The career of a veterinary technician has a promising future in employment prospects, opportunity for growth, and good pay for a challenging and rewarding job.
For a list of accredited school in Illinois, click here. A veterinary technician assists the veterinarian in all aspects of animal care, from animal intake to discharge. The daily duties vary, which contributes to the interesting nature of the job.
Your education will prepare you to assist in surgery, emergency care and animal restraint, perform dentistry, administer anesthesia and medications, take x-rays, and work in a laboratory setting doing blood counts and urinalysis. Other duties include record keeping, inventory, and patient contact and education.
The curricula of the programs in Illinois are very similar. Prerequisite general education courses must be taken before admission or application, most often English, communication, computer skills, math, biology, speech, psychology, or humanities.
The core curriculum is science-based. Typical courses include anatomy and physiology, terminology, clinical skills, laboratory skills, radiology, pharmacology, parasitology, and clinical skills. Animal behavior and nutrition are sometimes stressed. Depending on the program, more or less emphasis may be placed on large or small animals, or laboratory, exotic or zoo animals.
An internship the final semester or quarter brings together your classroom experience and hands-on lab experience in a clinical setting during which you will hone your skills and learn new ones observing veterinarians and technicians. Every school has its own admission procedures. All require a high school diploma, GED or the equivalent. Some programs require experience working, volunteering or observing at a veterinary clinic.
One requires a Health Occupation Aptitude Examination; another requires immunizations, including TB and rabies, to be current. Spots are limited, and some schools use a formula to weigh grades and scores on the aforementioned tests to determine who they will accept. Schools have excellent website pages on application, tuition and financial aid.
The more helpful the website it is, the more information it contains. Time spent carefully evaluating all this information will be time well-invested in these three important areas of your education.
Many websites have net price calculators and other tools to help you estimate your costs. Some Illinois websites even have pages that tell you the average debt students have after completing their education. The interactive chart above is a visual representation of the annual salary of Illinois veterinary technicians compared to the national annual salaries, all based on the latest May Occupational Employment Statistics figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Illinois law also requires vet techs to pass the Technician Veterinary National Exam. In this state, a private testing company called Continental Testing Services administers this test. Candidates for licensure must first submit an application for examination to Division of Professional-Regulation , which will determine eligibility to test and send information regarding registering for the exam.
This division permits potential licensees to take the exam before graduation from an approved program but counts the results only if it receives a graduation certificate within 90 days following the graduation date. Receiving a license by endorsement involves getting a license in one jurisdiction based on meeting similar standards in another. Illinois issues a license to technicians currently in other jurisdictions. The division may request personal appearances to discuss the contents of the application and to determine if the applicant meets all the requirements for a license in Illinois.
Apart from the core courses in English and math, vet tech students also take classes in nursing skills, pharmacology, radiology, animal anatomy and related science courses.
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