15 Nov 2022
Always more than just a blogger, scrolling through her decade’s worth of Vet Times musings has prompted Jane RVN to return to her YouTube channel with renewed vigour.
Jane Davidson
Job Title
A selection of Jane RVN’s YouTube appearances.
There must be something in the air this November, what with a decade of blogs to read through, I seem to be reminiscing quite a lot.
This hasn’t been maudlin navel gazing, I promise. It has motivated me on a few fronts. The most obvious one is that there are now new videos on my YouTube channel!
I always look back at my early videos with fondness. 2016 was a tough year, during which I had to give up work due to ill health. I was mainly housebound with pain and was trying to work out how to avoid further spinal surgery. But during this rather (legal) drug-hazed period, I decided to share my OSCE and clinical skills knowledge via YouTube.
I started making videos and publishing them, but leaving their success to Google SEO. However, after a few months I was happy I could keep up fortnightly videos, so decided to start sharing the videos on social media. People were finding the channel themselves, but I wanted to share that I was still a part of the vet nurse community and supporting students – even while I was stuck at home.
It was a very difficult period and the positive comments and likes for the videos really helped me – so thank you to everyone that has supported Jane RVN on YouTube.
Well, fast forward to today and the channel is still going strong, with almost 2,000 subscribers. So, I felt it was time to do some new videos.
After my blog on the history of surgical instruments, it seemed a series of crossover #PlanetRVN and #PhDbytheSea videos would be perfect – naming and identifying surgical instruments and their uses, plus some interesting and fun (well, I think so…) historic facts.
Since my Gamgee/Tolkien and cotton wool facts I have been intrigued by the links between human and animal surgery. I will admit that what I find fun or interesting may be skewed by the fact that, in my head, I mainly live in the nineteenth century, but learning to be critical of surgical stats is always good.
After advances in the design of artery forceps, numbers of patients dying from blood loss post-amputation plummeted. Great! But the number of people dying from infection post-amputation increased. Who doesn’t want to learn that the advances in artery forceps meant you were alive long enough to die from infection rather than blood loss after leg amputations?
Either way, I’m happy to continue being the BBC of YouTube – striving to educate, inform and entertain.
