ROLES AND
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE
ANIMAL HEALTHCARE TEAM

A multidisciplinary animal healthcare team supports patient-centred, relationship-centred care and a thriving, sustainable animal healthcare workforce. Clarity about roles, responsibilities, and the current legislative settings helps every member of the team work well, and helps employers and animal owners understand who is doing what and on whose authority.

Veterinary nurses, technicians, and technologists

Veterinary nurses, veterinary technicians, and veterinary technologists are three professions with distinct qualifications and their own identities. Together they make up the field of veterinary nursing and technology. A few things define their place in the team:

  1. They practice on their own professional authority within their competence. Their daily work includes patient assessment, nursing care planning and delivery, anaesthesia monitoring, clinical decision-making within nursing care, client education, and initiating care within their competence. They are responsible for their own conduct, their own continuing professional development, and their own practice, guided by professional standards and the AVPRC Code of Professional Conduct. Where an activity requires veterinary delegation, the veterinarian is responsible for the decision to delegate, and the practitioner remains responsible (but not legally liable) for their performance of the delegated activity.

  2. Their titles reflect real qualifications. In New Zealand, the veterinary nurse qualification is a two-year diploma, or a three-year degree and the veterinary technologist qualification is a three-year degree. Internationally, these align with the North American veterinary technician (two-year associates degree or diploma) and veterinary technologist (degree), and with the UK registered veterinary nurse (diploma or degree). The alignment supports credential recognition across borders; it does not collapse the professions into one another, and it does not erase the difference in depth between a diploma and a degree.

  3. Their titles are not yet protected in New Zealand law. Anyone can currently use these titles regardless of qualification. Voluntary regulation through AVPRC, including registration and the Annual Practicing Certificate, is how the qualification behind a title can be verified today, and statutory title protection is the change AVPRC is working toward. See Title Protection.

They usually work in veterinary clinics and hospitals, in referral and emergency practice, in rural practice, or in education, industry, and research.

Allied practitioners

Allied practitioners are qualified for a focused scope of practice, following the pattern familiar from human healthcare, where allied health professions practice alongside doctors and nurses. In animal healthcare, this group divides into two, and the word veterinary marks the line, on the same principle that applies across this site: the term veterinary belongs to those who hold a formal qualification that includes it.

  1. Allied veterinary practitioners hold a qualification with veterinary in its name, such as veterinary physiotherapists and veterinary behaviourists. They are responsible for their own conduct and continuing education and practice within professional standards. On the AVPRC register, this group is currently mostly veterinary physiotherapists registered through NZAVPA.

  2. Allied animal healthcare practitioners work in focused animal healthcare roles without a veterinary qualification, such as animal physiotherapists who are not also veterinary qualified, rehabilitation technicians, farriers, equine dental technicians, trainers, dairy technicians, and artificial breeding technicians. Depending on their qualification, they may be professionals (diploma level or above in their discipline) or paraprofessionals (certificate-level qualification or trained on the job). Their skills go beyond a layperson's. Registration is not required for these roles, although voluntary processes exist and are encouraged.

  3. The work spans many settings, from clinics and referral centres to farms and home care, depending on the discipline. Many of these roles carry the title technician, and the same naming principle applies there too: an equine dental technician holds a focused qualification in equine dentistry, and the title says exactly that, no more and no less.

Animal Healthcare Assistants

Animal healthcare assistants are the foundation members of the team, and paraprofessional describes their role accurately: they work under delegation from the professionals above, providing routine care for boarding and hospitalised patients, maintaining the clinical environment, and supporting the team.

  1. The animal healthcare assistant qualification (previously called veterinary nursing assistant in New Zealand) is an entry-level qualification of roughly one year full-time, and completing it meets the entry criteria for many of the professional qualifications on the New Zealand Qualifications Framework, making it a genuine first step on a career pathway.

  2. The role is well established internationally, known as animal nursing assistant or veterinary care assistant in the UK, and veterinary assistant in Canada and the United States.

Veterinarians

Veterinarians are regulated by the Veterinary Council of New Zealand under the Veterinarians Act 2005. In New Zealand they are educated at Massey University to a standard comparable with the United Kingdom and North America. Three things distinguish their position:

  1. Statutory title protection. Veterinarians are currently the only members of the animal healthcare team whose title is protected by law.

  2. Statutory regulation. Their standards are set under legislation, and they are accountable for their own practice, for their clinical decisions, and for their decisions to delegate. Registered allied practitioners remain accountable for their own practice and conduct.

  3. Activities reserved to veterinarians under current law. Significant surgical procedures are restricted under the Animal Welfare Act 1999, and authorising restricted veterinary medicines sits with veterinarians under the veterinary medicines regime. By long-standing convention, although not specifically outlined as such in the legislation, diagnosis and prognosis also sit with the veterinarian in New Zealand.

Every role above contributes to animal health and welfare, and the team works best when each member practices to the full extent of their competence, with clear delegation and clear accountability at every step.

Veterinarians

Are regulated by VCNZ, under the Veterinarians Act

Veterinarians are animal doctors and in New Zealand they are educated at Massey University to an international standard that is like the United Kingdom and North America. In New Zealand, veterinarians have three important aspects that set them apart from all other animal healthcare practitioners:

  1. Qualified veterinarians have statutory protection of title. This means, they are the only people who can legally use the title of veterinarian.

  2. Registered veterinarians have statutory regulation, meaning their standards of practice are guided by legislation, and they bear the sole legal responsibility for all veterinary care under their direction, including consequences from the conduct/activities of allied animal healthcare practitioners working under their direction.

  3. Legislation stipulates that registered veterinarians are the only member of the healthcare team who is legally able to:

    • Diagnose a disease,

    • Provide a prognosis,

    • Perform surgery,

    • Prescribe medications.