October 14-20 is the annual celebration of National Veterinary Technician Week. In New York State, we call these animal healthcare professionals licensed veterinary technicians (LVT), but in other municipalities they are known as certified veterinary technicians, veterinary technologists, or registered veterinary technicians. No matter what their exact title is, these critical members of the veterinary healthcare team function as registered nurses do in human medicine. For a general description of the role of veterinary technicians, you can read a prior blog post.
The Animal Medical Center employs 90+ LVTs who support and enhance patient care working side-by-side with the veterinary staff. Space doesn’t allow me to describe the role of every LVT at AMC, so as part of our weeklong celebration of veterinary technicians, I will highlight just a couple of exceptional veterinary technicians in action.
Recovery
AMC’s Surgery Service has a cadre of LVTs focusing on pets recovering from general anesthesia. They work in a specially outfitted area right off the surgery preparation area. Once an anesthetic procedure is completed, the pet is moved into recovery and stays there on a soft mattress under a heating blanket until the anesthetic has worn off enough that they can again stand and walk normally. Xyna is a member of the recovery tech team. She is new to AMC and a recent graduate of SUNY Canton’s accredited LVT program. Like all LVTs, she was trained in recovery techniques, but never thought she could have a full-time job, supervising anesthetic recovery. When I visited recovery to speak with Xyna, under her care was a pug with a hip dislocation, a schnauzer fresh out of the CT scanner, and a cat recovering from a spleen removal surgery.
Radiation Therapy (RT)
One of AMC’s most experienced LVTs, Corrado, works in RT. After 17 years at AMC and about the same amount of time working as a tech for private practices and a guide dog school, he has seen it all from the tech perspective. His AMC career started in the blood bank and as backup for hemodialysis procedures. His next stop was CT/MRI where he was responsible for operation of the big machines and patient anesthesia.
Currently, Corrado operates our third big machine, the Varian linear accelerator and also serves as RT patient anesthetist. Even though all patients receiving radiation therapy do so under general anesthesia, these pets recover in their cages in the radiation therapy suite rather than in the surgical recovery area.
Want to learn more about veterinary technicians? Read these previous blog posts from National Vet Tech Week 2013 and 2012. And when you are done, don’t forget to say “thanks” to the veterinary technicians this week, and every week.