Why I love journals – and how I thought one could have saved my life

This month is one of the busiest of my year but as with every month, I make time to spend a day catching up on the latest journals from the veterinary nursing profession.

Every time I sit down to read a journal, I think of Eileen, a VN that mentored me when I was studying to become qualified. Eileen was a young woman, but she was wise beyond her years. Her cockney accent and delightful sense of humour made her the centre of attention when the pressure was on. The entire clinic would listen to her as her calm and reassuring nature guided us in any stressful situation.

There was no truer example of Eileen's calmness than one morning when I briefly thought I might die…

I was a student on the 7 am shift and on arriving in the clinic my duties were to care for all of the animals in the ward prior to the rest of the staff arriving at 8 am. On this particular day, I encountered a parrot that had been admitted late the evening before. The parrot's name was ‘Olive’ and she was in an incubator in the treatment room with a standard cage card on the outside that said ‘PDS’ (Proventricular Dilitation Syndrome). As I had been taught, I followed the cage cards and opened the incubator to replace the bedding, noting the diarrhoea and urine colour on the cage card. I used standard infection control procedures and carried on caring for the rest of the patients in the hospital. An hour later, one of the junior VNs arrived and observed my notes on the cage card. With wide eyes, she approached me in the ward and said: ‘Did you know that Olive has tuberculosis?’ By her expression, I could tell that something was wrong, but I was very new to my courses and didn't know what she meant. I told her I didn't know, and she looked very worried but just turned and went back to her work. Later in the morning when Eileen arrived, I took her aside and told her what had happened. She smiled at me and said: ‘Tuberculosis is a disease that's contagious to humans. I haven't seen a case of that in many years. Don't worry, let's first go look at the medical record for Olive, to be sure that is what she has, then let's go look up tuberculosis so we can review the risks from handling her.’