Читать книгу Pet-Specific Care for the Veterinary Team - Группа авторов - Страница 60

There are dozens of factors that influence how an individual pet will be cared for. Most of these are out of our control. We don't choose the genetics of the animals (but we can counsel; see 3.4 Predicting and Eliminating Disease Traits), their lifestyles or how the client was raised to treat or care for pets. However, we do have influence over how we deliver information to our clients, and we choose the services and products we promote and market to them. We have hundreds of opportunities every week to teach our clients about what is available to them, why it's important for their pets, and how we can deliver it. The better the care we offer and the more customized it is to the needs of the specific pet, the longer our patients will live and the greater their healthspans will be.

We are responsible for the health and well‐being of our patients. If a pet dies from a disease for which we had a preventive or a treatment that we never told the client about, that pet's death is at least partially our responsibility. It is our job to tell the client what products or services would benefit their pet – without judging, prejudging or making assumptions about what the pet owner wants or doesn't want done. It is their job to decide which services and products they want. We should be giving them enough information to make sound decisions. We create opportunity for ourselves by giving pet guardians choices as to levels of care. Ways to personalize care for each client and patient include:

 breed‐specific programs and DNA testing (see 3.13 Breed Predisposition)

 Fear Free™ strategies (see 6.6 Fear Free Concepts)

 customized healthcare plans (see 1.3 Personalized Care Plans)

 multiple payment options (see 10.13 Approach to Pricing)

 offering house calls or virtual care (see 2.5 Virtual Care (Telehealth))

 offering compounded medications and home delivery (see 9.10 Dispensing and Prescribing)

 fostering personal relationships between clients and individual team members (see 5.1 Pet‐Specific Customer Service)

 providing classes or seminars for clients

 developing good relationships with specialists or utilizing mobile specialists within your practice (see 10.10 Making Referrals Work)

 performing health risk assessments (see 1.2 Providing a Lifetime of Care and 2.7 Risk Assessment)

 customizing client education materials (see 5.14 Client Education Materials).

We waste opportunities to better care for our patients when we worry about rejection, being too assertive or spending too much of the client's money. Instead, we should be providing choices and giving every pet guardian the chance to take the best care possible of their furred or feathered family members.

By and large, our clients don't know all that much about medicine, whether animal or human. Nearly half of US adults are considered medically illiterate [1]. Many clients have difficulty following even simple instructions on a drug label or understanding a doctor's diagnosis and instructions. The majority of human patients don't know the names of their own medications. Even otherwise intelligent, well‐educated people can become confused when dealing with information outside their area of expertise, particularly in times of stress.

Clients who don't understand the complexity of a problem or its solution will question the expense. This certainly applies to treating sick or injured animals but fear influences decisions about wellness care as well. Fear of anesthesia, fear that the pet won't be able to chew if you extract those teeth, fear of medication side effects, of overvaccinating, of chemicals in pet food and many other things.

Clients don't know how to judge risks and benefits, they don't understand the causes of diseases their pet might get (“Where would he have gotten THAT?” “He's an indoor cat, he doesn't need to see the vet every year”) They don't know which of those medications they are giving is the one for the cough and which is the one for pain. They think that blood testing is a waste of money because they don't understand that we have medications or special diets to treat what we find.

Our clients are paying for our knowledge and guidance. They did not attend veterinary school, so it is our obligation to communicate that knowledge to them. Practicing medicine means being a teacher to pet owners. Every client interaction is an opportunity to teach about pet care, including what problems their pet might have or be susceptible to and how we could address them. Just think – we each have the opportunity to teach and influence thousands of people over our careers!