Hi, I’m Sam, owner and director of the PetMed CPR Education Company, a veterinary CPR training provider. I know the name is confusing but as an RVN I’m not permitted to use the word Vet! Hectic but here we are. Here’s a little bit of my story and journey with RECOVER.
Hopefully that’s cleared the name confusion up. I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself and share my veterinary CPR journey with you all. I’m an experienced RVN who adores ECC and has spent years working in multi-disciplinary referral hospitals. Back in 2014 I embarked on a teaching career within a further education college, I became programme lead and whilst I loved the teaching, I wasn’t ready to hang up my greens.
I returned to North Downs Specialist Referrals, where I’d worked for a number of years before and took up the role of Head of Training. In this role I was tasked with ‘sorting out the CPR training’. I also ran wards, supported new joiners and still loved the intensive hands-on nursing. Give me a critical patient and I was a pig in the proverbial.
CPR protocol overhaul
Overhauling CPR though was a rather enormous task bearing in mind at that point the RECOVER guidelines were new and not established in the UK… but I stumbled upon RECOVER and bingo I had my evidenced based guidelines to form the CPR training around. That was just the start of my RECOVER journey. I did the online course, loved it! So much detail and I felt confident in the changes we needed to make. I started exploring RECOVER certification but couldn’t find it in the UK. I managed to convince my anaesthetist pal Aurora to come on a trip to Estonia. Full disclosure I sat on the plane with not the foggiest idea of where I was going!
That was back in 2019, and we became certified RECOVER rescuers at EVECCS in Tallin. It was an amazing experience and we both completely embraced the process. Ken and Dan are incredible and if you ever get a chance to attend a lecture please go.
Becoming an instructor
We returned, CPR got overhauled and I spent a year ensuring every single clinical team member had CPR training. Building it into the new joiner onboarding and making it an integral part of the intern onboarding. No easy task I tell you and a year felt like a lifetime!
When we heard they were offering instructor training both our lives were very different. We had just emerged from COVID, both having had our first born in the middle of a pandemic, but we applied, crossed our fingers and then voila we got a place! I started to feel like I was getting my identity back and was even asked to speak there. We were both so excited and this time we knew where we were heading, so off to Ghent we went.
June 2022 Aurora and I joined a very small number of UK based instructors and well the rest is history. Retreats, certification workshops, so many practices helped and even a session with the military working dogs has all happened since then. I continue to learn and expand my knowledge. Loving what I am doing and feeling so privileged to work with so many wonderful veterinary teams.
That’s me, would I be a good fit to support your team with their veterinary CPR training? If so pop us an email and we can make it happen.