Veterinary Assistants

VETERINARY ASSISTANT JOB DESCRIPTION 

Veterinary assistants must have a broad knowledge of animal science, medicine, and husbandry, including a basic knowledge of pharmacology and sufficient mathematical skills to ensure the administration of accurate drug and fluid doses. They must be able to successfully restrain animals, complete clinical laboratory tests, use multiple radiology techniques, administer and monitor animals under anesthesia, and assist in surgery. Assistants must also deliver compassionate nursing care.

General Knowledge and Tasks 

General Knowledge 

• Know the range of services the practice provides and the species it treats (this may vary by doctor).
• Be reasonably familiar with dog and cat breeds and coat colors.
• Follow OSHA standards. Be able to find Safety Data Sheets quickly. Understand the Globally Harmonized System labels on containers to ensure safety.
• Know and use standard medical and business abbreviations.
• Use proper medical terminology when speaking and writing.
• Be familiar with infectious diseases, including their prevention and steps to reduce or eliminate transmission. Know the most common zoonotic diseases (infections from animals to humans) and how to prevent transmission.
• Competently speak and write the English language.

General Tasks 

• Always be in position and prepared to work at the start of each scheduled shift.
• Use ADP to clock in and out for all shifts and breaks as required.
• Maintain a professional appearance while at work, including clean and pressed uniforms or clothes. Change clothes during shifts as necessary to look professional and avoid carrying odors.
• Smile and maintain an even, friendly demeanor while on the job, even in frustrating circumstances with difficult clients. 
• Perform job tasks efficiently without rushing.
• Promote a positive attitude among staff.
• Handle stress and pressure with poise and tact.
• Be willing and available to stay late or through breaks when needed, excluding meal breaks, to assist with emergency or critical-care patients.
• Show respect for clients, team members, and animals (alive or deceased) at all times.
• Have the physical strength and ability to stand for an entire shift when needed, and be able to lift pets and objects weighing up to 50 pounds without assistance. Assist with lifting patients weighing more than 50 pounds.
• Maintain a list of tasks and engage in productive work during slow periods.
• Supervise and direct kennel staff if technician supervisor is not available.
• Assist other employees as needed. Avoid waiting for coworkers to ask for assistance.
• Assist in hiring new employees by advising candidates of openings, offering them applications, and providing your opinion to the hiring manager.
• Participate in your performance appraisal, and, as requested, in those of others.
• Participate in all staff and training meetings.
• Maintain constant vigilance regarding open doorways that could allow pets to escape from the facility.
• Maintain strict confidentiality regarding clients and patients for whom the practice provides veterinary services.
• Be prepared to handle any pet or facility emergency that may arise, including dog or cat fights, choking or strangulating animals, and facility fire or weather-related emergencies. Follow contingency plans.
• Follow established facility closing procedures to ensure the security of patients, staff, data, revenue, inventory, and the building.

Front-Office Tasks 

• Know phone functions, including the hold, intercom, transfer, forward, and three-way calling features.
• Answer the phone by the third ring when receptionists are preoccupied or unavailable.
• Use patients’ names during phone conversations with clients about their pets. Know each patient’s sex so the pet can be called “he” or “she.”
• Possess sufficient knowledge of animal husbandry and basic medicine to answer routine questions or refer calls to appropriate colleagues.

Client-Interaction Tasks 

Patient-Admittance Tasks 

• Admit patients to the hospital. Provide counseling and compassion for clients, answer their questions unless it is clear that the attending doctor should do so, and ensure that all admittance paperwork is properly completed. 
• Provide clients with handouts and brochures regarding relevant medical conditions, surgeries, immunizations, internal and external parasites, pet health insurance, and diets.
• Assist clients with unruly or unrestrained pets.
• Transfer incoming patients to appropriate wards and ensure their comfort. Identify patients with cage cards. Check for the presence of appropriate paperwork.

Pet-Identification Tasks 

• Scan new patients and strays for microchips, tags, and tattoos. Identify and record microchip numbers, tattoos, and/or patient markings in patient records.
• Communicate with clients about the various pet-identification systems available, including tags and microchips.
• Assist clients in registering pet-identification information in the practice’s computer system and in the appropriate national database.

Procedural Tasks 

• As patients are admitted, build a surgery, procedure, and/or treatment schedule for the approval of the attending doctors.

Patient-Discharge Tasks 

• Coordinate patient transfers with front-desk, kennel, and/or veterinarians.
• Prepare medications and prescriptions for dispensing as directed by the doctor. Ensure that each prescription label contains the following information: doctor’s name; practice’s name, address, and phone number including area code; date; patient’s and client’s name; medication name, strength and volume (or number); administration instructions including route of administration, such as by mouth or in the ear; and product’s expiration date. ALL PRESCRIPTIONS AND INJECTIONS MUST BE VERIFIED BY A SECOND PERSON BEFORE DISPENSING/ADMINISTERING.
• Dispense medications. Discuss administration or application and potential side effects with owners as directed by doctors. Print or email handouts on medications if needed. 
• Discharge patients. Instruct clients on the care of patients at home, the timing of recheck appointments, and warnings of adverse effects of surgeries or medications.
• Assist grieving clients and comfort them. Be familiar with the grieving process. Always be sensitive to background chatter or conversations that could exacerbate the anxieties and grief clients experience during euthanasias or deaths of their pets.
• Handle angry or grieving clients with a calm and reassuring manner and take them immediately out of the lobby to an exam room.
• Assist clients to their vehicles if needed.

Medical-Record Management Tasks 

• Understand the medical-record filing system and Cornerstone data entry system.
• Locate medical files for hospitalized, surgical, or incoming patients.
• Make notes in patient files of all relevant phone or in-person conversations with clients, especially when notifying them of lab results. Place your initials after the entries. REMEMBER, IF YOU DON’T DOCUMENT IT, IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.
• Verify and/or witness clients’ statements regarding procedures, including euthanasias.
• Check files for completeness of notes, charges, callbacks, and reminders, making entries as needed.
• Accurately file all paper medical records.

Exam-Room Tasks 

• Possess sufficient strength and assertiveness to effectively restrain patients and ensure the safety of clients and personnel. 
• Clean and straighten exam rooms to prepare for incoming patients. Spray disinfectant on exam tables, wipe them clean, and dry them. Remove sources of offensive odors; empty trash if necessary. Check floors, walls, doors, and counters, and sweep or clean them as needed to remove hair, body fluids, and dirt.
• Answer questions and educate clients about basic pet care and procedures including nutrition; internal and external parasite control; immunization protocols; the administration of topical, oral, otic, and ophthalmic medications; spay and neuter procedures, behavior and obedience training, and pet insurance.
• Complete cursory overall examinations of patients and record your findings in the medical records, including taking temperature, pulse and respiration.
• Identify external parasites.
• Perform suture removals, nail trims, anal gland expression.
• Draw up vaccines and/or injections for administration.
• Vaccinate pets. Follow manufacturers’ directions as well as AAFP guidelines for placement of injectable vaccines at appropriate sites.
• Dispose of used needles and syringes and other sharp objects as set forth by the practice’s policy and OSHA standards.
• Inform the practice manager or doctors immediately of all bite or scratch wounds you suffer so that reports can be made and you can be referred for timely medical care by a physician if necessary. Clean all wounds quickly and thoroughly.

Nursing-Care Tasks 

Basic and Environmental Tasks 

• Prioritize tasks to maximize clients’ satisfaction and patients’ health.
• Track comfort items that clients brought for hospitalized patients.
• Maximize patients’ comfort with a gentle and reassuring manner. Understand that actions that would constitute animal cruelty under state or local laws or the practice’s policies will be grounds for immediate reprimand and/or termination. Patients should not be dragged by their leashes--- other methods should be employed. 
• Monitor patients for vomit, blood, urine, and feces in the cage, and clean patients and cages as needed. Note unexpected incidents on cage cards or charts.
• Monitor patients’ behaviors and note potentially aggressive behaviors. Use caution when handling aggressive or potentially aggressive pets. Request assistance when needed.
• Monitor changes in patients’ conditions. Alert doctors to significant changes.
• Alert doctors to notable pathology identified during patients’ exams.
• Follow isolation procedures. Prevent contact between contagious animals and others. Using the designated products and dilutions for disinfectants, properly disinfect your shoes, hands, and clothing before leaving isolation areas.
• Walk dogs on a double leash or on a leash within a fenced exercise area. Ensure that they are restrained and under your control at all times.
• Accurately assess patients’ temperatures, pulse rates, and respiratory rates.
• Clip hair in a manner that minimizes clipper burn. Maintain, clean, and lubricate clipper blades on a regular basis. Surgical patients should only be clipped with designated clipper blade.
• Complete and update cage cards. 
• Use warning stickers and notations on cage cards and records as appropriate. 
• Prior to discharge, remove patients’ catheters and clean patients so that no body fluids or excrement are present.

Patient-Treatment Tasks 

• Understand the mechanics and application of standards of asepsis.
• Properly calculate medication dosages and volumes of liquids or tablets to be administered to patients. Recognize grossly inaccurate doses of commonly used medications. All decimals should be written with a 0 (zero) in front (i.e. 0.1, not .1).
• Maintain IV catheters so fluids flow freely; flush and clean as needed. Hospitalized patients should always have a T-port in place and fluid pumps should be used instead of Dial-a-flow when at all possible.
• Monitor, adjust, and maintain IV infusion pumps.
• Monitor and maintain urinary-collection bags. Record urine production on charts being sure to record precise times so that hourly rates can be calculated.
• Administer IV, IM, SQ, and oral medications.
• Provide IV and SQ fluid therapy to patients. Maintain aseptic conditions. Understand the different types of fluids and additives used in the practice. Calculate, add, and administer medications through fluids. Calculate and administer proper fluid flow rates to patients. All bags with additives must be labeled appropriately.
• Administer routine enemas.
• Apply wound dressings and treatments. Maintain a clean site. Understand the applications for wet, dry, and wet-to-dry dressings.
• Apply bandages in a manner that ensures that the bandage protects and/or limits mobility and remains properly applied. Cover and maintain bandages as needed to preserve function and cleanliness.
• Use cotton swabs to clean ears, bulb syringes to flush them, curettes to remove debris, and catheters to irrigate ear canals. Administer ear treatments without causing trauma, and teach clients how to complete this task.
• Trim nails to the quick without causing bleeding. 
• Provide physical therapy and hydrotherapy to patients as instructed.
• Understand how to stop bleeding by using styptic pencils, powder or other means.
• Detick patients with tick-removal instruments or medications.
• Identify a patient’s level of pain and possible causes of pain, and understand the medications and methods used to control pain.
• Assist kennel staff in medicating and treating boarders.

Technical Tasks 

General Technical Tasks 

• Restrain pets in a manner that allows necessary work to be performed, minimizes patient stress, and ensures their safety and that of other people.
• Safely and effectively apply and use restraint devices, including muzzles, towels, gloves, and cat bags.
• Perform venipunctures using patients’ cephalic, saphenous, and jugular veins in a manner that minimizes trauma to patients and injury to veins and allows you to successfully obtain nonhemolyzed blood samples. Place blood in appropriate tubes for the tests that are needed.
• Collect urine and fecal samples. Use fecal loops for stool collection as needed. When required, perform urinary catheterizations on male dogs or cystocenteses on male and female dogs, cats, and pocket pets.
• Aseptically place cephalic, saphenous, and jugular intravenous catheters without causing patient trauma.
• Perform needle aspirates and stain them as requested.
• Draw blood for transfusions. Type-match blood samples. Perform blood transfusions: set up filters for whole-blood administration, oversee administration of blood and blood products, and monitor patients for transfusion reactions.
• Set up and record diagnostic multi-lead ECG tracings.
• Make effective smears from vaginal swabs.
• Obtain ear swabs and cultures for analysis.
• Express anal sacs.
• Properly implant microchips and test their functionality.
• Assist with euthanasia procedures. Hold off veins and release pressure at appropriate times when catheters are not used.

Emergency-Care Tasks 

• Provide basic life support, including CPR, airway maintenance, and oxygen therapy.
• Apply temporary bandages or splints.
• Know where to find the emergency drug kit. Make sure products have not expired, and understand the basic uses for these drugs.
• Control bleeding using pressure bandages and tourniquets.
• Provide fluid and pharmacologic therapy under veterinary supervision.
• Provide cooling baths and/or enemas for heatstroke patients. 

Laboratory Tasks 

• Understand the paperwork and procedures of outside laboratories used by the practice.
• Maintain all laboratory test kits and reagents under proper environmental conditions.
• Maintain centrifuges, microscopes, and chemistry analyzers.
• Make slides of body fluids. Air-dry and stain them as directed.
• Make blood smears with properly feathered edges to ensure accurate interpretation.
• Evaluate blood smears to accurately assess platelet numbers, red and white cell morphology, and differential white counts. Recognize blood pathogens.
• Maintain stains and other supplies to ensure the best results. Prevent contamination of stains and replace them when ineffective or contaminated.
• Use proper stain techniques to maximize the diagnostic capability of prepared slides. 
• Perform urinalyses. Properly use and record data from urine dipsticks. Measure specific gravity. Evaluate urine sediments for crystals, cells, and other material.
• Perform and evaluate skin scrapings and ear smears.
• Complete routine ELISA tests, such as heartworm and feline viral tests.
• Perform CBCs and differentials.
• Set up, centrifuge, and read hematocrits.
• Use refractometers or chemistry analyzers to evaluate total protein levels of serum or other fluids.
• Set up and read blood glucose test strips. 
• Collect and prepare samples for bacterial and fungal cultures. Evaluate in-house cultures.
• Evaluate bleeding/clotting times.
• Maintain quality control by running control samples and periodically testing in-house results against results from an outside laboratory.

Surgical Tasks 

• Develop or locate and maintain equipment and instrument maintenance logs.
• Understand aseptic principles and apply them to surgical patients, instruments, equipment, and rooms.
• Know the names of instruments and where they are stored.
• Prepare the surgery suite(s) for incoming patients.
• Prepare patients for surgery. Clip surgical fields with straight margins. Minimize tissue trauma. Properly scrub and prepare surgical fields. Maintain clean fields when moving patients.
• Properly position and align patients for surgery.
• Use circulating warm-water baths (blankets?) and/or hot water bottles to maintain the body temperatures of anesthetic and surgical patients.
• Ground patients when using electrocautery.
• Properly scrub hands and arms for surgical cleanliness, and 

aseptically gown and glove yourself when called to assist or “scrub in.”

• Assist surgeons with aseptic gowning and gloving.
• Anticipate surgeons’ needs for assistance, instruments, and patient monitoring, and treatments.
• Monitor patients’ recoveries. Protect patients from aspiration and hypothermia. Deflate cuffs and remove endotracheal tubes as soon as gag reflexes return.
• Stimulate and care for puppies and kittens removed by cesarean section.
• Keep controlled drugs secured to meet Drug Enforcement Agency and state board specifications.
• Update patient records with drugs administered, procedures performed, and patient status during surgeries and recoveries.

Surgical Cleaning Tasks 

• Clean operating rooms and equipment after use.
• Clean surgical prep and recovery areas.
• Wash, and store endotracheal tubes.
• Dispose of used needles and syringes and other sharp objects as set forth by the practice’s policy and OSHA standards.
• Clean surgical instruments by hand and/or ultrasonic cleaner.
• Operate and maintain the autoclave when kennel staff is unable.
• Pack and autoclave instruments when kennel staff is unable. Using lists of instruments or photos as guides, ensure that packs contain the proper numbers and types of instruments and that they are labeled with dates and types of packs. Apply pressure and temperature sterilization tape and/or monitors, and verify effectiveness after autoclaving.

Dental Tasks 

• Know the names of surgical and dental instruments and their storage locations.
• Understand and use proper attire when operating dental equipment, including masks, eye protection, caps, and protective apparel such as a gown or scrubs.
• Recognize significant dental and gum disease, record it in patient records, and bring it to the attention of doctors.
• Perform dental scaling and polishing procedures without traumatizing the gingiva.
• Perform fluoride treatments.
• Maintain proper dental records for each patient.

Anesthetic Tasks 

• Be sufficiently familiar with the anesthetic machines to operate, maintain, and repair them.
• Routinely check and change soda lime. Record dates of soda-lime changes on the machines.
• Check anesthetic hoses for leaks and internal contaminants.
• Ensure that the anesthetic scavenging system is functional.
• Understand the differences between closed- and open-circuit administration of anesthetic agents, adjustments needed for oxygen flow rates, and anesthetic percentages used for each. Use the switch on certain anesthetic machines when changing between rebreathing and non-rebreathing circuits.
• Regularly check the level of inhalant anesthetic in vaporizers. Add anesthetic as needed.
• Check pressures in oxygen tanks regularly and replace tanks at appropriate times. Check regularly for leaks in oxygen hoses and couplings.
• Connect oxygen tanks to anesthetic machines without damaging gaskets. Maintain spare gaskets and replace them if they are damaged.
• Test endotracheal tube cuffs for leaks prior to use and replace them.
• Know how to inflate the cuff while checking for leaks to inflate just the right amount to prevent leakage without traumatizing tracheas.
• Generally understand the various anesthetic agents used for different patients.
• Administer preanesthetic drugs to surgical patients as directed. Record times of administration.
• Preoxygenate all surgical patients. Brachycephalics and at-risk patients must be pre-oxygenated for at least 5 minutes before anesthesia induction.
• Monitor surgical patients by tracking anesthetic depths, heart rates, respiratory rates, temperatures, pulse oximetry, end tidal carbon dioxide and ECGs during anesthetic procedures.
• Adjust gas anesthesia for each patient to safely maintain proper surgical planes. 
• Use palpebral, toe pinch, and corneal reflexes to assess and maintain necessary surgical planes.
• Maintain anesthetic log books so as to be in compliance with AAHA and state board standards.

Imaging Tasks 

Radiology Tasks 

• Maintain radiographic, developing, and shielding equipment to maximize patients’ and employees’ safety. Record maintenance data.
• Minimize radiation hazards. Use protective equipment and wear exposure badges during radiographic exposures. Use sandbags and other restraint devices to provide patient restraint and minimize human radiation exposure whenever possible.
• Properly measure patients for effective translation to radiograph machine settings.
• Develop, use, adjust, and maintain a radiograph technique chart that minimizes waste caused by erroneous exposures.
• Position patients to obtain diagnostic-quality radiographs of skeletal anatomy, internal organs, superficial lesions, or extremities. 
• Consistently use the physical right and left markers and only rely on digital markers when needed.
• Adjust machine settings to correct technique failures.
• Maintain a radiograph log book that complies with AAHA standards and/or state laws.

Inventory-Management Tasks 

• Report items needed to the ordering manager.
• Receive and stock supplies, matching invoices with packaged goods. Report all shortages, overages, and damaged goods if kennel staff is unavailable for this task.
• Ensure that medical supplies are always available.
• Regularly check for outdated supplies. Remove and replace them as instructed by the practice manager.