The Vet Tech Cafe's Podcast

Caffeinators, pack your bags and fasten your seatbelts. We're going to where the water spins backwards. We're headed back to the Southern Hemisphere, specifically New Zealand! We met a wonderful Kiwi at IVECCS last year, Ashleigh Walsh, at the AVECCTN pinning ceremony. When we learned she was there from New Zealand we knew we had to have her on as a guest. It took until THIS WEEK to figure out the...

We got lots to talk about in this Taproom Episode!  We've got outside sources criticizing our profession and we think you know who we're talking about.  We also dive into the concept of CPR/DNR policies  What is your hospital's CPR policy?  When do you bring that up with the client?  Do you have a flat fee for CPR? Who has that discussion with the owner?  Let us know in the comments!

Caffeinators, are you ready to have your mind blown? We've long thought it's time to rethink veterinary technician education, and many out there agree. Thankfully, Jennifer Gunther is someone that is out there doing it. She's been an educator at Denver Community College's vet tech program for 20+ years, and they have recently started an apprenticeship program that exists separately and in addition...

Caffeinators, have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a traveling veterinary technician? Maybe have a home base, but otherwise constantly on the road traveling to all corners of the US and working relief? Then have we got an episode for you! Our friend Simon Chavez recently stopped by one of our locations-it may have been Chicago, Boston, or Anchorage, we're not sure-but we had a v...

Hello from Phoenix!  Our second "staff meeting" trip to Phoenix.  We recap our trip and have a discussion about "Things we don't do anymore".  

Caffeinators, if you've been listening in a while, you've heard several guests recommend Doc Jim when we ask who they think we should talk to. And guess what?! We got him! We don't often have veterinarians on our podcast, but there are those who are integral to our development as a profession and Doc Jim is certainly one of them! Holy cow was this episode fun! He is such a huge supporter "of our a...

Caffeinators, anchors aweigh, it's time to set sail! Have you heard of Vet Tech Life? Have you heard of CE on the Sea? If so, then you know Kelly Cronin. We know her from our VTS(ECC) study group days over 10 years ago, and she came by the Vet Tech Cafe recently to talk about this amazing CE event, which recently sailed, along with so many other topics! She talked a lot about management and transi...

Caffeinators, it's time for our monthly checkin from the Vet Tech Taproom. Have you checked in with yourself lately? We got together to discuss a couple things for this episode, mostly what happens when an owner has a bad experience or negative outcome at the hospital and threatens to go "public"-meaning social media or the news? How do you or your hospital respond? We give our analysis of what we...

Caffeinators, fasten your safety belt because this episode is taking from the US to British Columbia, to Ontario, Canada, to India. Yah. Recently, Marina John, Vice President of the British Columbia Veterinary Technologists Association reached out to us and we had a discussion about soooo many important topics ranging from title protection, association work, charity work, involvement, and boundari...

Caffeinators, we need more personality in our field. We need young minds and fresh faces with big goals to grow into the roles many of us currently occupy, and Ralia Cortinas may just be one of those people that checks those boxes. Ralia is currently a student in the Distance Learning program through Purdue University, but the credentialing process is clearly very important to her. We talk a lot a...

Happy New Year from the Vet Tech Taproom! We briefly discuss our "resolutions" for 2024 and encourage you to post yours in the comments! We review a couple of our recent episode and preview a couple forthcoming ones as several of them revolve around veterinary technician education. We also look at NAVTA's list of nominee's for Veterinary Technician of the Year, a couple of whom we've been fortunat...

Caffeinators, we talk about veterinary technician education all the time, but we don't often get to talk to the stakeholders-the students. Our next two episodes focus on that. First up is Sydney Hoevet, a student in the vet tech program at Portland Community College. It's always refreshing to look at our profession through fresh, less jaded eyes than our own. It's also really nice to hear the prof...

Caffeinators, are you a Veterinary Anesthesia Nerd? If so, you'll love this episode with the final part of the trifecta that is the Veterinary Anesthesia Nerds, Darci Palmer. We ran into Darci at IVECCS and pitched the idea of her being a guest and thankfully she obliged because this is an awesome episode. Darci currently works in Anesthesia at Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine, a...

Caffeinators, Happy New Year! In this episode, we discuss the recent AAVSB changes for the VTNE administration as well as a study published in the November JAVMA issue for which our good friend, Dr. Andy Roark, was a contributing author. We also look ahead to 2024. This is bit of a longer taproom, but these two topics we were quite passionate about. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below....

Caffeinators. We know you love the Vet Tech Without Scrubs pages and the content that Adrienne Kruzer puts out. We do too. Adrienne was suggested to us by several previous guests as someone we should talk to. We ran into her at IVECCS and we barely had to ask and she was in to come join us for a discussion. This is a wide-ranging discussion chronicling her career, Vet Tech Without Scrubs, the Sout...

Caffeinators, grab your passports because we're going back across the pond! For this episode, we sit down with Sieske Valk. Sieske reached out to us to talk about her business venture Autumn Animals, which specializes in at home applicative and hospice care. We discuss what hospice and palliative care look like both in the UK and the US, and how as a profession we aren't meeting these needs. Siesk...

Hey Caffeinators! We're back to our regularly scheduled programming! We had some scheduling issues getting this episode recorded as it was supposed to be released on Veteran's Day here in the US. Why Veteran's Day, you ask? Because that's really the focus of this episode. Bill Wade started in the US Air Force in the 1970's, transferred to the US Army in the 1980's and worked as a veterinary techni...

Hey Caffeinators, welcome back to another episode of ... the Veterinary Viewfinder?! That's right! If you've been listening to us the last few months, and the Veterinary Viewfinder podcast as well, we've both been dropping nuggets back and forth about how we handle all their complaints and they record in our basement and pick up your tab in the Taproom. It's all in good fun as they have been so ki...

Welcome to another episode of the Vet Tech Taproom!  We unintentionally spent a lot of time talking about vet tech associations.  Here's your friendly reminder to get involved!  We can only make change in numbers.  We also recapped our most recent episodes with Dani and Liz while chatting about the conference experience and previewing some future episodes.  

Caffeinators, this is a bit of a heavy topic. By and large, our field has been immune to layoffs. That's not to say they haven't happened in the past, but certainly not by the hundreds or thousands we've seen major companies go through. This episode is focused on layoffs. Dani was a trainer for a corporation, a role that was created specifically for her that she thrived in, and was recently told h...

Happy Vet Tech Week, Caffeinators! What does that mean anymore? We delve into a couple of recent nuggets of content we've come across and have a discussion about those, and what we'd like to see. What does Vet Tech Week look like for you? Does your hospital celebrate Vet Tech Week and the days and weeks set aside for the other vital members of our teams, such as CSR's, assistants, bossed, etc? Or...

Caffeinators, it's mid-October and that means it's an Anniversary here at the Vet Tech Cafe. We're celebrating our 4th complete year-can you believe it? We thought we'd be lucky if we put out 10 episodes, but here we are still going strong because of YOU and all of our amazing guests. It also means we get to chat with Liz Hughston again! This episode is extra special, because we recorded it LIVE w...

Caffeinators, we are in the era of corporatization in veterinary medicine. Maybe you've already experienced working in a hospital that was bought by a corporation, maybe you're going through that process now, or maybe you haven't but chances are you probably will at some point. That is the focus of this episode. Tia Gregorio recently joined us at the Vet Tech Cafe to talk about corporate merging f...

Caffeinators, you've heard us before say some of our favorite episodes are when listeners reach out to us with an idea and it turns it to an episode, often because it's something we hadn't thought of before or someone doing something awesome that we didn't know! That last part sums up this episode. Paige Allen, MS, RVT, wrote to us about some of the cool stuff she's doing IN RETIREMENT and we had...

Our latest Vet Tech Taproom episode where we recap IVECCS 2023.  Did you attend?  Did you see us and say hi? Tell us what you loved about IVECCS 2023!