For 15 years, veterinary medicine has been part of my life, yet the career I have now looks nothing like I could have ever imagined. Starting out, I didn’t even know the role “veterinary nurse” existed, let alone that it was registered.
A shy, barely audible school student tentatively booked some work experience at a vets in south Wales – two long bus journeys and a five-mile walk each way, each day, to stand quietly in a corner and see the veterinary world come to life.
My careers advisor had said “people like us don’t do things like that” and, quite frankly, I am stubborn, and Abbey Veteterinary Centres in Abergavenny opened its doors to me. They welcomed me in and RVN Hannah Welsman very patiently, along with her team, opened my mind and eyes as to what RVNs could do.
Years later, having ricocheted around training facilities, I proudly donned my greens and became an RVN.
That’s the story, right? Beginning, middle and end? That’s the story we tell when someone asks how we built our careers, yet careers aren’t linear – not parcelled into effortlessly wrapped packages tied in a bow, all identical to the ones beside it.
Truth be told, I quit in my second year. I walked away from training and vet medicine. We don’t talk about that, though – it’s not so pretty – but it’s important that we do. You see, as a former SVN, I had already acquired some skills and understanding of the professions. In time, after a break, I wanted to return. Yet, how do we walk back into a career we have already left?
Consider SVN registration like a provisional licence. Once applied for and a vehicle sought, a world of opportunity opens up for you to travel through your training, with someone safely sat in the passenger seat mentoring and sharing knowledge, while helpfully watching out for hazards and blind spots that experience has yet to teach you to recognise quickly. That comes with time and practice.
My “blind spots” were how hard training would be, how challenging I would find communication and how speed bumps would feel like mountains to climb.
Having taken my break from nurse training, I dusted off my provisional licence, stuck a pin in a map and started over. The pin wasn’t metaphorical. It’s not a great play on words, nor an embellishment of the truth – it’s exactly what happened, and no less than a week later, I landed in Surrey with an extremely large rescue dog and a sense of adventure. In how many professions would that even be possible as a student? Yet it was and I was welcomed as an auxiliary with open arms.
In the following weeks, I fell in love with medicine all over again. I used my skills and began to thrive. Weeks later, reinstated as a student; months later, an RVN; a year later, a head RVN.
And just like that, the world opened up. My VN passport was firmly in my hand and I was ready to take advantage.
Where can your VN passport take you?
When I was given the opportunity to write this article, I reflected on all the ways my VN passport had helped me and all the wonderful adventures I’ve been fortunate to take – the opportunities to speak publicly, lecture, mentor, teach, write, work clinically, learn and travel the world – and I’ve loved it.
Yet most of all, I like hearing about the VN passports of my fellow nurses – nurses who have taken their passports and created some truly special snapshots of where this profession can take people. The following are examples.
Craig Tessyman
Craig is a talented VN who has spent decades in clinical practice chiselling out his niche and passion for exotics.
If you’ve not seen Craig speak on the lecture circuit, it’s a must. Whether you are interested in exotics, you’ll leave a lecture with a new perspective and the reassurance we can all learn something – that learning something is far better than nothing and improvements in husbandry and welfare need not be groundbreaking, but do change the world for many non-traditional pets.
Craig has challenged the perspective of what a VN looks like and sharing space with him has been one of my highlights of sitting on BVNA council. Craig’s passport is stamped with destinations I could never contemplate, yet we share the same start point.
Chloe Finn
Chloe is an RVN who would likely chuckle at opening VN Times to see her name among these passports. Yet her passport has inspired me.
Chloe is a charity VN. Her passion for education has encouraged research and conversation around shelter medicine and its impact – discussion around neutering interventions and its consequences, and chain reactions lowering risks of accidents, for male cats particularly. Shelter medicine is an absolute art form and one I had overlooked for so much of my career, yet It has now taught me just as much as working in referral and out-of-hours.
Chloe has opened the minds of many nurses as to what charity medicine can achieve, and how innovation and problem solving can steer welfare improvements, while maintaining the human-animal bond.
Her VN passport has opened doors to leadership and mentoring the next generation of charity nurses in a time where they will be needed more than ever.
Francesca (Frankie) Lees
Frankie is an RVN who has seen gaps in communication and used her VN passport for good.
While she explored a passion for behaviour and dog training in general practice, she’s gone on to qualify as a dog trainer and open a puppy school in Plymouth. This not only helps strengthen the human-animal bond, but, in turn, sets dogs up for success in social situations. Her knowledge of clinical practice, coupled with her training expertise, is helping dogs and their handlers become confident.
Not content with educating adults, Frankie used her passport for even more. She has also authored a brilliant book for children called Don’t Hug Dug! – aiming to educate children and their parents about dog body language to help make things safer and more comfortable for people and dogs alike.
Frankie’s passport has had a remarkable impact on animal welfare.
Stacey Vickery
Stacey and I met at college. She was the person in the room who quietly and calmly plugged her way through training, while always offering help to everyone else. She brought a sense of calm when, in truth, I was really struggling with training.
Since graduating, Stacey fully embraced her niche and passion for avian medicine, working primarily in exotic referrals, using her passport to lecture and share knowledge, just as she had all those years ago in our classroom.
Even now, if we bump into each other at a conference, I feel my jaw unclench, my shoulders drop and a smile reach across my face.
Stacey has not only used her passport clinically, but has mentored so many people throughout her time as an RVN and our profession is all the richer for it.
Belinda Stoner
Belinda is an RVN whose name will be known to hundreds of nurses up and down the country. Her contribution to veterinary nursing is really quite profound, yet the first time I met Belinda she was dressed as a minion. To this day, her lesson was my most memorable in college (I went to three) and taught me a lot about perspective.
Belinda worked in practice as a GP RVN before using her VN passport to help teach the next generation of vet nurses at MYF Training in Aldershot. Her wealth of knowledge, coupled with her infectious laugh and personable nature, meant students felt empowered and enthused in her company.
Training can be exceptionally hard, but Belinda got me over the finish line. The “minion” lesson was one in which Belinda pretended to know absolutely nothing about veterinary medicine to get people to direct on how to set up a drip in a clear step by step way. This has stuck with me and is likely why I loathe the term compliance. Was the client non-compliant, or did we not explain clearly and set the case up for success and management?
Belinda is now using her passport as a practice manager after 16 years in education. She is formidable, and the profession and her teams are all the richer for her.
Belinda – if by some miracle this should be sat on a coffee table in a break room for you to see – thank you for believing in me when I had been just about ready to throw in the towel.
Katherine Howe
I have worked the “vampire shift” for a long time now (day teams, I salute you) and OOH is where my vet nurse heart is happiest. That being said, nights, coupled with being a locum, can be quite lonely.
Due to the nature of night shifts, teams are often skeleton crews, with many nurses just working with one vet. This often results in close, yet segregated teams. While I meet many day teams for fleeting conversations at handovers, I rarely get to meet other night nurses working in general practice. Despite this, there’s an immense sense of camaraderie.
Katherine has been a senior emergency and critical care nurse for many years, and has a passion (and talent) for mentoring. She has nurtured talent, lectured, shaped protocols, and expertly ran one of the busiest OOH clinics in Surrey and, despite us never having actually met in person, has become a staple sound board.
You see, I worked as a locum at the clinic where Katherine was a head nurse and I arrived to a brilliantly organised clinic, with all eventualities considered and prepared for. At a time in my life where my mental health wasn’t particularly shiny, I worked as part of a skeleton team, yet never felt alone.
Katherine’s VN passport has now taken her to Scotland for a new challenge and I can’t wait, at some point, to meet in person with a brew to discuss the next destination.
Samantha Thompson
This VN passport is stamped. Sam has worked her way through a variety of roles in clinical practice and then into leadership. The way she speaks about leadership inspired me to learn more about it. What does good leadership look like and how can we champion it further?
Sam has helped shape and create induction policies and programmes to support nurses at the beginning of their careers to form firm foundations. She has gone on to pivot with her love of audits, policy and troubleshooting to help support practices further with Practice Standards Scheme assessments, alongside becoming a RECOVER (veterinary CPR initiative) instructor.
More than anything, Sam has a golden thread of mentoring and support, cheering along her peers and helping others strive for growth in a multitude of settings.
Each of these incredible nurses has touched my career in one way or another, despite not meeting half of them in person – our flight paths often narrowly missing each other, but picking up souvenirs as we go. We have different roles, career goals, values and so much more, yet we all share the title “veterinary nurse”.
It has opened up a world of opportunity, and one in which we celebrate and champion each other – destinations we never imagined possible, and so much yet to be explored and conquered.
Younger me would never have imagined in my wildest dreams how well travelled my career would be, and I’m so proud to share a profession with so many people striving to drive things forward.
In recent years, career opportunities for veterinary nurses have exploded, with more clinical and non-clinical roles appreciating how many transferable skills nurses have and, more importantly, how they can be used more readily.
When a role in a VN’s niche doesn’t quite exist yet, we are carving them out and creating them. Courtney Scales, Laura Jones and Jack Pye need no introduction, having made anaesthesia, internal medicine, and imaging far more accessible for nurses to jump into and thrive. They’ve shown how peer-to-peer mentoring can be truly transformative – each packing out lecture halls to standing room only; nurse voices, loud, proud and present for all to hear.
These nurses, among many I meet along the way, are leaving breadcrumbs for future nurses to follow and explore to become well-trodden paths – paths to varied and fulfilling careers, with career passports as unique as the people behind them.
How to strengthen your VN passport
Whether you are a natural academic, practical learner, clinical, non-clinical or anything in between, options are available for you.
Are you interested in leadership and management? Many certificates are out there created and built for the profession, or the BVNA has also done a lot of work on leadership, and its junior vice-president, Lyndsay Hughes, is a clinical director of a busy hospital and passionate about this subject area. Watch this space…
If you’re thinking you would like to explore anaesthesia, several options are available at different price points.
Burtons has been on the road with Courtney, delivering CPD evenings and practical workshops on ventilation (bit.ly/43Ze3v4).
Another excellent stepping stone is the BVNA anaesthesia learning pathway (bit.ly/3AazQιP). Stepping up from that, you could consider investing in a certificate in anaesthesia.
Are you on the go a lot, but love a podcast? They count as CPD and, again, many veterinary podcasts are available and free.
Fancy dipping your toe into referral or pulling back the curtain on behaviour? Did you know “seeing practice” also counts as CPD? For me, seeing things in the real world gives me a tangible feel for if it is for me and inspires me to learn more.
Consider booking a day for some peer-to-peer mentoring and maybe your career will take a pivot, or you’ll see the power of mentoring in real time. It’s a great opportunity to delve into a niche with someone who has already done some further study in an accessible way.
Top tips for using a VN passport
Top tips for getting the most out of your VN passport include:
- Have a clear goal of “when”. Many of the nurses I speak to say: “When I get to X, I’ll try Y.” My question is always: “When will that be?” Many of us put off things we want to try for fear of failing, but that frequently leads to never taking the leap: “If not now, when?”
- Don’t be afraid to say no. While opportunities are plentiful, sometimes we may feel the need to feel grateful, even if something clearly isn’t for us. While a free trip to Mauritius would be dreamy, I can’t swim and I’m not a fan of the beach, so I’d likely not appreciate, nor enjoy it as much as something else or someone else would. Say no to things that don’t serve you, even if they do look dreamy.
- Plans change, and that’s okay. Sometimes, the journey we planned isn’t the one we take. I trained in orthopaedics and neurology. I adored it – it’s all I imagined my career to be – yet, I’ve not touched a cruciate operation in years. I certainly didn’t think I’d end up taking a year’s sabbatical to work for the RCVS in a mental health remit. Plans change and so do people – go with it. With the aforementioned Laura, for example, her plan was to work in anaesthesia and surgery. Now she teaches, runs an academy and creates content on her incredible platform @vetinternalmedicinenursing as a medicine nurse. That pivot has not only built a thriving career, but has had a positive impact on staff and animal welfare alike.
- Value and practise negotiation. Sometimes, the niche we want to explore isn’t yet there. A space may not be in practice for it; it may not exist; you my have spotted a gap long before it’s needed. You may need investment in the form of time, or funding to be able to facilitate further growth or role development. Get comfortable negotiating – it isn’t a dirty word, it’s a much-needed form of communication to enable all parties to make informed and mutually beneficial decisions.
- Time is a valuable commodity – trade it mindfully. Our time is valuable. As written on the wall of a diner in the film A Cinderella Story, “Don’t let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game”. Don’t waste time doing things that make you unhappy. So you started a new job, but hate it – that’s okay; plenty more exist. It’s not worth sticking at it and being unhappy when stacks of other opportunities are out there. If you want to train further or do a certificate, but it will take three years, that’s okay. If you put it off for a year, it will still take three years, but you will have wasted a year mulling it over. If you want to work abroad, grab the opportunity with both hands. If you don’t enjoy it, you gave it a go and can tick it off the to-do list and move on the next adventure. Time is valuable, so spend it wisely.
My career passport looks nothing like I could ever have imagined and yet I’m so proud of the stamps I’ve collected along the way. Some were short adventures; some comfortable long stays. Several occasions arose in which I thought I was lost and stumbled on some truly amazing experiences, but all have been made possible with my trusty VN passport, and that’s pretty awesome.
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