Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?

Why don't vet techs fight for bigger pay and demand more like human nurses do?Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?Veterinary technicians have been fighting for better legislation and oversight of the profession for many years. In fact, the fighting has been going on for more than 20 years in some states and there have been laws passed to govern veterinary technicians and the practice of veterinary technology in many states in the last few years. However, this fight has been slow going because typically it has been the veterinarians who credential technicians until the laws finally pass and they quite often don't want to feel like "someone is telling me how to run my practice". Veterinary technicians also typically don't have the money for lobbyists or the ability to go spend days waiting to speak before their state legislators and they don't get the public backing that other private interest groups do.



Even with legislation, you won't see an automatic increase in pay because the laws don't govern that. Pay is governed by the perception of value of the veterinarian towards credentialed veterinary technicians. As long as veterinarians can hire anyone regardless of skill/experience/education and label them a veterinary technician or allow them to perform the same duties all while the clients are kept in the dark, pay and respect will not increase. And as long as owners are exposed to uneducated/unskilled/untrained individuals who are passed off as "veterinary technicians", we will garner little public respect or support because the public doesn't understand the difference and see vet techs as unknowledgeable or unskilled.



This is of course not to say that all on-the-job trained staff aren't good at what they do, but when you have so many people working in veterinary facilities for summer jobs or just a job then you end up with a large portion of the workforce that is typically not highly skilled or knowledgeable and that is what the clients see. These are the kinds of individuals who don't see a need for getting an education or going to continuing education lectures because they "don't have to, so why should I?" and these give the rest of us a bad reputation.Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?
Actually there's a lot less legislation than you might think for nursing, and almost none of it has to do with their pay or benefits. What's there is mostly about increasing the supply of nurses, and a little in a few states about staffing levels. Both of those are aimed not at making the nurse's life better but at ensuring a minimum level of patient safety. In general, though, hospitals are pretty well on their own in most of the country in deciding how they staff, and many are willing to stretch well past the point of safety or good sense in order to improve the bottom line.Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?Probably because the patients can't say how well they were treated.



And for the poster that said other wise, vet techs work hard.Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?
Because their patients don't sue.Why is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?I wish I knewWhy is there huge legislation for nurses but not vet techs aka vet nurses?
Easy...they don't do squat.