Q&A with a keynote: Tasha McNerney, BS, CVT, CVPP, VTS (Anesthesia & Analgesia)

Tasha McNerney, BS, CVT, CVPP, VTS (Anesthesia & Analgesia), founder of the Veterinary Anesthesia Nerds, will take center stage to present her keynote address “The 5th Vital Sign: Pain Management as the Key to Purpose, Profit, and Possibility” during our upcoming Fetch Coastal conference on October 9-11.

During this interview with dvm360^®, McNerney explains what her upcoming keynote address will focus on, the takeaway that both veterinarians and technicians can implement at their practices, plus what other chances attendees have to hear her present at Fetch Coastal.

What is your keynote address about?

My keynote is going to focus on pain management, and how we utilize our team members to provide great pain management. And then also how we can make that pain management work to profit for the economic health of our practices. There are a lot of opportunities just within pain management and anesthesia for technicians and other staff members to participate in the process. So not only does that take some of the stuff off the plate for our veterinarian, so we can all participate and make pain management a more team-focused endeavor, and therefore, not only will the patients get better overall care, but then also our practices can appropriately charge for these things and find different income streams or different streams of revenue through expanded pain management practices.

Tasha McNerney, BS, CVT, CVPP, VTS (Anesthesia & Analgesia)

What are the key takeaways from your keynote?

I'm hoping that after they come to my lecture, they go back to their practice and have kind of a meeting of 'okay, hey, can we set up these kinds of either initial or post-chronic pain consultations.' So a lot of times, animals, cats, dogs, anything dealing with chronic pain, or osteoarthritis pain or things like that, those animals are going to need a lot of follow-up care, and they're going to need a lot of tweaking to their pain management plans. They may even need supplemental care, things like massage therapy, things like rehabilitation, etc. There's a lot of opportunities for practices to not only provide those therapies but also kind of be the point person to kind of develop that plan. While the veterinarian is going to guide that plan, really the people either providing some massage therapy or doing some of these rehabilitation appointments, or even just doing some of the follow up with the client, and the pets can be the technicians and the assistants, etc.

I think that, what I'm hoping, is that people will come away from my lecture and go back to their clinic and say, 'okay, from now on, when we're dealing with chronic pain consults, how can we get the entire team involved?' Again, it doesn't always have to be the veterinarian doing all of these things on this checklist. So what kind of things can we delegate to our team members, so that everybody in the team feels that they are involved in the care and really great pain management for these patients.

Are you giving any other lectures at Fetch Coastal?

I am actually doing a really, really fun lecture. It's going to be a workshop together with a great, fantastic veterinary technician named Tabitha Kucera. If you're ever interested in veterinary behavior from the technician standpoint, she's the person that you want to talk to. She and I are going to be hosting kind of a roundtable workshop on feline handling and I am going to be talking about kind of the pharmacologic and when do we get drugs involved. And if so, which drug cocktails do we use portion of it, and she's going to be talking about some practical tips for handling feline patients that come in, that are really scared and may potentially be fractious because they're just so overly fearful. So we're going to talk about some ways that we can handle these cats to give the cat a better overall, less scary experience at the vet.

What's one fun fact about you that might surprise people?

Oh, man, I feel like since I am so present on social media, probably a lot of people know a lot of things about me, and I probably am an open book already. But I think that probably what you know, some dvm360 people were surprised to find out about me is that I actually grew up in Miami, Florida. I think that a lot of people always associate me with Philadelphia, because that's where I live now and working for Penn, and I'm so involved in the Philadelphia area. However, that's not where I'm from. I actually grew up in Miami, Florida, and I still have a big piece of my heart down in Miami.

What do you like most about the Fetch conferences?

I like Fetch conferences because I'm kind of laid back and I feel like Fetch conferences are pretty laid back. And that's not to say that they don't have some really good science and medical information. But I do like the fact that usually, the Fetch conferences are not taking themselves so seriously that they can also be super, super practical. And that's what I like is that not only are we going to talk about the medicine, and the research, and the science, but we're also going to talk about how does this actually look in the real world? In practice? How is this actually attainable? Because I'm sure that everybody's been to some lecture that's at a really, really high level. And you think, Okay, that's great. But how does this research fit into what we're actually doing in practice? I think that's where Fetch does a really good job of not only the science but also the practicality of implementing some of these things in real life.

Do you want to attend McNerney's keynote? If so, you are in luck because you can register here today to learn from her as well as all of our other incredible faculty. We look forward to seeing you all down the Jersey Shore!