Читать книгу Pet-Specific Care for the Veterinary Team - Группа авторов - Страница 31

To provide care that will last a lifetime, the veterinary healthcare team needs to be able to consider the needs of the individual across that lifetime, not just at specific points in time that correspond to scheduled office visits.

It is now possible to predict the needs of pets, from the time of puppy and kitten visits well into their senior years, realizing that this is a dynamic process and the model will need to be updated and tweaked throughout the pet's life (see 6.4 Creating a Pet‐Specific User's Manual).

When considering pet‐specific care across a pet's lifetime, it is also important to keep in mind that the goal is somewhat different from that of the standard model of disease treatment. In pet‐specific care, the goal is to keep the pet healthy, focusing on prevention and early detection, just as is done in human healthcare. Thus, our goal is not just to treat animals when they are sick, but to guide owners on the path to keeping their pets healthy and optimizing their pet healthspan, not just their lifespan (see 9.7 Continuum of Care and Convergence Schedules). The process starts with understanding the factors that most affect health, and that begins with appreciating risk.