When you bring your pet to Southwest Vet, you know you and your pet will receive nothing but the best care. Our entire team is proud to offer dedicated care and attention to each and every one of our extended family members—two- or four-legged. However, as National Veterinary Technician Week (October 11 to 17) approaches, we’d like to highlight two positions that ensure your beloved pet receives such excellent care. Enjoy VIP access to the rockstars—our veterinary technicians and client care representatives—who work tirelessly to ensure your pet receives nothing but the best care. 

Veterinary technicians: Patient care rockstars

As in human medicine, veterinary career positions are tied to experience, education, and skills. Many of our veterinary technicians and veterinarians began their career path as kennel attendants or veterinary assistants, like human nurses and physicians may have begun as nursing assistants. Our highly trained licensed veterinary technicians can legally perform all a veterinarian’s tasks, except for prognosing, diagnosing, prescribing, and performing surgery. Our talented veterinary technicians provide the bulk of your pet’s nursing care, and often engage in as much client communication and education as our veterinarians and client care representatives.

At any given moment, you may find our vet techs performing the following patient care tasks:

  • Monitoring your pet — Whether your pet is at Southwest Vet for surgery or hospitalization for an illness, you can count on our vet techs to closely monitor your furry friend. Before, during, and after surgery, our vet techs keep a close eye on your pet’s vital signs and comfort level, taking appropriate actions if their heart rate or blood pressure indicate pain or anesthetic complications.

  • Nursing your pet — Nursing care is a major part of our vet techs’ duties, from administering medications, coaxing your pet to eat, and cleaning up after the inevitable sick patient messes. You can always count on our vet techs to ensure your beloved pet is warm, comfortable, and clean while in our care.
  • Advocating for your pet — Since our vet techs closely watch your pet during their stay at our hospital, they are the first ones to detect subtle signs of pain, nausea, or other uncomfortable conditions that require veterinary attention.
  • Assisting our veterinarians — Our vet techs are our veterinarians’ right-hand team members, and are always there to provide assistance for exams, surgeries, treatment plans, and anything else our patients and veterinarians need.
  • Collecting samples and performing diagnostic tests — Our in-house laboratory is packed with specialized equipment designed to help provide a rapid diagnosis for your pet, and no one can better convince a finicky machine to work correctly, or understand which tests require which samples, than our vet techs. From blood work to X-rays, urinalysis to blood pressure readings, our vet techs do it all.

Whether our vet techs are helping provide world-class nursing care to our patients, assisting our veterinarians during surgery, or discussing the ins and outs of parasite prevention with our pet owners, we couldn’t make it through the day without our patient care rockstars.

Client care specialists: Client care rockstars

The other half of our care team consists of our client care specialists (CCSs), the compassionate, knowledgeable people who answer the phone lines, handle the scheduling, and are the first ones to greet you and your furry pal. While our CCSs perform a variety of receptionist-type duties, they also possess extra veterinary skills, and are incredible at performing the following tasks:

  • Answering pet owners’ questions — As a pet owner, you likely have a ton of questions about providing the best care for your four-legged friend, many of which may pop into your head as soon as you arrive home after an appointment. Our CCSs are knowledgeable about many aspects of veterinary medicine and pet care, and can offer guidance and clarification to help you care for your furry pal.
  • Retrieving vital patient history — If you’re transferring from another veterinary hospital or your pet received treatment at a specialty facility, our CCSs spend a significant chunk of their day tracking down essential medical records, test results, X-rays, and patient histories, so we can better care for your pet.

  • Triaging sick pets over the phone — Pets routinely get into mischief, and our CCSs can triage their condition severity over the phone. For example, if your pup ate a couple of unwrapped Hershey’s kisses, our CCS will know that she will likely suffer only some gastrointestinal upset, but if your naughty pooch got into your stash of baker’s chocolate, they’d recommend an immediate appointment for toxicity treatment.

Our amazing CCSs not only handle every situation with kindness and compassion, they always maintain their cool when faced with an emergency or unpleasant situation. You can count on our team to go above and beyond for all our patients and pet owners. 

Our Southwest Vet team is devoted to providing top-notch care to your four-legged companion, whether they are visiting our hospital for a routine wellness exam or a complex internal medicine diagnostic workup. Rest assured that your beloved pet is in excellent hands with our superstar team members—call us to schedule an appointment.