Meet Emma, one of our passionate Veterinary Nurses at the AWL NSW Veterinary Hospital. For the past four years, she has been a vital part of the AWL NSW team, starting as an Animal Attendant at the shelter before transitioning to the vet clinic three years ago.
Q. Tell us about your role at AWL NSW
I’m a Veterinary Nurse at the AWL NSW vet clinic. Vet Nurses look after our hospitalised patients, monitor surgery, look after our animals in the isolation wards & ringworm building, manage reception, assist the vets with consults & communicate with shelter, private clients and foster carers.
Q. What might your day-to-day look like?
Firstly, the most important part… as soon as I get to work in the morning, I make sure I say good morning to all of our beautiful hospital patients and see how they’re doing.
I’m mainly a medical nurse so I will feed & clean all the patients in the hospital and isolation wards, medicate them and give them lots of love. I check on the patients that had surgery the day before, check their vitals and give the vets an update on the condition of all the hospital animals and whether there are any concerns.
Then it’s time to update every single animal’s record with their daily observations. I think our record was close to 70 animals in our care at the clinic one kitten season!
A massive part of my job is trying to make the animals as comfortable as possible when they’re away from home. I have a big soft spot for the scared cats, so will always show them love and kindness, especially the strays that have come off the street & may not have had positive experiences with people before.
I help recover animals from surgery and help out in the clinic where needed. Then repeat it all at the end of the day. This doesn’t even begin to sum up what we do at the clinic every day!
Q. What inspired you to pursue a career in veterinary medicine?
Ever since I was a little girl I knew I wanted to work with animals. I’ve worked with animals for the last 16 years but always felt a call to Veterinary Medicine because I wanted to help those that can often be overlooked. I’ve always been the girl that’s drawn to sick animals and wanting to help them get better, so I knew nursing was my calling.
I was a vet nurse six years ago, but it wasn’t the right point in my life to pursue it. A few years ago one of my best friends moved from the shelter to the vet clinic and encouraged me to chase my dreams and start nursing again. I made the leap and since then I haven’t looked back.
Q. Tell us about the veterinary clinic and the vital role it plays in the lives of animals in our care
The vet clinic plays a HUGE role in the lives of animals in our care. We desex and perform dentals and other necessary procedures to get the animals ready to be adopted. A big part of our job is caring for animals that have come in as injured strays or through our inspectorate with some horrific injuries or horrible neglect cases – we nurse these animals back to health.
We perform surgeries to assist their recovery and provide intensive care. A lot of us at clinic are foster carers and will take home some of these intense cases and give them a home to recover in until they’re well enough for adoption.
We also operate the Animal Care Truck that goes to rural areas and helps with free vaccination, microchipping and we also do subsidised desexing at some locations – this is something that not everyone has the luxury of accessing normally. Going out on the ACT trips is an extremely rewarding experience.
Q. Do you have an impactful or heartwarming story about an animal you’ve worked with?
I’ve dealt with so many incredible animals at the clinic but I think one of the standouts would be an amazing kitten named Burke. He came to the clinic as a stray with his siblings. They were around 4 weeks old & were covered in ringworm & had bad cat flu. But Burke was TINY. He was a very unwell kitten & because he’d been so unwell his growth was stunted. He ended up in the care of our clinic for around 4 months.
When he finally cleared ringworm (he had months of treatment) he developed pneumonia & became very sick to the point he wouldn’t eat. I used to stay back after my shift and buy him special food to get him to eat.
This little guy had stolen my heart when I first laid eyes on him at 4 weeks of age. Once his pneumonia was under control, I decided to take him home to foster (I think you know where this is going). He stayed with me until he was 9 months old. In this time, he developed some severe health issues & required major surgery to try and fix some of these issues. Our amazing vets went above and beyond to perform this surgery and give him the best chance for the future.
I had a special bond with him from day one and it was no surprise to anyone when I decided to adopt him. He’s now almost 3 years old and living his best life! He is the epitome of why I’m a vet nurse, the love of my life and one of my biggest inspirations.
Q. Finally, what’s the most enjoyable part about your role for you?
The thing I love most about my role is that we take on the ones that are overlooked, the animals that require intense care and months of treatment – such as our ringworm cats, cats with major health issues, parvo dogs or dogs that have required major orthopedic surgery. We give every animal a chance at recovery and we try our hardest to get them to the point of adoption where they can go live the lives they’ve always deserved.