Tag: Clients
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Are you firework ready?
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The season of terror will soon be upon us, and by that I don’t mean Halloween – I refer, of course, to the dreaded Bonfire Night, and the influx of owners requesting a magical cure for their dogs’ noise phobia. We’re all guilty of losing track of time, but this time of year particularly seems…
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Lack of diversity in the veterinary profession is everyone’s problem
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It is heartening to see the need for diversity in the profession getting some airtime and column inches of late. Discussion of the issue is long overdue, but has this led to progress? Let’s be frank. Look around you – in your vet school class, your workplace, your boardroom and your practice. I’m going to…
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The big C
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I spend much of my working life looking for it, identifying it, and discussing it. My personal life has already been touched by it, and there’s a not inconsiderable chance it will kill me some day. News organisations neatly divide every object in the world into something that will either cure or cause it or,…
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Unable to escape
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As I scrubbed flea tablet-induced cat vomit from the floor for what felt like the hundredth time, I thought maybe I should just learn my lesson and do battle with spot-ons instead, no matter how much my cats scowl at me for days afterwards. Or, worse still, I could try a collar, but I suspected…
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Dishing the dirt on anal glands
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It’s strange that the second thing people always say when they hear you’re a vet (the first is generally to inform you how much money you’re earning) is “oh my goodness, do you have to stick your arm into a cow?!”, as if it is the most disgusting thing another human could possibly do. That…
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Ludicrous layouts: no space for anything and everything out of place
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I’m probably going to come over all “feng shui”, but working in some different spaces recently has got me thinking about how we choose where things go in the veterinary clinic – especially in converted buildings that were never intended to be a veterinary practice. Do we really “choose” where things go, or do we…
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Mastering the art of veterinary medicine
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Veterinary medicine, veterinary surgery, veterinary science; whatever you want to call it, veterinary has all these academic connotations – and rightly so. But a lot of what we do is not black and white – very few “textbook cases” or one-size-fits-all diagnostic approaches exist. There are so many balls to juggle – client requests, patient (and…
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Striving for (im)perfection
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In our current era, it seems as if perfectionism is considered a great virtue. I see and hear a lot of people describing themselves as “a bit of perfectionist” (which always strikes me as an oxymoron) as if this is a good thing, a great virtue to be lauded. I freely admit here that I…
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15-minute consults: a waste of time?
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Many practices still have 10-minute small animal consultations – mine included – until recently, when we made the move to 15-minute appointments. It was initially debated as to whether we could offer longer consultation times in a specified time block, reserved for “sick pets” only. However, this was decided against due to the difficulty of…
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Developing a mutually agreed plan
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A cuddle was not enough for this patient (see top image) – he clearly wanted to use me to get a better vantage point and sharpen his claws at the same time. It’s a bit hard to develop a mutually agreed agenda with a cat, but have you ever stopped to consider whether, as a…