Читать книгу Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters - Группа авторов - Страница 48

Medical records are essential in order to assure quality and timely medical care is provided. Record‐keeping procedures must comply with state and local practice acts and federal drug laws (i.e. Drug Enforcement Act [DEA]) and should follow guidelines provided by state and national veterinary medical associations. Animal shelters commonly use commercially available software such as PetPoint (http://www.petpoint.com), Chameleon (https://chameleonbeach.com) or others to maintain, facilitate, and manage individual animal medical records as well as population data.

A medical record should be prepared for each animal that includes the intake date; an individual animal ID number; signalment; physical description; historical, physical, and behavioral findings and observations; results of microchip scanning; body weight and body condition score; names and dosages of all drugs administered or prescribed and routes of administration including vaccines, parasite control products, other treatments, and anesthetic agents; results of any diagnostic tests performed; surgical procedure(s) performed; any presumptive or confirmed diagnoses, abnormalities or problems that are identified; and any other pertinent information regarding the animal's condition. Standardized examination and operative/surgical reports may be used to document both normal and abnormal findings but should allow for additions or updates when necessary and as appropriate. The medical record should also document assessment and follow‐up, including an assessment of the animal's adoptability or other outcomes. Copies of the patient's medical record should be made available to adopters so appropriate ongoing care can be provided.

In addition to the obvious need for medical record‐keeping for individual animals, populations also benefit from thoughtful record keeping and data collection. For example, several goals of the shelter wellness program might include decreasing the incidence and prevalence of infectious diseases in the shelter and following adoption, decreasing the incidence of problem behaviors in the shelter, decreasing the rate of return of animals to the shelter for problem behaviors, increasing the adoption rate, decreasing the euthanasia rate due to disease, and so forth. By identifying and tracking measurable factors (often called performance targets in large animal medicine), it is possible to measure progress toward these goals. In shelter medicine, such factors may be more appropriately termed “welfare targets.” Once baseline data (such as disease rates) are established, it may be possible to measure the impact of protocol changes on population health by evaluating individual welfare targets. A system for regular reporting will make it easier to identify both positive and negative trends in animal health.

Finally, record‐keeping can be used to facilitate tracking of national and regional trends in animal sheltering. In the United States, Shelter Animals Count (https://shelteranimalscount.org) is an independent, not‐for‐profit organization that maintains a national database that promotes standardized data collection and sharing. Launched in 2015, this national initiative with “broad collaboration from the animal welfare community” seeks to enroll all U.S. shelters in order to generate evidence to elucidate the best sheltering practices for promoting and saving companion animals' lives and preventing homelessness.