National Veterinary Nurses Week 2010 is between the 18^th and 24^th July this year.

Nurses at the Shreen Vet Group are helping to promote their profession by producing a waiting room display in order to educate clients about their role in practice.

Veterinary Nurses work alongside Veterinary Surgeons to provide a high standard of care for sick or injured animals. Unfortunately the profession is poorly recognised with many people wrongly assuming that nurses are training to be vets.

There are several routes of training to become a qualified VN. The most popular involves being employed at a veterinary training practice and attending college one day per week for two years.
Veterinary Nurses assist with the following:

• In-patient care including general care and administering medication
• Anaesthetic monitoring
• Processing radiographs
• Advice on general animal health care
• Post-operative check ups
• Removal of sutures
• Weight watchers clinics
• Behavioural advice and consultations
• Nail clipping
• Identichipping
• Bandaging
• Adolescent health checks
• Stock control
• Admitting and discharging patients
• Sterilising equipment
• Taking blood samples
• Maintaining a surgically clean environment
• Out of hours assistance to veterinary surgeons

For more information about veterinary nursing or how to become a veterinary nurse please go to www.bvna.org.uk

Some sad news to report this month; After 5 years of excellent service Sophie is leaving us for pastures new. It has been a real privilege to work alongside Sophie and watch her mature and grow professionally into the caring vet and exemplary surgeon that she is today. She will be missed greatly by colleagues and clients alike and we all wish her every success in the future.

That brings us to some exciting news to finish on, and that is the imminent arrival of Sophie’s replacement. Liz Hornsby, a new graduate from Bristol Vet School, will be joining us in mid July and we hope you will all make her feel very welcome. Watch this space for a (warts and all? ) biography next month as we welcome Liz to the team and get her mugshot into our rogue’s gallery!