The global veterinary teams of Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) performed more than 33,000 sterilisations in 2024. The teams work all over the world in communities with large free roaming animal populations (dogs and cats) to provide much-needed free access to veterinary care. By providing free humane animal birth control surgeries, along with rabies vaccinations and other health care and treatments, we work to improve the standards of animal welfare as well as reduce animal-human conflict.
Not all superheroes wear capes: Working on the frontline of animal welfare
Our veterinary nurse volunteers and Taskforce RVN’s (Registered Veterinary Nurses),on our one-year Taskforce Nursing Programme, play an instrumental role in supporting our local teams of vet assistants in humane animal birth control projects.
Veterinary nurses and vet assistants are often the unsung heroes on these big campaigns, playing a crucial part in providing the very best care. They are the advocates for the patient’s welfare, the voice for the voiceless, and the reassuring face when the patient wakes up. In this article, you’ll hear more about the role of our veterinary nurses and vet assistants during a spay/neuter campaign.
A typical day in the life: the role of nurses and vet assistants during a spay/neuter campaign
Volunteer veterinary nurses, the Taskforce RVN’s, and our local vet assistants play a key role in all areas of a well-run sterilisation campaign. Read on to hear more about the key stages.
1. Preoperative stage
It is important that all patients receive a health check prior to surgery and an experienced veterinary nurse can highlight any concerns to the vets for further assessment or help handle any patients for the vet to examine. If the patient is cleared for surgery, then the team can administer the premedication. This combination of drugs is injected into the muscle in the least stressful way possible and it provides the animal with sedation and pain relief. The nursing team will stay with any pre-medicated patients to ensure their airway is maintained whilst they fall asleep. It often takes around ten minutes for the drugs to take affect before the patient can be safely transferred to the preparation area.
2. Preparation stage
Before the cat or dog can go into the theatre, there are some important steps to follow. From premedication, the nursing team oversees monitoring the patient throughout to ensure they remain stable under anesthesia - regularly checking vital signs like the heart rate, respiratory rate and depth of anaesthesia. This patient monitoring is recorded every five minutes from this stage until the patient is awake, and it is done alongside other tasks. A nurse is always known to be a good multitasker!
All patients have an IV cannula placed by the nursing team, are administered further drugs prescribed by the vet if appropriate and have a tube placed to protect their airway. The surgical site is then shaved and scrubbed for surgery and each animal is marked for identification (tattoo, ear notch, microchip as examples).
3. Theatre
In theatre a vet assistant will be dedicated to each patient to monitor them throughout their surgery. The patient will be receiving fluids and additional pain relief through their IV cannula and the team must balance keeping their patient asleep and pain free but not depressing their system too much by giving too much anaesthetic drug. A skill and hard balance that our vet assistants have been trained to do. In challenging resource-limited settings, it's more common for routine sterilisations to be done under injectable anaesthesia rather than inhalation (gas).
The nursing team are also there to assist the surgeon, opening their kit in a sterile fashion, handing them additional items if required and of course keeping them informed of any concerns or changes with the patient. They also enter every patient into the WVS Data Collection App system, which must be done before the surgery is finished. Sometimes you have an additional theatre ‘float vet assistant’ who can record each patient into the WVS App and prepare discharge instructions and post operative pain relief if the animal is going straight home with their care giver after recovery.
4. Recovery
Recovery is still regarded as the most high-risk part of a patient's journey, so our vet assistants and veterinary nurses remain with their patients often in a communal recovery area until they are awake post-surgery. Our teams make sure the recovery area is secure, warm, and a calm environment to wake up in and that they are fully awake before they either go home with their care giver or transfer into a kennel for later rounds if they are free roaming. The nursing team are there to keep the patients safe and to also reassure them. Many of our patients will not have had surgery before, and for some this could be the first time they have received any form of veterinary care, so it is important that we put them at ease as much as possible.
5. Continued post-operative care
The work for the vet assistant team doesn't finish just because the surgery is done. If the animal has not gone straight home and is instead staying in kennels for a few days, then the vets will require assistance with checking on them. Everyone is checked at least twice a day to give pain relief, and check if they need any further medication and that their wound is healing as expected. Generally, at least one person will work solely in the kennel area to look after all the inpatients. It's a chance to continue getting to know the patients, provide them additional care such as making sure they are eating and comforting them, and tending to their emotional needs and not just their physical needs.
Not forgetting the big clean up that happens at the end of the day. We follow strict infection control and cleaning protocols, and so the theatre and preparation area must be thoroughly cleaned, disinfected and stocked up ready for the next day. All the surgical instruments and drapes must be washed and packed, ready to be re-sterilised. Quite a task when you are operating on many patients a day.
Running a sterilisation campaign is always a massive team effort and our vet assistants and veterinary nurses play a pivotal role in that. With this article we wished to acknowledge just one small example of how incredibly hard working our nurses and veterinary assistants around the globe are and what nurses do daily for all the animals we have the privilege of looking after. We hope you will join us in celebrating our teams during this Vet Nurse Awareness Month and appreciate our local teams of veterinary assistants doing an amazing job.
Are you a nurse looking to get involved?
If you are interested in volunteering your nursing skills and helping with one of our international projects, then please browse our current volunteering opportunities here. We would love to hear from you! We hope you will join us in celebrating our teams during this Vet Nurse Awareness Month and appreciate our local teams of veterinary assistants doing an amazing job.