There are many procedures and tests that are run in a veterinary clinic, even in the regular small animal general practice setting. As a veterinary Nurse, Your primary responsibility is to ensure that the veterinarian you are assisting has all of the materials they need to perform their tasks, that the animal in question is being appropriately restrained, and to follow through and ensure the test results as determined by the veterinarian are correctly recorded into the patient's medical record. In this chapter, we will identify several common procedures that you might see in a small animal general practice, since you are not the doctor, under no circumstances are you to perform any of these tests yourself. As stated before, it is your main focus to ensure proper restraint of the pet that the doctor has the materials they need, and that the results are properly recorded. In the medical record tonometry tonometry is a procedure the doctor performs to determine the intraocular pressure or the fluid pressure inside the eye.

There are several tools used to determine this, the most common being a tono pin. Testing the eye pressure of a patient is important and diagnosing glaucoma, and other eye diseases. When the veterinarian needs to check a patient's eye pressure, the Assistant needs to gather the directed materials, usually consisting of the tonal pin drops to numb the pets eye beforehand, and possibly some gauze. It is also important to properly restrain the pet so they are completely immobile during the process. Since the toe no pin directly touches the eye, observe your doctor or other experienced nurses and how they restrain various sized animals for this procedure, as the head must be held completely, still Without any pressure applied to the skull, for risk of creating unnecessary pressure behind the eye and altering the results, the veterinarian will usually take three readings of each eye and average the three results per eye for the final value.

Be certain that the values as well as the final value is properly recorded in the medical record. There are several other tests that often go hand in hand with tonometry including the shimmers tear test, and including the Schirmer tear test and the floor seen I stain. The tear test determines whether the eye produces enough tears to keep it moist. This test is used when a pet experiences very dry eyes or excessive watering of the eyes. The eye stain determines if there is any erosion to the surface of the eye floor seen as an orange stain that is applied to the cornea to reveal corneas. lesions.

Once the stain is applied to the eye, the excess is rinsed off, and the remainder turns fluorescent green. The stain outlines any alteration of the eye and allows the vet to assess the size and type of ulcer moving down, our patient will talk about ear cytology. If you've ever noticed a dog shaking its head excessively, or a lot of thick brown or black sticky material in their ears. That dog could have an ear infection. That icky brown stuff is called exudate. And the vet will be testing that stuff to see what kind of bacteria is causing the ear infections.

Ear Infections usually begin when moisture is trapped inside the ear canal, usually after swimming or a bath. Or if there is an overabundance of earwax, the vet will use a sterile swab to collect a sample of the exudate and smear it on a glass slide. They will Then he picks the slide, dip it and several colorful dyes and look at it under a microscope. There'll be looking for several things, mostly the overgrowth of yeast, caught you bacteria, Rod shaped bacteria, or the combination of all three. If there is a large amount of thick, chunky exudate. They may also pull a separate sample to see if there are ear mites present that need to be treated.

As a veterinary assistant. It is important to be aware of how painful an ear infection can be to the patient you are handling. A normally docile pet could become fractious out of pain. Not only are you in the doctor in close proximity of the pets head and at risk of being bitten. But if the pet jerks away suddenly while the doctor is collecting a sample, the risk of puncturing the eardrum becomes a real possibility. Also, remember that once the ears are properly flushed, and cleaned, or medicine has been administered directly into the Now, an ear cytology becomes a moot practice due to the site being compromised.

It would also be a good practice to watch a doctor or established nurse properly flush a pets ears. Many owners can do this at home, but may want a demonstration presented to them to ensure effectiveness. If during the physical exam, the veterinarian notices an abnormal growth or lump on the patient, they may want to perform an aspirin cytology of the growth. Essentially, the doctor will use a sterile needle to puncture the growth and collect a sample of cells, which will be appropriately stained and examined under a microscope. Examining these cells will help the doctor determine what the growth may be anything from a lipoma. A big lump of fatty tissue, or a pus filled boil to a cancerous mass.

Again, the veterinary assistants major job here is to securely restrained The patient for the veterinarian to perform the aspect of the growth. Keep in mind, these growth could be anywhere on the body. So sometimes improvised holding techniques may have to be used protip if you can help it don't look at the growth as a doctor pokes it with a needle. The last thing you want is to have pus core to in the eye skin tests that are often run in house would be the deep skin scrape as well as skin surface cytology, where the pet has a dermatological issue that the doctor needs to identify. The deep skin scrape is used to diagnose skin mites such as mange, whereas the skin surface cytology would be used to identify bacteria and inflammatory cells. A deep skin scrape can cause far more agitation in the patient than a skin surface cytology, so be prepared to hold on tight if necessary.

While these are just a few of the die Nasik tools common in a small animal general practice, there are many more available, some of which are not run in house. Your doctor may require blood, urine or feces samples to be obtained from patients to send to laboratories outside of your hospital to test for a plethora of other diseases. Some of these tests include urine analysis for crystals stones, or to check glucose levels by rock scene T for levels to check the thyroid and cortisol levels.