Vet "technician" - role between Vet and Nurse?

I am trying to get my head around the way Vet Med careers work, what are the routes / choices?

Vet Med D100 is the main route to be a Vet, with high grades and (very) competitive entry.

Vet Nursing degree is the route to the Nurse role (obviously), with much lower grades.

Its the bit in the middle I don't get

In human clinical context you have lots of other non-doctor roles (eg Radiologist, Anaesthetist etc) - do the same things exist in veterinary? What are the routes to them?

FWIW it is the hands on roles that I am trying to understand as opposed to, for example Vet Pharma

Reply 1

RambleAmple

I don’t think there is a middle bit. Nurses and vets tend to do all of those between them, e.g. anaesthesia, radiography are all things as a vet student we’ve been taught from day 1 of the course, and commonly nurses monitor anaesthesia during procedures. As a vet you can also specialise further into those and other branches, either with certificates or doing internships and residencies and usually if you do that you’ll probably work in a referral vet hospital rather than a first opinion clinic, but being a vet comes first - I think there are also certificates or similar for vet nurses. “Vet tech” to my knowledge is a vet nurse but in America. Some clinics also have animal care assistants, who help care for the inpatients etc but can’t get as involved with the medicine side as a qualified nurse or vet - you don’t need any qualifications to become one.

Reply 2

louisvbird

Universities Forum Helper

As above, there is no middle-ground in veterinary medicine: only vets or nurses. The only veterinary-allied professionals that I can think of are veterinary physiotherapists. There are some other less vetty roles like farriers...?

Nurses can specialise to an extent and become emergency care nurses, imaging nurses, scrub nurses etc. if they want to, but they do need to do the nursing qualification first. :smile: