Ahead of marking a milestone of 25 years in veterinary medicine next year, New York-based Ken Yagi is looking forward to being one of the key speakers at Vets Now’s 21st ECC Congress.
The UK’s biggest Emergency and Critical Care Congress takes place on November 7 and 8 at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. It has up to 70 hours of CPD, many inspirational speakers and unrivalled networking opportunities.
Renowned veterinary nurse Ken tells us what delegates can expect from each of the four sessions he’ll be taking part in. And why he’s still passionate about sharing his knowledge at conferences around the world.
Can you give us a brief run through of your career to date?
I started working as a veterinary assistant at a 24/7 emergency practice in 2000. I was there for 17 years, getting credentialed and became a VTS in ECC, then in small animal internal medicine before doing a Masters in Veterinary Science at the University of Missouri. Everything was about trying to help animals to the best of my ability, and I eventually became the manager of ICU. During this time, I also started doing presentations and my speaking career took off as I loved being an educator.
The more I spoke to people in the profession at conferences the more I realised things weren’t as good as they could be. That’s what led me to become involved in advocacy and changing the profession, dedicating myself to reimagining veterinary nursing.
What’s your current role, and what does it involve?
I’m the Chief Veterinary Nursing Officer for the Veterinary Emergency Group. We have 88 hospitals around the US with 2700 veterinary nurses and assistants. We tackle challenges to make veterinary nursing a lifelong career, like earning a living wage, getting recognition, being utilised appropriately and having a good doctor/nurse relationship.
What’s your RECOVER Guidelines 2.0: Basic and Advanced Life Support session about?
The RECOVER CPR guidelines were published in 2012 and newly updated this year. They’re evidence-based guidelines on how CPR should be performed in a standardised fashion to hopefully lead to a better outcome for patients. Basic life support is about performing chest compressions, creating good blood flow and breathing for the patient to maintain oxygen delivery. Advanced life support involves different drugs to administer, what monitoring we should be doing and dealing with certain arrhythmias.
I’ll be covering both basic and advanced CPR, incorporating the newest evidence included in the 2024 guidelines.
And what about the CPR Team Debrief session?
Using the guidelines to do the right thing in the moment is definitely important, but I feel that CPR training is as much about the people side as the clinical side. Before it was standardised, when a code was called it would sometimes go well and sometimes go horribly. In those occasions it may be that people weren’t working well together, it’s stressful and you may have lost the patient. These situations are one of the worst experiences veterinary emergency professionals can have.
The guidelines help fix that, but there’s also handling the emotional side. Team debriefing can help, whatever the outcome, by talking through what went well, what didn’t go well, while addressing each person’s feelings about what happened. That can help the team function better next time.
Debriefing doesn’t happen all that often as people are busy and move on after a code, but it is really important to make it an intentional team process to talk about it while it’s fresh in the mind.
Then there’s More than just hartmanns – coloured fluids
This is about transfusion medicine and the use of different kinds of blood products that are good for different diseases. Red blood cells are good for patients that are highly anaemic and experiencing hypoxia as they have lower oxygen-carrying capacity. Plasma is mainly good for coagulation and sometimes for albumin. The use of platelets is also a huge part of coagulation.
Using the right components for the right issues will minimise the risk for the patient, so having the knowledge in component therapy will be very helpful. But there are occasions where whole blood is useful – like massive haemorrhage – and we’ll talk about that, too.
Finally, there’s your Advanced case-based discussion.
I’ll be doing this alongside Ashton Hollwarth and Helen Wilson. We’ll be looking to present a variety of challenging and complex critical cases, discussing our decision-making processes and differing approaches.
And we’ll be highlighting that one-size rarely fits all in the realms of ECC, where clinical equipoise can be rife.
Who do you think will benefit most from the sessions?
I think the CPR and team debriefing sessions in particular would be for both doctors and nurses. CPR isn’t something you do alone, it’s a team event. One of the things I commonly find when I’d doing simulation-based CPR training is nurses or assistants looking for a doctor to tell them what to do. But I always tell them that they need to know the “why” behind the CPR guidelines and the “how” to execute on it, even if there isn’t a doctor around.
As a profession we need to get away from thinking “we’re ‘just a nurse’ (or assistant) and we need a doctor” to make the right decision. Realistically, it’s whoever is there the quickest and can provide the best care that increases the chance of survival. We’re all equal partners working alongside each other. Team debriefing helps further that cohesion.
What are your thoughts on the Vets Now ECC Congress and why do you enjoy the major international conferences you attend?
It’s about eight years since I’ve been to the Vets Now ECC Congress and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the people I met before, as well as meeting new people. Being among an international community that has the same passion, meeting people who have the same goals of doing better and creating change in their parts of the world, and seeing that circle widen, always energises me.
About Ken Yagi
Ken Yagi MS, RVT, VTS (ECC), (SAIM), Chief Veterinary Nursing Officer, Veterinary Emergency Group
Ken has dedicated his career to reimagining veterinary nursing for 24 years. He is currently the Chief Veterinary Nursing Officer for Veterinary Emergency Group, and the Program Director for the RECOVER Initiative.
Over the years, Ken has received many accolades, including the Veterinary Technician of the Year award by NAVTA and the AVECCTN Specialty Technician of the Year award. Ken co-edited the Veterinary Technician and Nurse’s Daily Reference Guide for Canine and Feline, and the Manual of Veterinary Transfusion Medicine and Blood Banking and publishes articles and presents internationally on topics in ECC, transfusion medicine, and the veterinary nursing profession.
Ken passionately works to bring further recognition of the vital role of the veterinary nurses and technicians through work with industry leading organizations. He is also an advocate for the Open Hospital Concept, encouraging veterinary practices to invite the pet owners to “the back” as a part of the team.
Ken invites everyone to ask “Why?” to understand the “What” and “How” of our field, and to continually pursue new limits as veterinary professionals and individuals.
