The Pros and Cons of Being a Veterinary Technician

The Pros and Cons of Being a Veterinary TechnicianThe Pros and Cons of Being a Veterinary TechnicianThere are many reasons that the veterinary technician career path is one of the most popular in the animal industry.The vet tech profession has grown exponentially in recent years, and demand for qualified technicians remains strong.Here are some of the pros and cons of this very rewarding but demanding profession. Job Security and Opportunities There is a strong demand for veterinary technicians.The projected rate of growth for the profession is 30 percent through the year 2022. A veterinary technician should have no problem finding a job with such sustained demand for the foreseeable future. The nature of veterinary work virtually guarantees that no two days are alike.Technicians get to perform a wide variety of procedures, see many different patientsand interact with a dozen or mora owners each day. There are usually opportunities for advancement in the veterinary office.Technic ians may be promoted to a supervisory role over time (either working as a head technician or in an administrative position such as veterinary practice manager).They may also advance their careers by achieving a specialty certification that can lead to a higher salary and more specialized duties. Working with animals in hands-on capacity is a huge selling point for this career path.Veterinary technicians have constant interaction with their patients ranging from general exams to post-surgical care. Downsides The clinic can be a stressful work environment.Technicians must be able to deal with upset owners, aggressive or uncooperative animals, euthanasia, and seeing severe injuries caused by trauma or neglect.Stress is one of the biggest factors cited by techs that decide to leave the profession. You wont starve working as a vet tech, but you are likely to only make a moderate salary for your efforts.Even techs with specialty certification do not earn particularly large salaries. Long Hours and Risk of Injury Many veterinary technicians work longer than the traditional 40-hour work week.Many clinics are open on Saturdays, and some clinics are open 7 days a week.Emergency clinics may be staffed around the clock.Even in a clinic that keeps more traditional hours, there are often occasions where they are understaffed, resulting in mandatory overtime work. One of the biggest drawbacks to this and many other hands-on animal career paths is a higher risk of being injured at work.Veterinary technicians must work with animals under considerable stress from injury or being in an unfamiliar environment (and sometimes both of these things play a role simultaneously).A tech must be very careful to avoid bites or kicks from their patients, taking extreme care to handle and restrain animals properly at all times.

How to alleviate your lower-back pain from the comfort of your desk

How to alleviate your lower-back pain from the comfort of your deskHow to alleviate your lower-back pain from the comfort of your deskOne of the leading causes for missing work around the world is lower back pain, according to the World Health Organization. When our backs feel like theyre shooting lightning bolts up our spine, its understandably hard to focus on the task at hand.Recentsystematic reviews into the problem have found that the most important thing you can do to combat your chronic back pain is to move your body, even if the pain makes you want to lie down on the couch. The medical researchers concluded that adding just 20 minutes of any kind of aerobic exercise could significantly alleviate pain. In fact, improving the flexibility in your lumbar spine and hamstrings could reduce back pain by 58%.Although science recognizes time and again that our sedentary lifestyles are bad for us, many of us are mucksmuschenstill working jobs that necessitate sitting down for long peri ods at a time.Here are simple stretches you can do to alleviate some of the tension stiffening your lower back without needing to get up from your deskSeated hip stretchThis is a stretch recommended by the University of California school system that can simultaneously stretch your hip, and lower and middle back. Put your left leg over your right leg. Then put your right elbow on the outside part of the thigh of your left leg. Hold this position for at least 15 seconds as you look over your left shoulder to deepen the stretch. Now switch sides and do the same stretch with the opposite leg.Dont worry about how far youre able to stretch, its more important that youre doing it at all. Your back muscles will thank you.Hug yourselfIf making yourself a stretchy pretzel seems too intimidating, this next back stretch keeps your feet on the ground. Yoga teacher Zotos Florio calls it the thoracic rotation stretch, but you can call it hugging yourself with purpose.Sit in your chair with your fe et flat on the ground. Sit up straight so that your spine is in a neutral position and your weight is evenly distributed in your hip bones. Then cross your hands over your chest so that each hand is holding an opposite shoulder. While you hold yourself, twist to the left and hold for three breaths. Return to the center and then twist to the right side and hold for another three breaths. Try doing this once an hour.Touch your toesYour tight hamstrings can affect the natural curve of your spine and may be the cause of your lower back pain. This is a stretch to loosen them up. While sitting on the edge of your chair, straighten your legs and try to reach your toes as you keep your back and spine straight. When you get as far as you can go, hold the position for 30 seconds before releasing.Once you master these easy stretches, you can incorporate many other advanced stretches into your daily work routine.Get moving

Direct to Fan Marketing in the Music Industry

Direct to Fan absatzwirtschaft in the Music IndustryDirect to Fan Marketing in the Music IndustryDirect-to-fan absatzwirtschaft is part of a broader direct-to-fan model in which artists operate outside of the traditional music industry framework and focus on communicating with (and selling to) their fans directly. The marketing portion of the direct-to-fan model emphasizes using online platforms to promote new music, tours, etc. Fostering a social networking connection with fans is important in direct-to-fan marketing, as are tools like band newsletters and widgets. This type of marketing often allows musicians to gather information about their fans they can use to refine their marketing strategies, such as offering a free music download in exchange for a fans email address, which then can be used to send direct promo materials about a new release or a tour. The Collapse of the Traditional Royalty Payment Model The schlag of direct to fan marketing is a direct result of the colla pse of the music industrys traditional model, the retail marketing of CDs. With the advent of illegal music downloads on the Internet, record companies had to come up with an alternative that, although not particularly good for the industry or musicians, was better than free. That turned out to be the mass marketing of digital downloads on digital platforms- mostly tune by tune rather than by the doppelalbum. The problem with that model becomes very clear from a 2015 Guardian report that compares what an artist receives inrecord royalties from a major label selling a CD with what an artist gets from a download. CDs vary in retail price, of course, but the average is around $15. The artist typically gets between 10 and 15 percent of that average or something in the neighborhood of $1.50 to $2.25. A digital album download may net about the same, but the problem is that fans no longer primarily buy albums. They usually buy the single, which on Amazon nets the musician around 23 cents. But the sales trend for music is away from downloads and toward streaming platforms like Spotify and Google Play, where the single download that nets 23 cents on Amazon earns less than 2 cents. In some situations, streaming revenues per tune can be dramatically worse. In 2014, Spotifys CEO admitted that in the previous year they paid artists less than 1 cent per play. In the most extreme cases, the Guardian concluded that a solo artist would have to sell more than a million downloads per month to earn a nadir wage. For a five-piece group, the sales minimum to achieve that minimum wage would have to be around six million downloads monthly Hence, the advent of direct to fan marketing. The Essence of the Direct to Fan Marketing Model What direct to fan marketing does in a variety of ways is to remove most of the middlemen from the income equation. Instead of expecting a record company to collect and honestly deliver a paltry share of a diminishing royalty payment from another large corporation, the direct to fan marketing model proposes that the artist market the product herself.Here are just a few of the many ways to do this Marketing her own CDs directly to fans at performances. For many musicians, this results in just a few sales each night for others, sales of a hundred or more CDs at each performance are not uncommon.Often the best price point is an even $15- this way the fan doesnt have to find change- a ten and a five will do. The good news is that CD pressing costs have gone way down, and all but two to three dollars of that $15 goes to the artist.Selling digital downloads and CDs through media like CDBaby that make the artist responsible for creating the product and in return allowing the artist to retain most of the money. Using social media like Facebook to build the fan base, then marketing both performances and product through emails from the artist to the fan. Ahead of the game in so many ways, Prince had been doing this for years.Offering fans social incentives for buying products and attending performances. These strategies take advantage of the real affinity that exists between an artist and each individual fan. You can accomplish this in various ways. You can incentivize attendance byactually encouraging your fans to record live performances- a strategy that worked very well for the Grateful Dead. You can offer premium packages that include a backstage pass and a free CD, signed by you, the artist. The Point is Connection Underlying these tactics is a general strategy connect with the fan in as many ways as possible encourage communication between artist and fan through blogs and emails then use that communication to give the fan something he already wants a personal connection with the artist. In many ways, this is a better way of making a living as an artist. The old model treated fans as anonymous buyers of product sold through corporate middlemen. With direct to fan marketing, sales is just one component of a meaningful and more personal connection between the fan and the artist.