As a manager of a progressive, growing practice struggling to employ an appropriate number of LVTs, I can see the advantages of this petition.  We have multiple student technicians being intrusted with this task and several experienced assistants that we could train to perform it, as well, if this passed.  Originally coming up in a rural practice, I know first hand that most practices do not have licensed personnel for various reasons and training unlicensed people to fill the void is sometimes the only option.  It can effectively be and IS being done consistently throughout the state, despite current licensing requirements. 

All the practical arguments aside, as a seasoned LVT I am ultimately not in favor of anything that reduces our potential value to a practice.  As an industry we are plagued with gray area, blurred lines and halfass medicine in an attempt to meet all the patient/client/practice owner demands; we should be demanding more limitations for unlicensed personnel and more significant penalties for sidestepping these regulations, demonstrating a effort to raise the bar on standard of care, instead of undercutting those that have put in the time and effort to set themselves apart from the average employee.  I have interviewed numerous "technicians" that have been routinely utilized to perform LVT duties in other practices that are appalled/deterred/dissatisfied that our practice is attempting to practice a higher level of medicine and want our clients to know it by the people we put in certain positions.  As licensed technicians, we are definitely much more knowledgeable and independantly competant but unfortunately most practices don't really know how much of an advantage that alone is, only initially interested in an LVT for their technical skills.  A practice would never consider hiring or training an LVT to fulfill a DVM role, although many of us are more capable than a new DVM graduate.  This petition will only further reduce interest in investing the time and money into becoming a licensed technician, which in turn depletes the LVT pool even futher, making it even more difficult for practices to find any, let alone capable, LVTs.  This is most definitely a slippery slope and as licensed personnel trying to advance our profession, we can't afford to support this petition.