A Day in the Life of a Veterinary Receptionist

For Veterinary Receptionist Week, we spoke to Kate Gaskell, veterinary receptionist at Bollington Veterinary Centre in Cheshire for 20 years, about her work in a busy surgery.

A day in the life

The day starts with the receptionists coming in to open-up and set up all the rooms, making sure they are organised, clear and tidy from the night before.

Most of the morning is then spent booking in clients, dealing with them when they come out of consult, compile the medication the vets have prescribed and answering phone calls. We deal with basic queries and find out more information for the more complicated ones. 

At lunchtime we clean and tidy and restock all the medications after the morning surgery. We then do it all again in time for the evening surgery!

How did you become a veterinary receptionist?

I went into veterinary nursing when I was 17 and worked as a nurse for nine years before I left to have children.

I came back part-time four years later when the practice, Bollington Veterinary Centre, was opened.

Back then I had a four-year-old and worked a few hours a week as a receptionist and built-up from there. I’ve been doing this for twenty years now.

What advice would you give people who want to work in the veterinary profession?

It is so different now to when I started. Back then you just did it because you loved animals and took a college course.

Veterinary nursing is now a proper career, and it is a matter of getting the work experience and becoming known in your local practices to get taken on.

From a receptionist point of view, things have also changed a lot. When I started, there were no receptionists; nurses did everything. Now it’s been separated out, so there are much more specific careers, with different qualifications. 

We give a lot of advice to clients. We need to know when to get people into the surgery, when to get them to stay at home and what they should do. There’s a lot more to it these days.

Why do you think Veterinary Receptionist Week is important?

We do so much to keep the surgery operating as it should! When we have time, we try to highlight our work on social media. We do introductions to what the role of a receptionist involves, quizzes about how many phone calls and appointments we have a day...

It helps clients realise what we do and the difference we make in the care their pets get.