RVT, CVA, VETERINARY TECHNICIAN
Saturday, March 6 • 8am – 6pm
The Intersection of Compassion Fatigue and Client Communication: Caring for Our Clients, Our Profession and Ourselves
Speaker: Katherine Dobbs, RVT, CVPM, PHR (Wisconsin)
Letting the Cat Out of the Bag
In this first session, Katherine exposes compassion fatigue and provides its definition. She next explores the five phases of a caregiver’s career. A review of an important survey will define stressors each of us face in our own distinct position in the veterinary hospital. Find out what satisfies you in your career and what drives you to come back to help day after day.
A Look Under the Microscope
Next Katherine will compare compassion fatigue with the more familiar concepts of stress and burnout. This session will probe deeper into compassion fatigue and unlock the causes and symptoms that lead to the “hurt of the heart”. Discover tests that help to evaluate professional quality of life and general life stress. Learn that caregivers have rights that should be embraced.
A Look in the Mirror
This lecture will begin the journey into self-reflection to discover the changes that need to be made internally. Discover the eight laws of healthy change and self-care plus develop a self-care plan.
Improving Our Workplace
When team members have compassion fatigue, veterinary practices can become infected. Compare positive and toxic work places and learn the signs of organizational compassion fatigue and workplace burnout. Learn how the management team is crucial to the healing process. Explore the eight laws governing a healthy workplace, and tools to improve the practice team.
SUNDAY, March 7, 2010 • 8am-12:30pm
Anesthesia
Speaker: Kristen Cooley, CVT, VTS (Wisconsin)
The Ins and Outs of the Anesthesia Machine – The anesthesia machine is an often over-looked yet important piece of the anesthetic puzzle. This lecture focuses on the pieces and parts of the machine by following the flow of oxygen from its source all the way through to the scavenging system. Learn how to use the anesthesia machine to its fullest, how to use it as an intermittent dosing device and how to troubleshoot some common problems.
Monitoring Without Monitors – Did you know that if the only monitors you had were your eyes, ears and hands to assess an anesthetize patient, you could still gather significant information? You could evaluate physiologic parameters from heart rate, pulse quality, and vasomotor tome to respiratory rate, character, eye position and more. This lecture will teach you to determine anesthetic depth as well as approximately blood pressure, cardiovascular function and more, for those times when your mechanical monitors fail you.
Understanding Anesthesia Equipment – Anesthetic monitors are only as good as the people using them. Increase your knowledge base on the how’s and why’s of monitors used during anesthesia. We will go over what is normal vs. what is abnormal to make you more comfortable with the information these machines give us. This lecture will also cover how to react to abnormal readings, and how to troubleshoot some common monitor issues. Monitors such as pulse-oximeter, capnography, non-invasive blood pressure monitors (Doppler and oscillometric) as well as ECG monitors will be discussed.
Anesthetic Drugs-Review and Update – Anesthesia has a lot to do with drugs; drugs for sedation, drugs for analgesia, drugs for unconsciousness and drugs to reverse the effects of another drug. Good anesthesia starts with a thorough understanding of the variety of drugs that we use. Re-examine common medicants, learn a few new tricks and discover how certain drugs can work together to provide a safer and more balanced outcome when it comes to both anesthesia and analgesia.
