As in, she didn't ask me any questions.

Actually she did ask me two questions. "Do you have any experience with aggressive dogs?" and "Are you squeamish around blood?"

Said I would know by this afternoon and the only thing that sucked is that I was leaving to go back to school.

 

[Trilt]

That's dumb. If he was so completely unsatisfied with the way they ran it WHY does he want his job back? Especially since he did give 90 days notice that he was going to quit anyway.

I'm not saying whatever he described didn't happen. It may have. We have no way of knowing other than he says it did.

But it's not something to judge the whole chain on, I think. It sounds like what others in this thread were saying, that all the Banfields are different.

More info here: http://www.unlawfultermination.com/documents/Banfield-Complaint.pdf

He seems to have a pretty legitimate complaint, though of course his attorney's documents will be biased. And yes, it could happen at any clinic, not necessarily Banfield.

One thing I found interesting is at the end of the document, though, and relates to a discussion that happened a bit ago on the forum about the amount of patients seen per day - for a doctor at that Banfield to maintain his "ramp-up" salary, he would personally need to see 22 patients a day at with a patient charge of $100, or any other combination to make the hospital about 7k a week. That's a lot of patients, though obviously it is well within their legal rights to demand it.

 

[chickenlittle]

I just happened to stumble across this discussion and wanted to throw in my 2 cents...

One thing I found interesting is at the end of the document, though, and relates to a discussion that happened a bit ago on the forum about the amount of patients seen per day - for a doctor at that Banfield to maintain his "ramp-up" salary, he would personally need to see 22 patients a day at with a patient charge of $100, or any other combination to make the hospital about 7k a week. That's a lot of patients, though obviously it is well within their legal rights to demand it.

As a veterinarian with 4 years experience, I think that seeing 22 patients/day is completely reasonable and actually sounds pretty simple. Maybe it's just because I work in an area where clients expect pet care to be cheap (meaning we tend to follow a low-cost, high-volume model), but all 3 clinics that I've worked in would consider 22 patients to be a relatively slow day. In my current job, for example, we book appts every 15 minutes.... but will double-book if needed for emergencies, etc. I've seen up to 25 patients in a 4-hr Saturday, and I think my busiest weekday (we work 8-5:30, no appts from 12-2) was a total of 35 appts. I probably average around 25-30 clients on a typical weekday... any less than about 15 and I start to feel bored and antsy.

Regardless of where you work after veterinary school, your income will be determined by how much revenue you generate for the clinic. Most jobs will pay you anywhere from 20-25% of the money that you bring in for the clinic.... some clinics will pay you directly "on production," while others will pay a salary but base that salary on your expected production and your previous years' production. The lawsuit says that vet was earning $90k; he'd need to generate abouut $7k/wk in ANY clinic in order to justify that salary. Some clinics will emphasize lower numbers of patient visits and charging more money to each individual patient, while others will see higher numbers of patients and therefore generate less money on each visit. Regardless of the clinic's overall strategy, though, your income will ALWAYS be determined by how much income you produce.

I realize that there are parts of the country that will support a quality-over-quantity mentality, but in my area that is definitely not the case. Clients tend to balk at expensive bills... so the only way to keep the total clinic revenue at a level that can support doctor salaries and overhead is to focus on volume and work efficiently.