Any Equine Vet. Nurses on here?

[DawnF]

I am planning to quit my job and take the leap of faith to work towards becoming an EVN.
Is anyone able to tell me the reality of the job? What is your average day like (if there is such a thing!).
As I am 27 and re-trading so to speak (I am currently an engineer) do you think I would receive antagonism because of this?
Any words of wisdom you'd like to offer?
I am going on a work experience couple of weeks to get an insight and I appreciate that it will be long hours, hard work and nowhere near the pay I get now (supportive bloke - bless him) but it is something I've always wanted to do and would appreciate any feed back you may have to offer.

Oh I plan to do the 2 year day release NVQ after a year as an axillary (sp) as my local training practice requires this.

Thanks xxx.

 

[amandathepanda]

I'm 29 and worked as an EVN at an Equine Hospital on my year out from Hartpury. I was involved in surgery, intensive care, radiography, lameness work ups, wound management amongst many other tasks. I used to work up to 90 hours a week when you took in to account night duties - which you rarely get time off the next day to catch up with sleep! The pay was naff although it has probably improved a bit since I was doing it. Having said that, it is a very interesting and rewarding career and part of me does miss it as there is no better way of learning about the equine body and it's functions and it was certainly much more fun than my office job!

When you apply for jobs, make sure you get time off to catch up with sleep when you have been working night duties. This was my biggest bugbearer as it wasn't uncommon for me to start work 8.30am on a Friday and not get any sleep until 8.30pm on the Monday - I found this detrimental to my health! Also, make sure there is a clear policy in place for overtime hours as I made the mistake of not finding this out first to my cost.

I loved working as an EVN but I did find i got to the point that I had so little time off and was so tired that I stopped enjoying my own horses - which to me defeated the whole point of working with horses. If you can cope with the bad aspects of EVN then it is a fantastic, enjoyable career in which you will never get bored!

 

[DawnF]

Thanks for the great advice! It is very much appreciated!

Does anyone else have anything to add?

Dawn

 

[Happy Horse]

I worked as an EVN from 1997-2001 at a huge equine hospital. When I joined they were much more interested in equine experience than nursing experience as they could train the nursing on the job but you need to be 100% confident around horses. Now with the Equine Nursing qualification I would imagine getting a job could be harder and dependent on having the qualification as it has been around for a while now.

I was purely a clinic and theatre nurse so no mucking out. Our duties were (most interesting downwards!) xraying, assisting in theatre both as scrubbed and circulating nurse, assisting with nerve blocking, scanning, scoping and all other clinical procedures, stocking clinincs, sterilising kit, assisting with bone and MRI scans.

The good points are that no two days were the same, there are always emergencies turning up which are a challenge, there is plenty of job satisfaction when you see a horse recover from surgery. You learn so much about horses than you can ever think you would need to know! It made me a much more competent and confident horse owner (and I thought I knew loads before I started!)

Less good points are that you don't get close to any of the horses as you are indoors all the time (May be different in smaller practices) There is a lot of repetition for examples cleaning and sterilising surgical kits and there are NO shortcuts, some routine surgeries can become boring particularly if you have three or four the same in a day! You are at risk of being stomped on, fallen on, kicked - you have to be constantly aware of safety more so than around your own horses.

The bad bits - already mentioned by Panda. Long hours (my standard hours were 8.30-5.30 with 1hour for lunch if we were lucky. One night in four and one weekend in four on call) Obviously if there is work to do you have to stay until it is done. When you are on call you may not see your house for any length of time until someone takes over - it's not fun operating on a colic at 10pm getting home at 3am, getting into bed at 3.15am and being called into work again at 4am for another colic!

However we did get paid overtime plus a call out fee and if we were on call one night, the next day we could get in at 9.30am (but we'd have to then work till 7pm)

Basic salary was around £10k when I started and when I left it was around £12k (you are not going to get rich!) and we would get a quarterly profit related bonus.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

[DawnF]

Thanks for the advice!! By the sounds of things the hours are less than what I'm doing now! Anyone else have an opinion?