Job Description

Emergency A

nimal Care Attendant

Title

Emergency Animal Care Assistant

Reports to

Lead Emergency Animal Care Assistant

Prerequisites

High school diploma
Able to stand for long periods of time (10 hours)
Able to lift 50lbs (22kg)
Compassion and patience
A strong desire to pursue an animal related post-secondary program
Strong patient restraint skills
Understanding of veterinary hospital flow
Strong communication skills
Basic understanding of medical terminology
Ability to be on time and prepared to work at the beginning of your scheduled shift
Ability to communicate with clients to provide general patient updates (both verbally and electronically), collect and process invoices, and arrange visits, discharges, etc.
Manage, direct and sort incoming calls and messages to the appropriate specialty/department

Summary

To provide gold standard nursing and comfort care to our patients with clear and effective client communication. This will be a very important accessory role to our medical team and will include assisting them with their treatments and updating owners.
This role will work under the direction of the RVT in charge of the patient's medical care. The primary focus will be on comfort care for our Level 1 and 2 patients.
There is a heavy emphasis on quality of care with this role. This position schedule is shift work (10hr shifts), working evening, weekends, and holidays will be required based on rotation.

Essential Job Functions

Knowledge of biosecurity Providing a variety of oral nutrition options and hand feeding if necessary. Providing environmental enrichment (kongs, toys, treats, ipads, music, feliway etc) Ensuring Hospital "suites" are always clean and comfortable Monitoring and encouraging natural bathroom breaks Grooming and making sure their coats are comfortable and clean Facilitating safe, organized family visits Clean Kennels and ready them for new patients Notifying the medical team of any concerns with attitude, stress, changes to appetite etc Documenting in detail dietary intake, urination, defecation, and other fluid losses. Providing mentorship and support to the Kennel staff team Aftercare of deceased patients to be double checked by RVT Supporting and cross training in reception Knowledge and use of messaging and invoicing functions

Background for development and importance of this role

The need for this accessory role has risen due to the shortage of veterinary professionals. When examining the day-to-day work of registered veterinary professionals, we need to highlight was is in their scope of practice and place an emphasis of time on those activities for them. When the hospital is busy, their medical expertise is prioritized, and the non-medical activities become less of a focus.
Boreal Veterinary Centre feels that those "non-medical" activities are often under emphasized. Things like nutritional intake are often part of what confirm end of life decisions for clients. Sometimes this is due to increased costs related to prolonged hospital stays, or what the client perceives as quality of life.