Helping pets feel less stressed - Clinical Educator Charlie set to take part in Facebook Q and A

A Harper Adams Clinical Educator is set to use her veterinary experience to discuss ways to help pets feel less stressed in clinical environments in a live Facebook Q and A next month.

Charlie Wright, Clinical Educator in Veterinary Nursing, will be drawing upon her experiences during the talk with the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors (APBC.)

Her talk can be followed on Facebook here – it will be a 30-minute Facebook live Q+A session, held on Monday, June 6 at 7pm.

In this blog, Charlie explains what to expect from her talk – and why she’s taking part.

The behaviour and emotional health of veterinary patients is becoming an increasingly popular interest amongst veterinary professionals.

As a Clinical Educator with a background in behaviour, I am able to share my insight into this topic regularly with Harper Adams Veterinary Nursing students, so it will be great to do so more widely during the upcoming talk for the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors (APBC).

I’m going to be talking about how we can reduce a patient’s stress within the veterinary practice. The event is primarily aimed at fellow veterinary professionals – but both owners and pet professionals such as trainers, behaviourists are more than welcome to join.

The Facebook session will provide an opportunity to ask questions or simply listen to answers, on all things related to stress reduction of patients in the veterinary clinic. There are likely to be some top tips and key suggestions that can be easily implemented in practice that should hopefully benefit the pet, owner, and staff.

It’s something which is important to me - with more than a decade of experience working within the veterinary environment, I have seen first-hand just how stressed pets can become when they visit the vets.

Over the years I have learned and implemented practical approaches for supporting these pets - and their owners - to better cope with their visit, which in turn makes the job of veterinary professionals that bit easier as well. It is a win-win situation!

Stress reduction of pets during veterinary visits really is a collaborative approach, between the owner, those working in veterinary practice, and even extending to other pet professionals such as walkers, trainers and groomers. Veterinary Nurses in particular, are in an excellent position to lead this approach.

With that in mind, when teaching the veterinary nurse students at Harper Adams, I try to bring in aspects of stress reduction wherever possible.

We know emotional health and physical health are inextricably linked, so I like to encourage our student nurses to always consider the emotional state of the patients they may be working with.

I hope that they then take this thinking forward in their career, by applying a patient-centred holistic approach to nursing, and influencing their colleagues to follow suit.