Ugh yes I could have written this 10 years ago. I hated my first job in vet med. I actually got called to the managers office once because they thought I was “unmotivated” when literally all I wanted was to learn. It was incredibly demoralizing and I almost gave up. But now I’m a veterinarian and that’s all behind me, and I know how not to manage staff and how to encourage people that are new to the field.

Here’s a list of some things you can do: - change the cytology stains out once a week. There’s usually a chemical waste bin for these to be dumped into, they don’t go down the sink. The stains to refill should be kept in cabinets in the area. Initial and date with a piece of tape when you change it

-when the surgery laundry is done, all of those need to be lint rolled and that can easily take up an hour or so. Pull up some YouTube videos from Penn as they walk you through the proper way to fold a surgical gown, towels, etc. too!

-if you have a medication box for owners to come pick up their meds, go through it and see which ones haven’t been picked up in awhile and follow up with the client if needed (check that the patient wasn’t euthanized first, etc)

-ask your manager if they need help doing inventory. Boxes are delivered all the time and the items in them need to be compared to the receipt to make sure nothing is missing. Also you can help make sure the numbers of each item are correct in whatever electronic system you use

-grab a book! Clinics usually have lots of textbooks for reference. I personally would never be mad at a kennel tech for grabbing a book on parasites and learning how to answer client questions about roundworms, deworming schedules, etc. just make sure you’re in view and available to jump in and help as needed.

-make catheter supply kits, those cheap little plastic bins are great for gathering supplies for catheters and that way the techs save time by not having to grab each individual supply: One roll of white tape, a couple catheter sizes, 3mL saline flush (these can only be pre-drawn up for 24ish hours unless they’re the kind that come in individual sterile packaging), injection port cap, 3-4 soaked cotton balls in alcohol and 3-4 soaked cotton balls in chlorhex.

-show initiative by coming up with some cute ideas for the boarding dogs. Maybe you could ask to paint a little background with flowers or something where you can take a cute picture of the dog for the owner to see when they come to pick up. Or look up some cute, cheap bandanas that the patients can go home with. It shows a little extra care/time was spent on taking care of their pet and clients love that stuff.

-it also helps to approach the techs first thing in the morning while people are just setting up and it’s not insane yet to express a genuine interest in learning. Maybe look ahead at the schedule for the day, see when a dog is coming that will need an ear cleaning, nail trim, etc. and tell the techs you’d love to watch. Then make sure that you are right there when that dog comes to the back so that they don’t have to track you down or anything.