Professional

Tail docking: a professional dilemma for veterinary nurses

In the UK, there are specific regulations that cover tail docking in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act 2006. These are The Docking of Working Dogs' Tails (England) Regulations 2007 and The...

Veterinary human support

Veterinary human support is a useful umbrella term and can include anything related to supporting people in veterinary roles, from recruitment and training, through to workplace support and career...

Implementing patient safety in practice

The NHS advocates the use of ‘safety huddles’ to support effective communication at key points in the care of individuals, to improve safety. A safety huddle is a short multidisciplinary briefing,...

A guide to sustainability in veterinary practice

The veterinary industry carries a hefty carbon footprint. Typically, we use a lot of energy to maintain ambient temperatures of our premises, we rely heavily on single use plastics, we use anaesthetic...

Bereavement and the veterinary nurse

Early models of bereavement, such as the five stages model created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, described grief as a process, with the people involved passing through stages such as denial,...

Values conflict resolution

Value conflicts occur when a situation clashes with a person's deeply held moral beliefs and values, such as religious or political views (Harinck and Druckman, 2017). This article uses a range of...

Ethics in practice: Schwartz rounds and veterinary clinical ethics committees

Schwartz rounds are named after their originator, Kenneth Schwartz, who was diagnosed with cancer in his 40s and died after 11 months of treatment. During his treatment, he found the compassion shown...

Internal conflict in the workplace

The Oxford Dictionary defines conflict as a situation in which people or groups disagree strongly or are involved in a serious argument. In a working environment, workplace conflict is likely to be as...

Utilising interpersonal skills to manage challenging client behaviour

Introducing exercises that elevate the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) can help counteract SNS domination and reactivate essential physiological functions such as digestion and...

Mask wearing in the veterinary practice

PPE places a barrier between staff and exposure risk and with appropriate use, helps prevent the spread of pathogens between animals and within the practice (Stull et al, 2018). Person-to-person...

Chronic illness and resilience in the veterinary industry

The colloquial term ‘spoonies’ has been adopted by many suffering from chronic illnesses to describe the debilitating effect of limited physical and emotional energy that chronic pain and fatigue can...

Considerations for hand hygiene to reduce hospital acquired infections in practice

Veterinary nurses will commonly encounter patients that are suffering from an identified active infection and are carrying organisms that the practice has been made aware of. Active measures are...