Pawsitively Essential: The Role of Veterinary Assistants in Pet Clinics
Making a veterinary clinic hum takes a dedicated support staff. Vets rely on their vet assistants, vet techs, and office staff to make sure their furry patients get the quality care they need to live long, healthy lives or to provide life-saving emergency care.
Without question, the jacks of all trades in a vet clinic are the veterinary assistants, who often bounce from duty to duty in every part of the facility. They assist veterinarians and vet techs in a wide variety of ways, and they are everywhere.
At any given time, veterinarian assistants can be found in the reception area welcoming patients and making appointments, in the office filing paperwork, in an exam room helping the veterinarian calm a nervous dog, in the surgery room making sure everything is spotless and sterilized for the next patient, in the kennels checking on post-op patients, or out back walking a puppy.
One thing is certain: vet assistant jobs are never boring!
The essential work done by vet assistants helps vet practices hum along smoothly. The long list of duties a veterinary assistant may perform include:
- Cleaning and sanitizing equipment
- Feeding, bathing, and exercising patients
- Performing basic lab work
- Weighing animals
- Dressing wounds
- Taking vital signs
- Administering certain types of medicines
- Post-operative care
- Disinfecting operating and exam rooms
- Clerical work, such as assembling patient paperwork or billing
- Animal restraint
- Communicating with pet owners
For someone passionate about animals, becoming a vet assistant gives you a chance to be a vital part of a life-saving team.
Vet Assistants Enjoy High Degrees of Job Satisfaction
Vet assistants get to be around animals all the time, but the job can vary depending on where you work. Assistants in a regular veterinary clinic get to know their patients from their first visits as cute, bouncy puppies and adorable blue-eyed kittens. They watch them grow up and play a role in keeping them healthy.
Their days are a mix of routine check-ups and more critical care. While there are the inevitable sad days, the good days outnumber the bad.
Vet assistants in an animal hospital or emergency care center might find life more hectic, but saving lives feels very rewarding.
In fact, the majority of vet assistants find their jobs meaningful and enjoy their working environment.
Being a vet assistant is a good way to get a feel for animal healthcare. Some enjoy veterinary care so much that they go on to pursue a veterinary technician degree, which requires at least two years.
Finding a Vet Assistant Job
With the growing number of pets in this country, there’s a corresponding growth in the number of jobs related to their care, including veterinary assistants. Job growth is projected to be 20% between 2022 and 2032, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Almost 27,000 job openings are anticipated yearly.
This doesn’t mean it’s easy to land those jobs, though. Even though there are rarely any educational requirements besides a high school diploma or equivalent, it’s a tough field to break into if you don’t have experience working with animals or a vet assistant certificate. There are simply too many people looking for a career with animals to be able to land a job with no skills or training.
If you can, find opportunities to work with animals and get some experience. Look for opportunities to work at or volunteer in local animal shelters, wildlife rescues, boarding kennels, doggy day cares, stables, or other facilities that house animals.
Another good way to get noticed by potential employers is to earn your vet assistant certification. Becoming certified can increase your chance of landing a job faster. After all, vet practices don’t have to spend nearly as much time providing on-the-job training to hires who already know what’s expected of them.
How to Earn a Veterinary Assistant Certificate
Getting a veterinary assistant certificate is not nearly as costly or time-consuming as earning a vet tech degree. You can be certified in less than a year in a program like Animal Behavior College’s online vet assistant course.
Flexible and affordable, Animal Behavior College’s program teaches you everything you need to know in order to work as a vet assistant. It also offers invaluable real-world experience. Once the online part of the course is complete, students get the opportunity to work with a mentor in a local veterinary setting. You may be asking, is there a veterinarian near me? Call us at the number below, and we will tell you which veterinarian you may be paired with.
If you’d like to start a satisfying career working with animals, we’d love to help make that happen. Call us at 800-795-3294 to speak to an admissions counselor.
Don’t forget to visit our gift certificate page here.
