I have been a small animal practioner for 21 years.  The hard facts are that if the regulation is approved as worded (unlicensed assistants would no longer be permitted to monitor an intubated patient during anesthesia and recovery) our ability to provide surgical and dental procedures will be dramatically diminished. There are nowhere near enough LVTs available in the state of Virginia to enable practices to adhere to such a regulation and continue to provide the current number of anesthetic procedures.  To have an LVT (or veterinarian) be required to monitor a patient until extubation prevents them from moving on to the next procedure. In a busy practice where each LVT /DVM pair is doing 6 procedures per day, this will add about 1.5-2 hours per day of unproductive time while the LVT waits for the patient to be extubated. This has a negative impact on the economic health of the practice, as well as the ability of the practice to provide the care our patients need. In addition, requiring the LVT that is performing a dental procedure to also be doing the anesthetic monitoring simultaneous would dramatically reduce the standard of care that we currently have and compromise patient safety. To change from our current structure, where the patients are continuously monitored throughout their anesthetic procedure (including temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, ECG and capnograph) to a situation where the technician who is focused on the dental prophy or the veterinarian who is actively doing surgery has to also be monitoring, is a terrible idea that will lead to increased anesthetic risk for the patients.   The answer is not and can not be "Hire more LVTs" - since there very few LVTs out there to hire.  Until the situation of the LVT shortage is corrected, the best solution is to mandate that every antesthetized patient is monitored by a trained veterinary assistant, that has completed a a specified, regulated anesthetic training program.

I vigorously oppose this provision that would mandate only licensed personnel can monitor intubated patients.