Veterinary Nurse

Veterinary Nurse
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Veterinary Nurse: Claudia Hoffman

Veterinary nurses work under the supervision of veterinarians in private practices, animal hospitals, animal shelters and at institutions where research on animals is conducted. They attend to animals, give them medicine according to prescription, assist with operations and take laboratory samples.
Claudia Hoffman works as a veterinarian nurse. “I just knew I loved animals and I wanted to work with them,” she says. After interning at a veterinary clinic, Hoffmann fell in love with the work of a veterinary nurse and she decided to study for a two-year diploma course in Pretoria, South Africa.
The responsibilities of a vet nurse include being the vet’s assistant and handling the animals before the vet tends to them. “I am basically a walking encyclopaedia of what could be wrong with your pet,” she says. She says that you can compare the environment at a veterinary clinic to that of a human hospital. “The same thing that happens in a doctor’s practise with humans is the same work we do here. I am basically the vet’s right-hand.”