Dear Sirs,

 I am a licensed veterinary technician working at a 24 hours general practice in the wonderful state of Virginia. I started out working as a veterinary assistant at my current hospital. I graduated from Northern Virginia Community College’s AVMA approved program and sat for boards in 2003. I am also regional technician supervisor for 13 other area hospitals. I assist them with training and mentoring of technicians and assistants. I am a VALVT member and NAVTA member.

I am sending this letter in regards to the prosed changes to 18VCA150-20-172 Delegation of Duties for the Board of Veterinary Medicine.  Specifically:  The monitoring of a sedated or anesthetized patient may be delegated to an assistant, provided the patient is no longer intubated and provided a veterinarian or licensed veterinary technician remains on premises until the patient is fully recovered.

I understand the intention of the Board with the proposed law. In a perfect world,  licensed technicians would perform all technical skills in a veterinary practice. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. As I am sure you are aware, there is a great shortage of licensed technicians due to burnout, compassion fatigue and lack of pay. For every veterinarian there is 0.48 licensed techicians vs. human medicine for every doctor there are 2 .8 registered nurses. The Virginia DHP Count of Current Licenses for the FY ending June 30th, 2016 which lists 2032 licensed Veterinary Technicians, 4217 licensed Veterinarians and 772 Full Service Veterinary Facilities which translates to approximately 0.48 LVT per licensed veterinarian and 2.6 LVT’s per full service facility.  This falls well below most veterinary industry recommendations for a minimum of 1-2 FTE LVTs/ FTE veterinarian in a full-service GP veterinary practice. Workforce data from the same time period in the human medical profession show that 37115 Physicians and 104,873 Registered Nurses were licensed in the state of Virginia which represents 2.8 registered nurses for each licensed physician.

 With the proposed law, what I fear most is the limitation it would place on patient care. Taking care of patients is the reason why I became a licensed technician and why I have continued to remain in the field. I fear there will be veterinarian "monitoring" alone while doing surgery in order to follow the law.  Patients will not be intubated that really should be so a trained assistant can monitor them.  I do strongly believe in the current Virginia laws. Only licensed personal can induce anesthesia. Only licensed personal can place an endotracheal tube. I believe these laws help to protect our patients and protect the veterinary technician profession without crippling licensed technicians and veterinarians.

A side from patient care, I also fear  the proposed law  would increase the cost to owners because there would be a limited the number of procedures that could be offered to the public due to lack of licensed technicians. It would put more of a strain on the already limited licensed staff.

As an alternative I would suggest each hospital submit their veterinary assistant training program for the Board to review and approve.  This would help ensure that all staff involved with any anesthetic procedure is trained properly to increase patient safety. Currently our trained anesthesia veterinary assistants undergo an intense training program. Afterwards  a licensed technician or veterinarian helps to overseas the care of these patients.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Amanda Blankenship LVT