Vet Times

Tag: Euthanasia

  • Coping with euthanasia from a distance

    Coping with euthanasia from a distance

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    I’m not really sure what’s happening in practice at the moment, but it’s insanely busy. Despite trying to justify the unbelievable increase in work, I can always think of a counter argument: There’s fewer staff members, so maybe the cases are just more concentrated between fewer vets? In reality, we are actually only 1.5 vets…

  • What about vets on the front line?

    What about vets on the front line?

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    Our profession is generally pretty good at pulling together in the face of adversity. I’ve always loved the community feel of being able to go to CPD events, and usually know someone, or have connections with someone, who is there. I love being able to send a message to my uni friends at any time…

  • ‘The buzz’

    ‘The buzz’

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    I am, and shall always remain, a city boy. However much I love the peace, simplicity and endless rainfall of the Devon countryside, I feel most alive surround by buildings, traffic, sirens and people. This is surprising because I’m not an especially sociable person, and I am only rarely involved in the sorts of things…

  • Clearing the decs

    Clearing the decs

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    Ahh, Christmas is here: the time for massive, conspicuous and planet-destroying consumption; the time for finding out which new Christmas “tradition” has been invented by people in marketing this year to separate you from your money. For me, this December has been punctuated by repeated episodes of sudden middle-of-the-night realisations that, once again, I’ve forgotten…

  • Human euthanasia: a poem

    Human euthanasia: a poem

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    I wanted to write something about human euthanasia, and how I feel about the current state of end-of-life care. I’ve talked about in a blog before, and very little has changed, so I wondered what would be the point of talking about it again. Nevertheless, I thought I’d sit down to try. Last time, I…

  • Loss (reprise)

    Loss (reprise)

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    My father-in-law was the type of gentleman they don’t make any more. He was a far calmer, kinder, friendlier and gentler man than it is within my nature to be. Although he was her stepfather, he was far more of a dad to my wife than the previous incumbent. He was the kind of grandfather…

  • Disillusionment

    Disillusionment

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    “Have we had the suicide talk?” I was 16 or 17, seeing practice at my local vets’, as I did every Thursday evening. One of the vets would often fill gaps in consults by grilling me on the ins and outs of the profession, but this topic had not been covered before. When I blinked…

  • Mastering the art of veterinary medicine

    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…

  • 15-minute consults: a waste of time?

    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…

  • EMS: life, death and lost holidays

    EMS: life, death and lost holidays

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    EMS is something I haven’t touched on too deeply, which is odd considering how much of a vet student’s life it takes up. For those not familiar with the term, EMS stands for extra-mural studies: work experience conducted outside of university term time. Each vet school organises its EMS slightly differently, but at Bristol we’re…