In today’s world of expanding pet ownership and increasing demands in accessibility and quality of veterinary care, the fundamental challenge of attracting and retaining qualified individuals to perform the tasks required for high-quality patient care faces the field of veterinary medicine. This challenge directly translates to the scale of individual veterinary practices in the trenches of providing said care.
While the shortage of veterinary professionals is an issue with multitudes of contributing factors, the underutilization of team members, especially veterinary technicians, has been a source of dissatisfaction in practice for decades. Today, surveys have pointed to feeling underutilized and stagnant in their positions, leading to a sense of disrespect, and their work being meaningless has pushed the backs of veterinary technicians to find a different workplace or to leave the veterinary field altogether.
Also, at least several study reports have supported the significant increase in profitability credentialed veterinary technicians can bring to a practice when utilized appropriately and encouraged to be engaged in their work as professionals. The gain in revenue of a properly utilized veterinary technician far exceeds their salaries. Furthermore, the establishment of an efficient team structure and division of labor will lead to improved wellness of all team members by distributing the workload appropriately and alleviating lopsided demands on our valuable team members.
Through our own experiences in practice and surveying of the landscape while advocating for the veterinary nurses and technicians we had to stop and ask the question “Why is this still an issue today, in 2020?”, and “How can we make a true impact on the issue?”. Through these questions, the veterinary technician utilization assessment tool was born, for us to present to you today.
It is our goal through the employment of this tool for your practices that we will be able to impact the level of utilization and allow the practices to realize the beneficial effects. The first step to correcting an issue is to see where we stand today. We aim to help you identify the opportunities for improving practice health and success through veterinary technicians.