5.5 Medication Responsibilities

Overview

Veterinary medications in Canada are approved by Health Canada for the treatment, prevention, and diagnosis of disease in animals. Many drugs are labelled for use in specific species, though many of these medications are also used by humans. Once they have been approved for use in animals, it then becomes the responsibility of the veterinarian to prescribe the correct medications.

Veterinary-Client-Patient Relationship

A veterinarian cannot provide medical advice or write prescriptions for an animal they have never seen. Therefore, a valid veterinary-client-patient relationship (VCPR) must first be established (Kustritz, 2022). The veterinarian must also be able to write medical records to keep track of these patients.

In companion animal and equine medicine, this generally includes doing a physical exam on the animal and discussing the animal’s history with the owner, so the veterinarian is aware of the entire situation before making any medical decisions. This is important, as medicine is very patient-specific, and without this knowledge it is possible to do more harm than good.

Farm animal species are generally managed in groups, so the veterinarian must be familiar with the herd and the farm’s practices. The veterinarian does not always need to examine every individual animal. For instance, on a beef farm of 400 cows, examination of each individual animal would not be tenable (Kustritz, 2022).

In Canada, each province decides how long their VCPR is valid for–that is, how many months a veterinarian can give medical advice or refill prescriptions before they must see the animal or herd again (Kustritz, 2022).

For more information, see vet client patient relationship.

Extra-Label Drug Use

As previously discussed in this chapter, medications undergo approval by Health Canada. When a drug is approved, the approval is species-specific, and labelled for a specific indication, at a specific dosage, route, frequency, and duration. In veterinary medicine, we often do not have a drug that is labelled specifically for what we need, so veterinarians are allowed to use drugs “off-label”. This is termed extra-label drug use (ELDU), and means the use of the drug does not follow the label that was approved by Health Canada (Kustritz, 2022). Drugs are only used in this manner when there is not an approved veterinary product available.

Veterinarians hold a very important privilege, because most drugs are not tested on many of the species we treat. Therefore, this privilege enables vets to extrapolate information from the label and apply it as needed. Medical judgment is a very important factor in this.

Rights of Medication

When a prescription is ordered from the DVM, it is important to follow the “rights” of medication. These steps are followed in order to avoid medication administration errors.

The rights of medication administration are as follows:

1. The right patient
2. The right drug
3. The right dose
4. The right time
5. The right frequency
6. The right documentation

When medications are taken, there are many different doses, routes, timings, and medications themselves that can be chosen. As such, it is important to make sure that all of these are the right ones for a particular patient.

When preparing medications, each team member must be aware of their scope of practice–these are rules set out by the provincial veterinary governing bodies on what each team member is allowed to do within the clinic based on their role. In Alberta, RVTs and DVMs are licensed by the province, while VOAs and VMAs are considered “unregistered auxiliaries”. See delegation of veterinary medicine approved by ABVMA for more information on scope of practice in Alberta.

Understanding Prescription Labels

Reading prescription labels and being able to interpret the information in common terms is important for veterinary assistants, as you will be able to help the client understand the instructions for administering the medications that are being sent home with their animal.

Prescription labels must include the following information:

• Clinic information
  • Name, address, phone number
• Veterinarian information
  • Name of prescribing veterinarian and license number
• Client information (clients are the owners of the animals)
  • Name
• Patient information
  • Name, species
• Drug information
  • Name, concentration (strength), quantity, indications, warnings and side effects, DIN, expiry date, # of refills
• Dosing/administration information
  • Dose, route, frequency, duration
• Date the prescription was filled

(Kustritz, 2022)

References 

AAHA. (2019, September). VCPR: American Animal Hospital Association’s position regarding the veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR). https://www.aaha.org/about-aaha/aaha-position-statements/vcpr/

Alberta Veterinary Medical Association (ABVMA). (n.d.). The professional standard for the delegation of veterinary medicine. https://abvma.in1touch.org/document/6039/Delegation%20of%20Veterinary%20Medicine_Prof_Std_approved%20by%20ABVMACouncil_Feb2023_Final.pdf

Kustritz, M. R. (2022). Veterinary preventive medicine. University of Minnesota. https://pressbooks.umn.edu/vetprevmed

Image Credits

Rx label by Kelly Roberton, NorQuest College. Used with permission.