APPROACHED FOR WORK PLACEMENT?
If your Clinic has been approached for work experience or placement by one of our students, this information may assist you in deciding if you’re able to help contribute to the next generation of Veterinary Nurses.
Thank you
for considering hosting one of our veterinary nursing students for placement.
To ensure we produce quality graduates, we want our students to gain practical experience in a realistic work environment. To do this, we utilise veterinary clinics, such as yours, to provide work placements. Your support helps our students master the foundational practical skills necessary to work as a Veterinary Assistant or Nurse and obtain a realistic idea of how veterinary clinics actually work. It is also a vital component of mastering professionalism and client communication skills.
Your support helps our students master the foundation clinical skills necessary as Veterinary Nurses and obtain a realistic idea of how veterinary clinics actually work. It is also a vital component of mastering professionalism and client communication skills.
RECRUITMENT COSTS & TIME CAN BE REDUCED IF YOU HAVE PLACEMENT STUDENTS.
Perhaps your student is your next amazing employee, and they’re already familiar with your clinic.
STUDENTS NEW TO INDUSTRY
Students with no, or very little, veterinary nursing experience start out in our Certificate III in Animal Care Services program. If the student is still at high school or has limited time to dedicate to their studies, they may be enrolled in our Certificate II in Animal Care Veterinary Assistant Program.
The ACVN Certificate III in Animal Care Services course is specifically designed to focus on veterinary nursing. This allows our graduates to become excellent Junior Veterinary Nurses as it covers all the fundamental nursing skills and is the same as the first year of the Cert IV course with the exception of one subject. These students are dedicated to become veterinary nurses.
Our Certificate II in Animal Care starts with general husbandry then moves onto veterinary assistant skills, and is a stepping stone to the Cert III or IV. This course is more geared towards kennel and ward assistants.
While we appreciate any experience you can give our Cert II & III students, they should not:
- Be allowed to monitor any anaesthetics (apart from observing with an experienced nurse)
- Be left with recovering patients with ET tubes in place
- Monitor any critical care cases without constant supervision
- Be expected to handle aggressive animals.
CERTIFICATE IV IN VETERINARY NURSING STUDENTS
The vast majority of our Certificate IV in Veterinary Nursing students are employed at a veterinary clinic. These students use their employment to provide and cover clinical skill development.
Where their regular clinic is unable to provide appropriate cases or equipment, students can either attend our practical workshops to learn and be assessed on some skills, or arrange work experience at any clinic to complete their course requirements.
MENTORING STUDENTS CAN ASSIST YOUR TEAM IN GROWING MORE AMAZING.
Mentoring is a two-way street. You get back what you put in. Students bring some amazing new knowledge and ideas into the clinic and you can utilise them in updating or new protocol development, or even get them to present to your nurses.
Students ask questions. Mentors often find themselves really thinking about the why’s and how’s when helping students. This process can actually help mentors grow professionally as reflection is a vital component of critical thinking and professional development in the clinical environment.
VOCATIONAL PLACEMENT vs WORK EXPERIENCE
There is strict legislation around how much unpaid work a student can undertake for a course and how it must be documented. This is to ensure that students are not taken advantage of and that workplaces are operating within the requirements of the Fair Work Act.
The vast majority of clinical placement for our students occurs under a placement agreement. This is where the student, workplace and training provider agree to a structured training plan with specific training goals in place that align to the units of study. Whilst students are on clinical experience there is the expectation that they will be learning and developing skills and are provided with the opportunity to perform their video assessments.
Placements must be structured to be compliant with state and federal legislation. We have designed all our programs to meet legislative requirements to protect us, the clinics and most importantly the students. Program structures, in particular, the amount of hours a student can perform, must be adhered to. There is, however, some flexibility so we can customise to the clinic and the student.
