The author (front) poses with Raymond Adriel Arroyo, RVT, and Elizabeth Ray, RVT, in a veterinary clinic after one of her two Pomeranians was treated for a corneal ulcer. Photo courtesy Adrienne Kruzer It is no secret veterinarians are not the only professionals working in animal hospitals, but it is unfortunately common for other veterinary team members to be grossly underutilized. While it is widely agreed upon proper team utilization provides many positive outcomes, how team members can and should be utilized are often the reasons why this maximum utilization does not occur. Job descriptions When it comes to credentialed veterinary technicians and veterinary assistants, the first step to proper utilization is to define each of these important team members’ role in the practice. A job description seems common sense, but many hospitals do not know what their state regulations say non-veterinarians are legally allowed to do or provide their employees with specific role explanations that help set expectations for the entire team. If hospital leadership and staff veterinarians do not know what their state regulations say credentialed veterinary technicians or veterinary assistants can do, the descriptions of how these team members function within a hospital are likely to be vague or missing specific skills and tasks. This then encourages a lack of consistently utilizing team members based on assumptions, word of mouth, experiences, and sometimes even false information. The entire team, therefore, needs to be on the same page regarding what each role does and how credentialed veterinary technician and veterinary assistant roles differ. Comfort levels Veterinarians who are not used to working with experienced and fully utilized credentialed veterinary technicians and assistants are sometimes wary of allowing them to perform certain tasks, especially those deemed advanced. This may be a personal issue, with the veterinarian not being comfortable relinquishing control in performing certain tasks or due to trust issues with specific team members. These concerns must be addressed with leadership and the parties involved to determine the next appropriate steps. If a specific team member is inexperienced or has committed previous mistakes, it is important to remember they do not represent the entire team. A role’s utilization should not be restricted based on an individual’s performance. Training team members needs to be prioritized if there is a lack of trust or confidence due to a lack of skills and/or knowledge. However, if the lack of trust is due to character, the employment of these individuals may need to end. If a veterinarian is uncomfortable relinquishing control, the root cause for this feeling must be determined. Most reasons for not allowing team members to perform certain tasks can be corrected through education on the legal scope of practice and addressing trust issues, but a controlling personality or psychological control issues are different kinds of problems. These may require both environmental adjustments in the workplace and personal development by the individual. A hospital’s employee assistance program (EAP) may be a good resource for these individuals if they are not already working with a mental health professional. Training can be offered if a credentialed veterinary technician or veterinary assistant is uncomfortable performing a specific task their job descriptions expect of them. This training can be done internally or through external continuing education opportunities, such as wet labs and conference lectures. If comfort levels and skills are still lacking after proper training, the individual should be assessed to determine if they are actually the right fit for the role. Many hospitals have different levels of team members based on knowledge, skills, and work experience. Confidence and comfort levels must coincide with the level and department the individual is working in. Lastly, clients must be comfortable with the veterinary professional caring for their pet. If a client is used to only speaking with a veterinarian about their pet’s health or has only ever seen a veterinarian clip nails, draw blood, place a catheter, give an injection, or do another procedure that non-veterinarians should be doing, they may be resistant and have trust issues. Veterinarians must help calm their clients’ concerns by reassuring them of the other team members’ education, credentials, or experience. Using proper professional titles, having client brochures that explain the different team member roles in your hospital, sharing with the client how the proper delegation of these tasks allows the hospital to offer a higher level of veterinary care, and showing the client that they trust these other individuals to perform these tasks can aid in achieving this comfort level. Workflow What works for one hospital may not work for another, so workflows should be individualized to a certain degree. A veterinarian looking to fully utilize their team members should focus on prognosing, diagnosing, prescribing, performing surgery and other specific tasks restricted to veterinarians in their state practice act. If, after reviewing the job descriptions and state regulations, a leader discovers the veterinarians in their hospital are performing a variety of tasks that front desk team members, credentialed veterinary technicians, or assistants can be utilized to do, adjusting the workflow is a logical first step to relieving veterinarians of these things and instead further utilize other team members. Keeping job descriptions in mind when developing a hospital workflow will naturally result in more effective utilization of team members. In hospitals where the veterinarian is used to “doing it all,” workflow changes are often needed to enable other team members to perform certain tasks. Leaders can then dig deeper into specific technical skills that may not have historically been performed by non-veterinarians in their practice to expand their team’s utilization even further. An arrow is removed from a goose thanks to a team effort by Dr. Klapko, and veterinary assistants Meg Ferguson and Sammy Morrison. Photo courtesy Melissa Lawrence, Veterinary Emergency Group Veterinarian or non-veterinarian? Depending on the previous workflow, comfort levels, job descriptions, and preferences of the veterinarians in a practice, the specific technical skills a credentialed veterinary technician or veterinary assistant has been performing in a practice may vary. Referencing the state practice act and regulations for specific skills allowed or restricted may help aim for maximum utilization of non-veterinarian team members as individual skills are reviewed. In addition to the practice act, teams may also find it helpful to go through the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Committee on Veterinary Technician Education and Activities (AVMA CVTEA) Veterinary Technology Student Essential and Recommended Skills List1 while cross-checking which skills they are currently performing or can take off the plate of a veterinarian. If veterinarians in a practice are not familiar with what technical skills all graduates of these programs have learned, they may be limiting what their credentialed veterinary technicians can perform, simply because they are unaware what these individuals have been trained to do.1 The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) released its Technician Utilization Guidelines in October of 2023, another useful resource for leaders. These guidelines offer detailed guidance for how a hospital can maximize technician utilization and include an assessment tool to help identify some specific skills that perhaps should be delegated to non-veterinarians.2 To put all this information into practice, each time a veterinarian is about to do something that isn’t prescribing, diagnosing, prognosing, or performing surgery, they should ask themselves if what they are about to do can legally and safely only be done by a veterinarian. Suppose the task is not restricted to veterinarians, they should delegate that task to another qualified team member and move on to the next thing that only a veterinarian can perform. Increased practice income According to a 2009 AVMA report, a credentialed veterinary technician can increase a veterinarian’s gross income by $93,311.3 When inflation is considered, this was equivalent to $139,476.18 at the end of 2024. Another study published by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) in 2020 noted an increase in gross annual revenue per veterinarian of $79,118 CAD ($57,683 USD), or about $101,243.43 CAD ($70,570.12 USD) at the end of 2024 with inflation.4 This same study also noted that hospitals that paid their credentialed veterinary technicians more than $21 CAD per hour earned $122,342 CAD more in gross revenue per veterinarian than hospitals that paid their credentialed veterinary technicians $15 CAD an hour. This may mean these higher-earning credentialed veterinary technicians are more skilled and increase hospital revenue and, therefore, earn more than their lower-paid, less-skilled colleagues. Alternatively, it could mean these individuals with higher wages are not necessarily more skilled but are simply working harder and more efficiently because they feel valued by their employer, are fully utilized, and are still increasing revenue for a practice. Either way, the statistics are positive and further promote multiple reasons to fully utilize credentialed veterinary technicians, improve their skills, and compensate fairly. If hospital leadership is only worried about profits, fully utilizing non-veterinarian team members should be the top priority. Allie Burns, LVT, assists Jennifer Klapko, DVM, during a surgical procedure. Photo courtesy Melissa Lawrence, Veterinary Emergency Group Improved efficiency The popular quote, “Teamwork makes the dream work6,” applies to your practice; if a team is operating at its full potential in an organized fashion, efficiency will follow. An established definition of the word “efficient” is “productive of desired effects, especially: capable of producing desired results with little or no waste (as of time or materials).”7 Maximum efficiencies may take a little time to achieve as teams adjust to new workflows, establish positive relationships with each other, and make alterations in job duties, but once everything “clicks,” doctors can spend more time seeing appointments, performing surgeries, and doing other doctor specific things while veterinary technicians, assistants, and the rest of the team does everything else. This eliminates the potential waste of time (and money) that doctors may spend performing tasks that other team members should instead perform. If hospital leadership is concerned with how many patients their veterinarians are able to treat, improving efficiency by fully utilizing non-veterinarian team members is likely to help. Employee satisfaction and retention Compensation is a major factor in employee satisfaction and retention, but so is utilization. Several studies have noted that credentialed veterinary technicians who are fully utilized are more satisfied and stay in their careers.8,9 If appropriately trained team members are unable to fully utilize their skills, dissatisfaction and departure are likely to occur. Credentialed veterinary technicians do not pursue and achieve credentialing to be unable to utilize their knowledge and skills. Having dissatisfied employees results in unpleasant work environments, low employee morale, and increased turnover. On the other hand, satisfied employees contribute to creating a desirable workplace environment which can help attract candidates to meet hiring needs and reduce turnover. In addition to non-veterinarian team members, veterinarians are more likely to be more satisfied if team members are fully utilized. Shared workloads and a team-based approach to patient care makes for happier employees. Elevated patient care As fully utilized veterinary team members grow their skills, the level of patient care a hospital can provide improves. Enhanced patient care includes improved client satisfaction, better medical outcomes, fewer mistakes, greater patient comfort and well-being, and even increased access to animal health services since utilized team members enable veterinarians to see more patients. Teamwork that comes with proper utilization of non-veterinarian team members enables better communication, trust, efficiency, and shared workloads that aid in elevating patient care in many ways. Other benefits of fully utilizing non-veterinarian team members exist, and more are sure to surface as they become the norm in all veterinary hospitals. The temporary discomfort that may exist when making positive changes in how a team is utilized will be quickly overshadowed by the rewards produced by these growing pains. Adrienne Kruzer, BBA, RVT, LVT, is a credentialed veterinary technician in Ohio, NC, and South Carolina. Kruzer writes for various publications, lectures at veterinary conferences and colleges across the U.S., and works for Veterinary Emergency Group as the veterinary nursing program manager. Kruzer also volunteers her time as a district representative and board member for the South Carolina Association of Veterinary Technicians and actively represents her profession on social media. References CVTEA Accreditation Policies and Procedures. American Veterinary Medical Association. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2025, from https://www.avma.org/education/center-for-veterinary-accreditation/committee-veterinary-technician-education-activities/cvtea-accreditation-policies-and-procedures-appendix-g American Animal Hospital Association. 2023 AAHA Technician Utilization Guidelines. American Animal Hospital Association. 2023. Available at https://www.aaha.org/globalassets/02-guidelines/2023-aaha-technician-utilization-guidelines/resources/2023-aaha-technician-utilization-guidelines-new.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2023. AVMA. AVMA report on veterinary practice business measures. 2009 ed. Schaumburg, Ill: AVMA, 2009. Shock, D. A., Roche, S. M., Genore, R., & Renaud, D. L. (2020). The economic impact that registered veterinary technicians have on Ontario veterinary practices. The Canadian veterinary journal = La revue veterinaire canadienne, 61(5), 505–511. NAVTA. NAVTA 2016: Demographic Survey Results. NAVTA Journal. 2016;August/September:26-33. Learn and Grow: How teamwork makes the dream work | It’s Your Yale. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2025, from https://your.yale.edu/learn-and-grow-how-teamwork-makes-dream-work Definition of efficient. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2025, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/efficient Corrected 2022 Demog Survey 2-13-23.pdf. (2022). !Corrected 2022 Demog Survey 2-13-23.pdf. Google Docs. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11pmYzIouybfL55YsduRbaZ1TtMD1i2DB/ Kogan, L. R., Wallace, J. E., Schoenfeld-Tacher, R., Hellyer, P. W., & Richards, M. (2020). Veterinary Technicians and Occupational Burnout. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 7(7). https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.00328
