In Clinic Services
One of the major challenges facing many veterinary clinics today is training and developing their nurses; enabling the clinic to run more efficiently by utilising the nurses skills. Many veterinarians are not equipped with the skills to develop their nurses to their full potential, and do not have the time to invest in training their nurses themselves. This is where Veterinary Nurse Solutions can assist you; we offer a number of services to help veterinarians develop their nursing team into a super team.
Training & Professional Development Programs
Training and professional development programs are an ideal solution to ensure your veterinary clinic retains the skilled nurses you have already invested in, as well as develop your staff into a highly efficient team. Veterinary Nurse Solutions will come into your clinic, and perform a training needs analysis in conjunction with you and your existing team. A training needs analysis report will then be provided, detailing the areas your staff require training in, along with several options on how to undergo this training and implement the knowlege and skills gained. These options may include customised training delivered by Veterinary Nurse Solutions, external training providers, or nationally recognised courses.
The training needs assessed are not limited to veterinary nurse skills, it also includes customer service, practice management, stock control, administration, merchandising and any other facet of the job your nurses are performing.
We then work with you to implement the training, this may involve training sessions with your staff (delivered in a variety of ways to suit you), induction sessions, the writing of new protocols and procedures or one-on-one training with staff. Flexibility and customisation are the key areas to ensure the Training & Professional Development Program works for you.
Training and professional development is also an ideal way to express commitment to your employees and show an interest in developing their abilities. It presents an opportunity to enhance employer branding and these are major factors in retaining, developing and attracting the highly skilled nurses to your clinic.
Customised Training
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Many clinics require their nurses to be upskilled in a particular area where the need as already been identified. This may be because the clinic has purchased new equipment, is expanding into a new service, or just wants to be able to provide a higher standard of care. This training can include:
Veterinary Nurse Solutions can customise a training plan, deliver the training and assess your staff to ensure they have mastered the vital skills. We will then assist you in implementing these skills into everyday clinic life. These training plans are developed with your clinic in mind, and have flexible delivery options to enable the training to fit seamlessly into your clinic. |
Veterinary Nurse Solutions also recognises that rural clinics often miss out on the continuing education services that their city counterparts receive. If you are a rural clinic in SA or VIC that needs training for you staff, we are more than happy to travel out to you to deliver customised training.
Induction Programs
The first day at a new job is always a time of confusion. So many people to meet, and so much to learn in a short span of time. A well-planned staff induction program can make it easier for new team members to come up to speed with the various protocols of your clinic, whilst providing significant benefits for your clinic through increased staff productivity and staff retention.
Many veterinary clinics make the mistake of ignoring the induction process, have inadequate or ad-hoc staff induction processes, or rely solely on new staff ‘working it out as they go’. But induction, the learning necessary to get a new person up to speed, will go on regardless. The point is, expecting the new nurse to learn things by themselves or by asking questions from other employees, rather than structuring how they learn these things, will only waste time and cost the clinic money.
Starting a new job is a stressful experience for new nurses, especially as every clinic has a different set of protocols and ways of doing things. This will naturally affect the success of any induction program and can even cause the new nurse to ‘drop out’ if they feel excessively uncomfortable or confused. It is therefore worth spending time on effective induction, as real cost savings can be made in a number of areas by avoiding accidents caused through unfamiliarity; rapid achievement of full productivity; and minimising the likelihood of the person becoming frustrated and resigning, leaving you to be exposed to the entire recruitment cost again.
Giving new team members the right kind of introduction to your clinic means they can quickly get over the ‘strangeness’ of their new work environment and become productive almost immediately.
Veterinary Nurse Solutions can design an Induction Process that enables your new recruits to quickly become a valued team member. This Induction Process can include anything from an employee manual, induction checklists, phase training program, skills assessing, and training of your staff responsible for inducting new employees.
Protocols, Policies and Processes
The three Ps - many people hate the idea of writing policies, protocols and processes, however they are an essential part of ensuring your team works efficiently, in the correct manner, and follows the 'rules'. They also are a vital part of your employee handbooks and practice manuals. Writing these however is a time consuming process, and many veterinarians and nurses do not have the time in their busy days to sit down and put pen to paper.
Veterinary Nurse Solutions offers a service where we develop these protocols, policies and processes for you. We will sit down with you to identify what needs to be written, establish how you want particular tasks done for protocols, what policies you need, and then write these for you from scratch. Not sure where to start? That is fine, as we can assess your clinic, its current protocols and policies, and ammend or write new ones as appropriate. Veterinary Nurse Solutions will consult you at every stage of the process to ensure you get the protocols, policies and processes that your clinic needs.
Flexible Services
Here at Veterinary Nurse Solutions, we understand that you are busy running your clinics, so we are flexible in the contact hours needed to work with you to provide our services, so we are available weekends and evenings to work around you.
Although we are based in South Australia, many of our services can still be utilised by interstate clinics, so if you are in another state, do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your needs.