ACM50412 Diploma of Veterinary Nursing (Emergency & Critical Care)

Our Diploma of Veterinary Nursing (Emergency & Critical Care) is the standard industry qualification for any nurse working in an emergency and critical care facility. It allows you to extend your knowledge in nursing these complex cases.

You’ll also benefit from this course if you currently work in a large general practice with a varied emergency caseload.

You’ll learn about emergency cases, including:

Trauma and wounds
Multiple traumatic injuries (e.g. Resulting from car accidents)
Abdominal emergencies such as GDV
Reproductive emergencies
Ingested toxins and snake bites
Diabetic ketoacidosis
Sepsis
Addisonian crisis and many more.

The course places a large emphasis on advanced critical care and intensive care monitoring of patients, as well as patients suffering from haematological diseases such as disseminated intravascular coagulopathy and thrombocytopenia.

The course is delivered entirely by distance education using our online 'Student Portal.' This allows you the flexibility to study when it suits your schedule. You won’t need to attend any on-campus classes. We’ve designed the course to fit around your work and lifestyle.

How is the course structured?

Our Diploma (Emergency & Critical Care) is a ‘taught’ course.

That means we teach you the skills and knowledge required and then you apply that knowledge to your own, real-world cases, rather than just being asked to do a stack of assessments and research.

You’ll still be required to undertake your own research for some assessments. However, we’ll guide you through what you need to know via 'knowledge checklists,' set textbooks, and structured self-assessment tasks to ensure you have the required knowledge before completing any exams or assessments.

Our course is divided into three distinct sections:

1. Advanced Nursing Theory

You’ll learn all the vital skills you need to nurse advanced cases, including:

Fluid therapy
Pain Management
Wound management
Advanced inpatient care
Animal reproduction
Pain management
Advanced anaesthesia monitoring

2. Advanced Emergency & Critical Care Nursing

We’ll teach you about the types of emergency and critical cases you can expect when working in an emergency centre, including:

Medical and traumatic emergencies
Dealing with toxicoses
Emergencies requiring surgical intervention.

Each subject walks you through common procedures and disease processes, how to assist, the equipment required and how to nurse a patient in ICU or post-operatively. You’ll then put this knowledge into practice in your real-world cases. You’ll need to complete a range of case studies complete technical skill logs, and fill out nursing case logs.

3. Nursing Management

During the course you will cover some key areas of nursing management including:-

General management of your nursing team
Mentoring and inspiring your team of nurses to deliver great customer service and patient care.
Professional Development
Development and implementation of policies and procedures
Managing Biosecurity in the veterinary clinic - covering infection control and the workplace health and safety implications.

This section of the course is designed to assist you to review and improve on your existing clinic policies and develop new ones.

Application Criteria

You must:

Have successfully completed a ACM40412 Cert IV in Veterinary Nursing (older qualifications or overseas qualifications will need to upgrade via RPL first - we have special deals for upgrading for Diploma students, just ask us)

Have suitable post qualification experience with emergency cases

Be employed in a veterinary practice with an after hours service that sees a variety of emergency cases and has critical care facilities and equipment, including:

A minimum of 15 hours per week on average

- If you hold a casual position at an emergency clinic, fulfil the 15hrs a week at a general practice in addition to casual hours at the emergency clinic.

If you work in a smaller general practice that sees a larger proportion of emergency cases than normal clinics and has the right equipment, we may still accept your application. However, it’s likely you’ll need to undertake several work placements within a specialist centre to complete sections of the course.

Please note: These work placements must be arranged prior to your officially enrolling on the course. You can still apply and discuss your situation with us before arranging anything.

Students falling under this entry requirement are only accepted on a case-by-case basis. Our Nurse Educators reserve the right to make the final decision as to whether we think you’ll have access to the right caseload to successfully complete the course.