If you’re a caring person, and one that loves animals, to boot, then you might be considering a career to help those animals most in need. Aside from animal shelters or rescue operations, this typically means looking for animal health care. Whether it’s as a nurse, technician, or doctor, working in a vet’s office might be worth considering. Here, we’re going to look at what it takes to work in such an environment, and whether or not it might be right for you.
Are you confident and quick to act?
While you do, of course, need to have logical thought behind every action as you are treating an animal, it’s important for anyone working in a vet’s office to be able to make quick decisions and act on them with confidence. Of course, you can receive ongoing training for the skills you learn in education and early in your career to keep confidence in your abilities. However, you need to be able to be decisive in working with both pets and their owners. Animals can respond poorly to those who don’t operate with some level of confidence and their owners need to have faith that they’re fully in control of the situations they put themselves in.
You’re able to deal with a variety
If you want a job where you do the same thing, day in, day out, then working in a vet’s office might not be for you. A lot of the work might repeat itself, but there are going to be different patients with different needs, and even of different species, coming in every single day. This might mean using different diagnostic tools or treatment techniques, it might mean having to go on farm visits for larger animals and more. What’s more, depending on the level of your job, you might be preparing animals for surgery, cleaning surgical tools, performing lab tests, running X-rays, and much more. You need to be ready for a lot of variety in your job role from day to day.
Expect plenty of education
Depending on what position you want to fill in a vet’s office, it’s going to require plenty of time spent in education. Of course, becoming a veterinary doctor is the most time-consuming of all, taking usually around five or six years. While still not a short period, you can earn your degree to become a veterinary technician in two-to-four years. It takes real education on the biology of the animals that you are handling, as well as the methods by which you handle and treat them, which is not a quick process. Nurses can get to work with less training, still, so it might be worth looking into that option.
You have an interest in the subject of animal medicine
If you don’t have some genuine interest, enthusiasm, or inclination when it comes to the subject of animal medicine, you’re not likely to make it through the education to earn your degree. Aside from the fact that you need to stay on top of the subject to provide the best care, you might also want to go into learning more to further your career. For instance, vet technicians can choose a lot of different specializations, from dentistry to behavior to survey to equine nursing and more. Finding your specific interest can be key to helping you further your career, earning more money, and seeing what you can accomplish in the field.
You care for animals
This is crucial. If you don’t care for animals, then it will be hard to find people who trust you to handle them, even if you have all of the professional training. Most of your co-workers are going to be doing it largely for the well-being of animals since there are better-paying careers you can get into with just as much training. You need your patients and their owners to trust you as best as possible, and that just isn’t possible if you can’t demonstrate a caring demeanor and real concern for the animals you treat. Of course, working as a vet can challenge you, since you’re often going to be there for the lowest part of an animal’s life, not to mention their owners, but you still need to have genuine care.
Whether or not working in a veterinary office is the right thing for you is a personal decision. However, hopefully, the points above make it clear that you should give it some thought rather than rushing into anything. After all, once you’re taking that role, there are going to be innocent animals depending on you.
