Veterinary hospitals run on speed, precision, and teamwork. But one area that still often runs on paper? Anesthesia monitoring. With the 2025 guidelines from the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia (ACVAA) now available—the first update in more than 15 years—it’s time to rethink how we track what happens when patients are under sedation or anesthesia.
Even in the most organized veterinary hospitals, anesthesia is often still tracked with pen and paper. It’s familiar, and it’s what many of us have always done—but that doesn’t mean it’s the best option anymore.
This year, the ACVAA released updated monitoring guidelines for small animal patients—the first revision since 2009. The 2025 update includes new guidance on sedation, neuromuscular blockade, and recovery monitoring, and it clarifies expectations for trained personnel. It also introduces tiered recommendations—minimum, alternate, and advanced—to support a wide range of practice settings and resource levels.
So what do these updates mean for veterinary emergency and specialty hospitals? Let’s break it down—and show you how a tool like Ax Mode, built into Instinct Treatment Plan and Instinct EMR, can support your team in delivering safer, more consistent care.
📋 What’s New in the 2025 ACVAA Guidelines for Veterinary Anesthesia
First things first: a quick look at the updated guidelines.
Here are some of the most important updates:
- Continuous monitoring: Greater emphasis on real-time tracking of patient vitals during all anesthetic events
- Monitoring during recovery: New emphasis on tracking vitals during recovery—especially in the first 3 hours post-procedure, when nearly half of anesthesia-related fatalities occur
- Sedation-specific guidance: Dedicated recommendations for monitoring patients under sedation, recognizing the unique risks and needs of these cases
- Tiered monitoring approach: A flexible system of minimum, alternate, and advanced recommendations to accommodate varied resources and patient risk levels
- Cognitive aids and checklists: Encourages the use of tools like equipment checklists and standardized safety protocols to reduce errors and support team communication
- Personnel expectations: Recommends that a trained, dedicated individual be assigned to monitor anesthesia—not relying solely on automated equipment
The new guidelines are built to work across all kinds of practice settings, with flexible recommendations that help teams deliver safe, consistent care—even when tools or resources are limited.
🛠 How Ax Mode Helps You Align with the 2025 ACVAA Guidelines
Built into Instinct Treatment Plan and Instinct EMR, Ax Mode is a digital anesthesia monitoring tool purpose-built for the demands of emergency and specialty care.
With Ax Mode, your team gets:
- A color-coded interface for logging vitals, medications, events, and notes in real time
- Timers, alerts, and medication calculators to reduce mental math and manual tracking
- Audit-ready, legible records accessible across shifts and teams
And with new updates in 2025, Ax Mode is now even more flexible:
- Skip extubation for sedation cases to keep workflows streamlined without sacrificing accuracy
- New Ax Tags for Sedation, Intraoperative Meds, and Postoperative Treatments improve clarity and team communication
- Improved timer flexibility lets you log Ax End before Procedure End—perfect for cases when anesthesia continues while suturing wraps up
- Coming soon:
- Quick-access Ax Sheet History so you can review past cases, spot trends, and make informed care decisions
- Add and track custom vitals, like ventilator vitals, CRIs, fluids, blood gases, and more, and customize the order they appear on the Ax sheet
Whether you’re prepping for surgery, transferring a patient, or reviewing post-op notes, Ax Mode helps ensure your records reflect what actually happened.
🚨 The Risks of Paper Anesthesia Charts
Still using paper? The level of detail needed for anesthesia records can be difficult to achieve manually, especially when you’re juggling multiple patients or working through a hectic shift.
Inconsistent or incomplete documentation can:
- Open your hospital to compliance risks
- Complicate handoffs and post-op reviews
- Undermine patient safety in high-stakes cases
Paper isn’t inherently unsafe—but in a busy hospital environment, it can be risky.
🧠 Pro Tip: Not ready to go fully digital? Start by auditing a few recent records. Are vitals consistently logged every 5 minutes? Are drug dosages recorded with time and route? If not, there’s room to improve—regardless of your current setup.
🔍 Choosing the Right Veterinary Anesthesia Software
If you’re evaluating digital tools, here’s what to look for:
✅ Real-time, centralized access to anesthesia data
✅ An interface that supports—not slows—your team
✅ Features that reinforce ACVAA recommendations
✅ Compatibility with emergency workflows like sedated procedures
✅ Embedded in your PIMS or EMR
This is where Ax Mode shines. It’s not an add-on or third-party workaround—it’s built into Instinct Treatment Plan and Instinct EMR and is already trusted by some of the busiest veterinary hospitals in the world.
📈 Making the Transition: Tips for Success
Change can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few tips to ease into digital charting:
- Start with one tech-forward anesthesia or surgery team
- Run a side-by-side trial: paper vs. digital
- Appoint a go-to digital support person during the shift
- Review recent anesthesia records to identify inconsistencies
💡 Bonus Tip: Add a routine anesthesia documentation review to your internal audits. You may spot trends that help your team improve, even before transitioning to a digital system.
👉 Want to learn more about how Ax Mode + Instinct can help your hospital run smoother?
We work best with high-volume ERs, specialty hospitals, and advanced general practices that offer full-spectrum care.
If that sounds like you, let’s chat. Book a demo and see how Instinct can help your team do their best work.