Addendum, Credentialed Vet Techs Post

There is one more thing that I inadvertently left out of the blog post the other day, and it has been gnawing at me a little.  There is one more discussion that non-credentialed veterinary assistants tend to bring up that really irks me.

"I learned everything the hard way.  In the trenches."  "I didn't take the easy way out."
I am not sure how exactly this argument works.
The easy way, the person is stating, is to spend 40 hours a week at school, hold down a job, perform another 10-20 hours of homework a week, deal with wet labs, years of debt repayment, months of studying for a national exam, weeks of studying for a state exam....and then go on to a career where you're required to take time off to go to continuing education and learn more and more every year.  A career where you also clean cages, speak to the willfully ignorant or cognitively dissonant, and are lumped into a category of people who may not know a trachea from an esophagus.  People who think that you are a sellout for going to school, and that you think you're better than them.  So they automatically put you down, from Day 1.

How is this the easy way out?  How is being told exactly what to do, and when to do it, without any additional information on the hows and whys over years and years, the hard way?

Not only that, but when school is over (and for a lot of us, during school).....we are also in the trenches.  Learning what Book Smarts translate to Real World Smarts.  An assistant's 5 years of experience is not more difficult or more special than a credentialed Tech's 5 years of experience.  They're both 5 years of experience, both "in the trenches."  So how does the argument work?

It doesn't.

We, as C/R/LVTs, are literally being shamed for making our dedication to our career legal and responsible, and putting ourselves in a position to provide our patients and DVMs with the best possible start to our career.

The fact of the matter is this.  As with all things in life, you get out of it what you put into it.  There will be amazing assistants that I would trust to care for my pet, because I know that have gone to IVECCS/AVMA/WVC/AAHA symposiums, absorbed any and all information, and most importantly....they know what they don't know.  Because those people are amazing.  I trust that if anything was to happen, they would alert the DVM or the LVT, and go from there.  I know that they would ask questions.  Provide a sounding board.  Be a great assistant.

It's the people who don't know what they don't know, the people who insist that veterinary medicine doesn't need credentialed, legally responsible Vet Techs that I am worried about.  I know many of these people, and some of them are DVMs or DVMs in training.

Veterinarians rely on their LVTs to provide a checks and balances system for the clinic.  No one person, as godly as the DVMs seem to be, is perfect.  I am far from perfect, but I know that my DVMs appreciate when I discuss cases with them, and provide a different perspective.  I appreciate that my DVMs are open to discussion and teaching and having LVTs who want to learn.  I know for a fact that our patients have benefited from having multiple people on the case with educational backgrounds that cover the universal quality of care that is expected of Veterinary Medical professionals.