Veterinary Nursing and Patient Care: assessment, monitoring, and daily nursing
Veterinary Nursing and Patient Care
This domain tests the technician's ability to assess, monitor, and nurse the hospitalized patient: obtaining vitals, recognizing deterioration early, maintaining hygiene and nutrition, and documenting care. Expect questions on the nursing process, fluid estimation, and comfort measures.
Core rules and concepts
- Nursing process: assess, plan, implement, evaluate - and reassess after every intervention. Nursing diagnoses are comfort/risk focused, not medical diagnoses.
- Awake adult values: dog HR 60–160 bpm, cat 140–220; RR dog 10–30, cat 20–30; rectal temperature 37.5–39.2 °C (99.5–102.5 °F). Cats often read high in clinic from stress.
- Perfusion: mucous membrane color, capillary refill ≤2 s, pulse quality, extremity temperature, mentation, urine output 1–2 mL/kg/h.
- Hydration: roughly 5% deficit is subtle; 8–10% gives tacky gums and persistent skin tent; >10% is profound. Weigh daily - 1 kg lost approximates 1 L fluid.
- Comfort: score pain with a validated scale, reposition recumbent patients every 4 h, lubricate eyes under anesthesia, provide oral care and active warming.
Worked example
A 4 kg cat with vomiting: HR 200, CRT 3 s, tacky gums, skin tent persists. Estimate 8% dehydration → deficit = 4 kg × 0.08 = 0.32 L (320 mL). Maintenance ≈ 4 × 60 mL/kg/day = 240 mL/day. Add ongoing losses (e.g., 20 mL/kg/day), replace the deficit over 12–24 h, and reassess perfusion hourly rather than recalculating blindly.
Traps
Skin turgor is unreliable in obese or geriatric cats - use gums and eye position. Never calculate from pounds without dividing by 2.2. Writing "WNL" instead of actual values loses the trend that detects deterioration.