Emergency Medicine in Small Animal Practice

The first week of the emergency medicine course will cover initial telephone contact with the client – including the dos and don’ts of telephone advice, and how to get the most from your conversation in the shortest time! We will also cover giving advice of first aid at the scene of an emergency, and how to best prepare your clinic for the arrival of an emergency patient!

Additionally, we will cover the principles and practice of triage, along with how to conduct the patients’ first clinical examination on arrival at the vet clinic (the Primary Survey). We will also cover the essentials of history taking from the owner, and those essential patient samples required to assist you and the veterinarian manage the case effectively!

This topic will cover management of the patient with breathing difficulty. Learn a methodical and proven method to evaluate and treat patients with breathing difficulties – from airway obstruction, diaphragmatic hernia, and pneumonia to pneumothorax, and a lot in-between – the nurses role is critical! You will also learn how to correctly administer oxygen therapy, provide short-term ventilation therapy, and how to monitor the effectiveness of a patients breathing. We’ll even chat about blood gas and criteria for ventilating a patient too!

Shock is both a common, and serious complication in many emergency patients. If we don’t diagnose and treat shock appropriately, our patients can suffer organ dysfunction, failure, or even death. Shock can be caused by many things – trauma, electrocution, heart disease, blood loss, infection and anaphylaxis to name a few. So – what does a patient with shock look like? Is the treatment for all types of shock the same? What happens to the patient that doesn’t respond to treatment for shock? When is the right time to give a transfusion? All of these questions and more will be answered in this topic!

Many emergency patients can initially improve following initial treatment – but can then appear to deteriorate. What is going on? There can be many reasons for this – and this topic will examine how you can monitor your patients to best detect deterioration, why your patients may deteriorate or sometimes ‘crash’ and die – and what YOU can do to help prevent this from happening!

During this topic, we will learn the best way to monitor and manage trauma patients following resuscitation of the respiratory, circulatory and neurological systems. We will discuss monitoring techniques, and an introduction to nursing the critically injured patient! 

Additionally, we will also look at specific emergencies, such as GDV, head trauma, transfusions and more – including a review of CPR!