Veterinary Assist??

[VeterinaryLover]

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Can any one become a Veterinary assist?
I mean if you don't have a degree.
What do you do as a Veterinary assist?

 

[Normed]

I don't know how the American system works, but I'm sure it's similar to here in Canada.
A Veterinary Technician is like a veterinary nurse, and here it's a 2 year post highschool program. They do everything from helping with surgeries, performing neuters, declaws, and dentistries, to administering medications... among many other tasks...
There are also courses you can take for Veterinary Medicine Office Assistant or something along those lines which is for more of a front desk, restraining, history-taking during appointments sort of job...

again, this is Canadian info.... 🙂

 

[MelliSpirit]

Pretty much. I'm 18, fresh out of high school, and have been working as a veterinary assistant for a year and a half. I did spend several months of that volunteering before actually being hired (that time served as a training period as well as an extended job interview). As a vet assistant, I personally do a lot of restraining for blood draws and procedures, weighing animals and taking temps, running lab work, putting lab results into our computer system, and when I have nothing better to do, I do some housekeeping tasks like laundry and cleaning kennels.

 

[wildfocus]

Can any one become a Veterinary assist?
I mean if you don't have a degree.
What do you do as a Veterinary assist?

in washington state (where i am from and where i've been a vet asst. for nearly nine years), yes, anyone can be one, and what you do depends on your clinic. at mine, i do everything a registered vet tech does except give vaccines with the owner present. in fact, we are all just called nurses.

depending on your experience, there may be a steep learning curve. for me, i actually did take a vet asst. course after college (which i will add was a waste of $$) and had experience working in a hospice and as an emt, so i got to jump right in...

 

[ri23]

In general a veterinary assistant does not require a degree, and a veterinary technician does. Most clinics, it seems, hire both techs and assistants - the techs to help with more, well, technical aspects of the job and the assistants bringing in animals, getting personal histories, cleaning etc.

 

[VeterinaryLover]

I don't know how the American system works, but I'm sure it's similar to here in Canada.
A Veterinary Technician is like a veterinary nurse, and here it's a 2 year post highschool program. They do everything from helping with surgeries, performing neuters, declaws, and dentistries, to administering medications... among many other tasks...
There are also courses you can take for Veterinary Medicine Office Assistant or something along those lines which is for more of a front desk, restraining, history-taking during appointments sort of job...

again, this is Canadian info.... 🙂

Yea it is almost the same thing. I was a Vet. Tech. during a summer youth program last year.

 

[ri23]

VeterinaryLover, I would recommend that you read through some of the older threads on this forum. A lot of the questions that you have have been covered pretty recently so you should be able to find some of the info that you are looking for.