HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Veterinary assistants are just one of the unsung heroes at veterinary hospitals, performing a wide variety of tasks ensuring our visits go smoothly.
As one administrator said, they can serve as "liaisons, from the front of the building all the way to the back."
"Not only do they have to have good client communication skills and transfer information and grab the charts and know the medical, charting rules, all of those things," Jeanette Fessler, campus director of the Metropolitan Veterinary Academy, said. "But they also need to be trained in some other skills."
The school opened in late 2022 in the same building occupied by the Cleveland East Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital in Highland Heights The veterinary assistant diploma program is 10 months long, and each term is eight weeks long.
"We take their first term and teach them office management, client communications, medical terminology to prepare them for the next level," Fessler described of how terms progress. "They will assist the registered veterinary technicians along with the doctors. They can get involved in surgery cases, preparing for surgery, preoperative things that need to be done. And we guide them through term-by-term over the 10-month period to train them, to get ready to do all the things that they're going to do there."
The shared building with the veterinary hospital gives students greater access to observe actual procedures they've just learned about in class.
"These cases are coming in naturally and normally and it's a working hospital," Fessler explained. "Then the students can go out on the floor and see all that happen in real time."
Over the past several years, the veterinary industry has struggled with staffing declines, adding to long hours, demands, and stresses of the jobs. An added aspect of the school will address that.
"What we would like to tackle in this program specifically is to provide some foundational knowledge, adding a layer of psychology to this, and coping mechanisms, resilience, resistance — what all of the things you would need to get through some of the traumas that you may face in this field," Fessler said referring to critically ill animals and euthanasia. She points out that while this is only a small part of the job, yet the effects can linger.
To learn more about the Metropolitan Veterinary Academy head HERE.