Meet Éilis Nichol: Veterinary Nurse and now part of the IMV Customer Care team
My name is Éilis and I have been a veterinary nurse for over 40 years. I live in Dublin with my husband and our rottweiler Ned and I have a horse called Lily who is kept on livery.
I trained in a small animal practice in Dublin. At that time there was no recognised veterinary nursing course in Ireland, so my qualification is through the RCVS. The course at that time was two years. There were only about six training centres in Ireland then. We worked full time in practice and had lectures one night a week.
Veterinary nursing only became recognised a profession in Ireland in 2008 and the title of veterinary nurse is now protected by law.
My first job after qualifying was in a mixed, mainly large animal practice. Never having studied large animals it was a major learning curve, but I loved the farm visits and being outdoors.
Following that I ran a riding school and livery yard for 11 years. During that time, I taught many students and it’s nice to see that there are quite a few who still ride and whose children are also riding. One of my favourite groups to teach was our local Riding for the Disabled group. I had students of very mixed physical and learning abilities in those classes but the pleasure it brought to them was particularly special. We also hosted a Special Olympics Equestrian event in 1991. I competed at riding club open level for many years with my one in a million mare Stormy.
Stormy was bought in a market as a just broken 3-year-old in 1984 and was with me until she was 35 years of age, when I had to put her to sleep.
I went back into practice in 1995 again to a mixed practice in Dublin. My main role was in the small animal hospital, but I did get to assist with some large animal surgeries.
It was during that time that I encountered my most exotic patient Jodie. Jodie was brought in to us by a local wildlife rescue having been rescued from a housing estate in Dublin following a report from a neighbour that there was a tiger in the garden next door. The neighbour was correct. Jodie was a 12-week-old Siberian tiger, who was bought as a pet. Unfortunately, when we got her into the practice she was malnourished and had pneumonia. She was only about as big as shih tzu when she first came and would barely eat. However, as time went on her health improved and she became really playful just like any young kitten but on a larger scale. By the time she left us a few weeks later, she was the size of a small labrador and eating a leg of lamb a day. She eventually was rehomed to a wildlife sanctuary in California when she was about 10 months old, by that time she could take down a grown man with one swipe of her paw.
In 2004 I moved to another mixed practice in Meath where I worked in the small animal branch. While I was there, I started running nurse clinics with my weight management clinics being particularly successful.
I also developed an interest in dog behaviour and training. Having two older dogs in our house we decided to get a younger one. I wanted another german shepherd, so we found Cleo in a local rescue and adopted her. She was 6 months old when we got her, and how she changed our lives! She was brilliant with people, but she was extremely dog aggressive. She taught me more than any dog I have ever had. It took about 2 years to rehabilitate her. She came to love agility and the dogs at the agility classes with her. Eventually she went on to help me teach other dogs, she was demo dog for veterinary nursing conferences on multiple occasions and she did educational visits to national schools when I worked with the Irish Blue Cross.
I served on the committee of the Irish Veterinary Nursing Association from 2008 to 2020 in the roles of secretary, PRO, chairperson & treasurer. I was privileged to be on the committee when we held the first veterinary nursing conference in 2010.
In 2016 I was beginning to feel my age catch up with me in practice and I decided I needed a change. I moved to a small animal charity practice The Irish Blue Cross in a mostly administrative role but still very much involved in the practice and with the clients. I had a great 6 years there working with a fantastic team of nurses, vets, receptionists, other admin staff and of course volunteers. My role was mainly focused on the running of the mobile veterinary clinics. There were three large trucks fitted out as veterinary consult rooms which went out to ten different locations in Dublin from Monday to Friday to provide veterinary care for people with limited income. The trucks were all driven by volunteers, one of whom is 61 years driving the mobile clinic.
In 2022 I saw an add in the Veterinary Ireland Journal for a customer care administrator with IMV Imaging and the rest as they say is history. I started with IMV in November with a trip to Bellshill on day one after meeting the team in Ireland first. I got to meet lots of my new colleagues and learned so much about the business. The highlight of the week was getting to see our products in action when I attended a sheep scanning course.
