Live Life Team
A vet nurse could be an excellent career choice if you enjoy working with animals but don’t feel that you want to spend the time qualifying as a vet, or perhaps feel that you cannot achieve the grades required. You need to be confident with animal handling, and not afraid of all shapes and sizes of animals.
You can train to be a vet nurse on the job, and there is a good chance that the vet that employs you will send you on a training course to help speed up the process. You will need to be prepared to help restrain animals, change dressings, weigh animals and perform administration tasks.
Vet nurses assist in theatre so you must not be squeamish about blood and gore, as you will need to be carefully monitoring the patient whilst the vet is working. This means keeping an eye on the breathing levels and heart rate.
You will need to be computer literate as you will have to update the computer with patients’ information, and in a small practice you may find it is also your job to answer the phone and make appointments for the vet.
In order to get onto a formal training course you will need to have 5 GCSEs, and these must be at level ‘C’ and above. It is also a stipulation of the course that you can secure employment so you have a practical forum in which to hone your skills.
