Boosting visibility of the VN role: 3 effective methods to showcase your skills

Are you an ‘out the back’ unicorn?

Do you magically ensure the smooth running of the practice whilst feeling like you’re out of sight for the most part?

Do you want to increase the visibility of your vital role?

If so, you’re in the right place.

Picture this: a profession where the importance of veterinary nurses is widely recognised. Where our expertise is celebrated. And where our impact on patient care is truly acknowledged.

This starts with every VN taking proactive steps to raise awareness, showcase our skills, and promote our contributions to animal welfare.

Today, for Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month, I’m sharing three methods you can use to showcase your skills, ensuring that our vital role as VNs receives the recognition it deserves.

Communication, Education and Demonstrations

Not everyone wants to be a ‘front of house’ nurse, and I completely get that. But the first way to help boost the visibility of our role to clients is to get out there and speak to them!

Our medical patients are fantastic examples of how long-term nursing support can make a huge difference to both our patients and clients, whilst also highlighting our skills.

Communication

We are often the people who will ‘relax’ our clients - we’re there to alleviate their concerns, work with them to care for their pets, explain things in a more relatable way, and answer any queries they may feel uncomfortable asking the vet.

So use this to your advantage - actively listening to client concerns, and offering tailored guidance in a compassionate way.

For example: has the vet just prescribed their respiratory cat a course of doxycycline tablets, and they’re worrying they won’t be able to administer them because they really struggle with tabletting?

Are they worried about mentioning that to the vet, as it makes them look like they can’t care for their pet? If so, that’s going to negatively impact the cat’s disease process - whilst causing our client stress.

So we can use this information to advocate for our client and patient, working with the vet to find a solution that means the patient is medicated, and the client’s concerns are resolved.

For example, we can give tips on getting those tablets in a stress-free way, dispense ‘pill putty’ for food-motivated cats, or look at whether a reformulation is possible (in this case, specials manufacturers actually make a meat-flavoured paste version, but lots of liquid versions of current tablets are also available!)

Whilst this seems like a very minor thing, it will make an enormous difference to your patient and client - and our clients will build trust and confidence in our skills.

Demonstration

One way we can significantly increase our visibility is by providing hands-on demonstrations.

Is your GI disease patient going home with an O tube in place? If so, be the person who chats the client through the feeding tube, shows them how to feed through it, how to clean it and bandage it, and what to do if there is a complication with it.

Is your CKD cat being prescribed subcutaneous fluids? If so, demonstrate how it’s done, and chat them through why we do it, and the difference it will make for a patient with chronic kidney disease. You can also book them back in for an appointment with you where they administer the next dose of S/C fluids if they’d like. That way, you’re on hand to provide support and guidance whilst they do this for the first time.

Or is your DKA patient going home? Do your clients need to use insulin for the first time ever, and are they worrying about it? If so, be the person who is there to support and coach them through it - you’ll dispel many of the fears about having a diabetic pet, and they will really thank you for it. You can chat them through insulin storage and handling, injecting, nutrition, monitoring, exercise and environmental considerations and much, much more!

These practical demonstrations really allow us to demonstrate our technical skills, whilst also showing them just how much we know about different diseases and at-home nursing procedures.

Education

To go alongside these, creating reference materials is often an important part of our role when caring for medical patients. We can use our ability to present information in a relatable way to hammer home everything we’ve discussed - giving our clients information to refer back to and use at home.

This could include an explanation of common medical conditions and actionable tips for nursing the patients at home, such as what to monitor for, and how to adapt their environment and diet to meet the needs of their disease.

It could also include monitoring sheets that clients can use to log progress and track symptoms at home, providing us with vital information on their pet’s disease.

Delegation

In order for our skills to be recognised, we have to have the opportunity to demonstrate them. This means that our wider veterinary team need to know what we can do, and give us the opportunity to do it.

Does a patient in the hospital need a procedure you can perform? If so, don’t be afraid to ask if you can do it!

Have you noticed a patient on the diary booked in for something you can do? Or perhaps they’re seeing the vet for an assessment, but would benefit from nurse input, too? Could you ask your vet to suggest they speak to you straight after their appointment, or book a time for a clinic or phone consult with an RVN?

Do your reception team know which skills can be performed by nurses, so that when making appointments, they make them with the correct people?

And if there’s something you want to start doing as a team - for example, one of my academy members, Cat, wanted to start up diabetic nurse appointments recently - can you get together and make a proposal to your vet team/practice manager?

Awareness

As well as our physical visibility, there are other important ways we can increase the client's awareness of our role and skills. These are by charging for our skills appropriately, and by making sure our clients know who we are.

Charging for our time as VNs

A veterinary nurse is a key member of the patient’s care, and their time should be chargeable just as the vet’s time is. By not invoicing for our services, we’re devaluing ourselves - so if you’re charging for a skill performed by a nurse, make sure it says ‘nurse’ on the invoice!

And if there’s a procedure that can be done by either a vet or a nurse - such as taking a blood sample, or an appointment for microchipping or nail clipping, for example - don’t charge less for the nurse to do it!

Make sure your clients can see you

Even if you’re not in a client-facing role, there are plenty of ways for your clients to know you’re helping them and their pets. If you’re not already, make sure that your practice has every VN on their website - with their name, qualifications, photo and special interests within the profession. 

Make sure this information is also somewhere they can see it - such as in the waiting room or in the consulting rooms.

This way, they’ll know exactly who is looking after their pet, and what their skills and special interests are - making sure we’re not those faceless beings who exist solely in the prep room, with our roles a closely-guarded secret!

So there you have it - 3 ways to boost visibility and make sure your clients know exactly how instrumental nurses are in their pet’s care. Remember, this comes from education, communication and awareness - and, alongside those things, making sure our vets delegate tasks to us appropriately. Our practices also need to ensure our time is charged for, and that clients can clearly see that their pet’s procedure includes them paying for a skilled, experienced, registered/enrolled student nurse advocating for them!

What do you do to boost the visibility of your nurses in practice? DM me on Instagram and let me know!