Collecting memories -the vet nurse experience

摘要

This month, RCVS Knowledg is celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Veterinary Nursing. It was November 1961 when the RCVS launched what was then called the Animal Nursing Auxiliary training scheme - and the British veterinary nursing profession was officially created.This has prompted us to look back on the earliest days of veterinary nursing, and ask how the nurses themselves experienced the changing status and role of the profession.For decades previously, the vital work of veterinary nursing was already happeningin places such as canine hospitals by trained individuals, often referred to as nurses, but sometimes as "attendants". In David Eric Wilkinson's book Canine Nursing, published in 1938, he writes about the important contribution nurses made to the recovery of animals, and, prior to the Second World War, discussion of the RCVS recognising and examining canine nurses took place. However, it was with the increase in small animal practice, and the founding of the BSAVA in the 1950s, that the demand for a formal nursing training scheme was finally met.