A little angry with my vet.

A view from the other side:
I was head receptionist at an animal hospital for 8 years. We had good vets and great clients. But the number of people who would call and want to speak with the doctors before making an appt was absolutely ridiculous. The vet techs and assts. came in at 730 am to start feeding, walking, set up etc. The vets came in at eight and went straight to treatments of in hospital patients. Then one vet went into surgery from 9 til noon and the other saw clients from 10 til 1. Both then took lunch and did more treatments/post op/updated files and made phone calls related to in hospital animals (to their owners for updates). They both went back into appts from 3 til 630 pm. Then they did final treatments, released in hospital animals to their owners, made more phone calls, had staff meetings and went home. The other staff stayed on for hospital cleaning/maintenance, feeding and walking and then also went home.

Not much time there for a lot of calls. Guess who got crap for giving messages to call clients that did not have an animal sick in the hospital or wasn't a post op question? The front office staff. We were EXPECTED to deal with any and all phone calls (aside from emergencies or something we were not trained to handle). If it was something we were unsure of we were expected to find time to ask the vet and then WE were to call the client back. Our job was to be the gatekeeper so the work in the back could get done as efficiently as possible..the animals in the hospital itself were the priority.

Now..just so ya know...we also were all trained to answer most basic health questions, determine what was an emergency, not to question clients who had requested additional wellness testing and to provide the best service we could by assigning appt times and emergency times as appropriately as possible.

Any receptionist who cannot clearly answer MOST questions, determine the extent of an emergency or will not say "I don't know, but I will find out for you" and then CALL YOU BACK is not doing their job. It goes both ways.

To be honest, Marge's mum...I encouraged my clients to speak to the doctors as much as possible when they were there or to arrange a callback time so the best use of time on both sides was used. If you have concerns about the front office staff at the vet you MUST speak to the boss about it. They cannot fix what they are not aware is happening and many vets just don't have time to check on their receptionists. If any of my understaff were rude, dismissive or would not book an appt for requested health testing they would be getting a talking to and likely would not be around for long.

I have spoken to the front office people many times about simple things like food, allergies, shedding issues, etc. I have no problem with that, and for those things there is no need at all to speak with the vet. But if I call with a concern and the vet tells me to call him back in a couple of weeks, AND on top of that I still have some questions (regarding possible medications), I, frankly, don't want to speak to the front desk.

I am always more than happy to make an appointment.. I have asked both the vet and the front desk on numerous occasions whether something warranted an appointment, and they've told me no.

So I definitely understand the need for calls to be filtered, but I'm not a pest with my calls, and I just kind of feel like if one vet can't make himself available to assist me, there are dozens of other practices who can that I can go out and choose from.

Shaina said:

Have you looked into his experience doing hips X-rays for structural integrity evaluation? It's not really like regular medical diagnostic X-rays...there's kind of an art to it. I ended up going to a performance specialist (who didn't cost any more than my vet would have btw) even though I absolutely adore my current vet because it is an irregular procedure...and not one I wanted to have to re-do.

Click to expand...

Yeah.. this is something I need to look into more. I've thought about it, but since we're still a ways away from getting them done, haven't looked into it *that* much, I'll admit.

I have very good vets. If I ask about a procedure and they think it is not necessary, not only do they tell me why, they tell me where to find out more on that why. They will do it, but they want me to understand that often things are not definative and will mostly not give a clear answer but will cost money (sometimes a lot of money to do).

Like I said, if I say, "Hang the money and press on!" they will. they just warn me ahead of time.

An interesting aside on Hip Xrays.. on performance (agility) dogs.. is that there are dogs out there competing well and that are pain free that have bad xrays and other dogs out there that can hardly seem to move that have better XRays. My vet would still do them, but he would do them with that statement.. (you can see I have had this discussion).

I will also say that if I ask my vets to call me, they do. I have known them for over 25 years. They have 24 hour service because they have a large animal practice.

They have also told me that I am not the "usual" client either (have assisted on E Surgery on my own dogs and cats and, when I had them, the cows). I read extensively and often have diagnosed my animal's illness or problem b4 bringing them in. Three of the vets there are gifted surgeons.

I am very lucky!!