Can standardization help veterinary technicians be more valued?

Veterinary technician content is sponsored by Elanco for the month of October.

In a dvm360 interview in honor of National Veterinary Technician Week, Anne Sholly, CVT, VTS (Oncology), shared that for veterinary technicians to be more valued, properly utilized, and receive better pay, there should be a standardization of credentials required for the role throughout the US. She also discussed that there may be room for different levels of veterinary technicians in the future to help address staff shortages.

Below is a transcript. Watch/listen to the full video for more.

Anne Sholly, CVT, VTS (Oncology): For us to be truly valued and utilized in vet med, I think that the structure as a whole needs to be a bit more standardized. Right now, to be called a veterinary technician, depending on what state you're in, you may or may not need to have formal training or may or may not need to be licensed to essentially have the same job title. And depending on what state you're in, you may be a CVT, an RVT, an LVT.

And I think for everybody inside vet med and outside vet med to truly understand what we do and realize our true potential, I think it would help to standardize everything. Across the board, have the same requirements for education and credentialing.

To really be able to see all the gaps that might be in vet med and see where vet tech's may be able to fill those roles by maybe having nurse practitioners or different levels of vet techs or nursing to be able to kind of fill in the gaps in vet med that we have now, being so short staffed. I also think standardization would help us fight for better wages that we truly deserve for what we do.