Meet the Team
The Clinical Team
Veterinary Surgeons
Visitors to our Surgeries in Looe, Saltash and Callington are often surprised when told that we have 9 full-time Veterinary Surgeons within the Practice, (2 of whom are the Directors of the business). You would have to be a very regular visitor indeed to meet all of the vets within the Practice by attending surgery.
Each of our vets has days when they take consultations and conduct operations and procedures. However, we have Vets who spend more time in Surgery, forming the companion animal team, and Vets who spend a large amount of their time on farm and with horses.
This allows for a degree of specialisation in the different disciplines and ensures that the continuing professional development training each Vet has to complete each year, is relevant and up to the minute.
Nurses
We have 4 qualified Veterinary Nurses and 2 halfway through their professional training course. Vets come and go but our nurses have been with us a considerable time, our Head Nurse over 15 years, providing continuity within the clinical team. They assist the veterinary staff throughout all the procedures and operations that are conducted here at the Practice. They provide continuity of care for the patient when the Vets active role is completed and are usually your point of contact for any queries regarding your in-patient pet.
They also provide ‘clinics’ dealing with such things as weight control and dental care. It would also be one of our nurses who would teach you what you need to know so that you can manage illnesses such as Diabetes in your home.
All of our nurses have been trained here in the Surgery and at either Bicton College of Agriculture or Duchy College (Camborne). Qualification takes 3 years but a veterinary nurse cannot be trained solely at College, as the majority of the course requires on-job training and assessment. We are a Registered training practice for Veterinary Nurses but we only have 2 students training at any one time.
We also have 2 Animal Care Technicians who back-up the nursing team. It will be 1 of these who will provide the ‘TLC’ and monitoring your pet receives on wake-up from anaesthetic, the toilet walks with drip and buster collar attachments and the feeding, watering, cleaning and keeping comfortable that is so very necessary for recovery. They also do innumerable other small task that are important but unglamorous and largely unnoticed until they are not there to do them!
The Administrative Staff
Receptionists
Your first point of contact with the surgery will usually be with one of our Receptionists. Looe and Saltash surgeries each have their own dedicated duos that have been with us some considerable time and hopefully have come to know you and your pets. They are available 9-5.30 each day, except for lunch hours and for an hour on Saturday mornings. In Callington on weekdays, our Receptionists are in practice from 8 am until evening surgery finishes and every Saturday morning.
We like to think of the Receptionists as our Diplomatic Core, as they are the contact between you and the Practice. They meet and speak to anyone and everyone who has anything at all to do with the surgery, from farmer to delivery driver, client to RSPCA Inspector. They try to satisfy the many different requests that are presented to them and give the best possible service to all.
Stores
We have a dedicated storewomen who is responsible for ensuring that medications, for farm, equine and companion animals are always to hand and for ordering the majority of the supplies that are used throughout the practice, from anaesthetic drugs to ballpoint pens.
Administrative Assistants
The rest of the clerical staff is made up of those necessary ‘paper-pushers’ that keep the business running. They enable us to comply with the many statutory returns that any business has to file, keep up to date and pay the taxman from. Accounts, VAT, Tax/NI, State Veterinary Service, Health and Safety, Local Authority, Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and all the admin. associated with keeping the surgery buildings themselves maintained and functioning, the staff paid, trained and supported, the vehicles running and the bills paid!