Caring for a pet with cancer should be viewed as a highly important step in promoting animal welfare.  Whether definitive or palliative treatment is given, it is important that the veterinary team work with owners to support the pet, rather than giving a “I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do” approach, which usually results in owners to seeking advice from unqualified individuals!

And a good veterinary nurse will have the ideal skillset for caring for a pet with cancer.  Furthermore they will find that all their skills are used daily.  In this lecture we will discuss how adept skills in rapidly assessing animals, venupuncture, performing complex clinical procedures, showing empathy, advocating for patient welfare and multi-tasking are invaluable to oncology care.  And nurses are often very good at all of these!

For those people who have experienced cancer treatment in human medicine this should be of little surprise; in human medicine the “treatment journey” is led by highly skilled nurses, the Doctors only getting involved in the diagnosis, recommending a treatment, and various decision-making “milestones” along the way.   A clear career development pathway for interested RVNs to specialise in veterinary oncology is now developing, and in this lecture we will discuss more about what the “Onco-RVN” job is about!