Our volunteers represent a diverse range of backgrounds. The largest cohort are our Veterinarians and Veterinary nurses who devote their time and expertise to our remit of best-practice animal welfare for all species in all hazards.
SAVEM volunteers train throughout “peacetime” to expand their skills, in readiness for deployment to emergency incidents. Fire and flood are two of the 11 emergency incident classifications listed in the South Australian State Emergency Management Plan, in which SAVEM is a Tier 2 Participating Organisation (PO).
SAVEM’s June and July training days have been specifically for vets and nurses. In June we held an Anaesthesia orientation training day, where we unpacked, assembled and familiarised ourselves with the SAVEM portable anaesthetic machine. Anaesthesia is an “act of Veterinary science” and must be performed by or closely supervised by a registered Veterinarian. Our machine is versatile, lightweight and will be invaluable for field hospital use.
In July we held Wildlife Emergency Response Skills training, delivered with the unmatched experience and expertise of master wildlife veterinarian, Dr Ian Hough. This is a very popular session with the vets and nurses, with Ian’s good-humoured practical knowledge welcomed by all. In the photo below, Ian demonstrates how koalas move among trees during a flagging-down event, with “volunteers from the audience” Steve and Peter doing their best forest tree impersonation.
We thank specialist trainers who assist us in building and developing diverse skills, enabling good animal welfare outcomes during a SAVEM response.
