Sticking up for my amazing assistants! This isn’t meant to throw shade at my amazing technicians, however many of the comments made make it sound like assistants are completely uneducated or given an easy way out to not get their licensure.  Every single person is vital for a successful practice, from the receptionist, kennel tech, administrative/management team, in addition to technicians.  When there’s a shortage of technicians, we have to re distribute SOME of their duties so our patients don’t suffer.   When I asked technicians about this in other states, literally nobody had an issue (didn’t feel degraded, undervalued or threatened with job security).  In fact, most techs commented that they would be easily overwhelmed if they were not allowed to train qualified assistants for placing peripheral catheters (most said that they would prefer central lines to be limited to LVTs).  

If what we truly want is higher standard of care, then why is it that a DVM can take a weekend course in ultrasound or orthopedic surgery and now is allowed to do these at his or her practice.  A family practioners in human medicine would never do surgery, or a dentist would not do most oral surgical procedures.  Or why is it allowed for any DVM to practice vet medicine in any capacity (especially emergency medicine) without an internship?  So we cannot always apply whats done in human medicine to vet med, in fact even family practice requires a residency but even an internship isn’t required in vet med. 

I think we can all agree that 2020 has changed the world, including vet med- I don’t see this as lowering our standards, but rather re-distributing the work load to prevent people from burning out and in a way actually improving our patient care.  Its great have licensed professional do everything, but its unrealistic. 

I love my techs and assistants, but I also want what’s best for my patients.  Redistributing the work load to take some of the burden off the techs to qualified assistants is the way to go.