How GuardianVets Maintains a Gold-Standard Triage Team

We’re incredibly proud of our team at GuardianVets. There’s a good reason for that- we’ve spent years building up an experienced, dedicated staff. We’ve also spent years fine-tuning our clinical standards for triage, honing our customer service guidelines, and shaping our operations to provide fast, efficient support when pet owners call in.

Let’s break down what that looks like in practice. We’ll dig into our hiring standards and our training processes to see why GuardianVets is a team you can trust.

What does it take to join the team?

First: our hiring manager, Sarai, is a vet tech with ten years of experience in the industry. She maintains extremely high standards from the very beginning of the interview process. 

To even be considered, candidates must have graduated from an AVMA-accredited school. We want our team to know how to handle the next steps when dealing with an animal in crisis, but we also want them to know why they’re making the recommendations they do. We also require that candidates have at least three years of emergency room experience. It’s important to us that our team knows how to stay cool, compassionate, and focused in fast-paced, high stress situations.

From there, candidates must pass a quiz to interview with our team. This is a blend of questions about triage style, the candidate’s responses to different situations, as well as general interview questions. 

We look for team members that have a rigorous understanding of clinical procedure, as well as the ability to compassionately communicate with pet owners. Our philosophy is that every case is significant, even if it’s not medically urgent- we believe the question is not if a patient should be seen, but when.

What’s the GuardianVets training process?

If the interview goes well, the candidate moves into the training stage, where they work with our training team to learn the ropes. 

This team is made up of credentialed veterinary technicians with over 50 years of combined experience. They support new hires through a series of courses focused on empathetic service, our clinical guidelines for triage, and the ins-and-outs of using our software platform. 

By the end, candidates are experts on providing compassionate service, triaging cases based on species and clinical symptoms, and using our software to follow the standards of our partner hospitals. 

At this point, they must pass a series of quizzes before moving into one-on-one training. Candidates are partnered with experienced GV technicians to shadow on shifts and work through a series of mock calls. The candidates that pass this stage start taking live calls with a coach observing and supporting as needed.

It’s an intensive process from beginning to end, with built-in accountability at every level. 

How do we maintain a high standard of quality?

Transparency is one of our core values at GV, and that’s true both internally and with our customers. 

All of GV’s calls are recorded and documented within the platform. This allows our customers to clearly understand what’s happening on calls to their hospitals and it’s also a key way that we handle quality assurance internally. We do regular call reviews to ensure consistency.

Beyond that, we err on the side of caution. If we’re not sure about a case, we refer it so there’s never a question of an animal getting less care than it needs.

Finally, our Chief Veterinary Officer, Shawna Garner, keeps us at the cutting edge of best practices in the veterinary industry.

The result? Well, the kind of service you can expect from GuardianVets is genuinely unmatched in the industry. Our team is highly experienced and trained to work from your protocols, so you can trust that your clients and patients are receiving only the highest standard of care.