Vet Consultations

Vet Consultations

 

If your pet is poorly then our vets are here to help.  In a consultation the vet will discuss with you any concerns that you have about the well-being of your pet and explain in detail what can be done to help your pet to the best possible health outcome.

The vets need to ask you a lot of questions about your animal and it’s environment and it is important for you to be as accurate and detailed as possible as taking this history is a critical part of reaching a correct diagnosis.

Your vet is an experienced, highly trained, professional and will pick things up just from looking at your pet at a distance including assessing the way it walks or holds its head, its general condition etc.  The vet may also need to carry out a thorough physical evaluation. This examination will often require someone to hold the animal and sometimes the best person to do this will be you at other times the vet may call in a nurse or nursing assistant to help. When examining your pet as well as examining the eyes, ears and mouth the vet may also need for instance to feel your dogs abdomen or perhaps they may need to extend one of your pet’s limbs or listen to your pet’s heart or breathing. Your pet cannot talk and the experienced vet can pick up a lot from these kind of procedures.

The vet is picking up information all the time and the more information that is accumulated the more likely a diagnosis can be made.

Following the physical examination the vet may have a diagnosis or have some strong suspicions about what is wrong but sometimes further investigation is needed. The vet will explain what other options there are regarding further information gathering with other diagnostic tools. These could include x-ray’s, ultrasound scanning, blood tests and urine tests. The vet will tell you what the best way to reach the right diagnosis is and explain any further costs involved. Although we do x-rays, ultrasound scans and blood tests in the practice It is not always possible to carry out these further tests immediately.

It may be that the vet has sufficient information to start treatment immediately – if they do so they will keep you fully informed with treatment options and the costs involved.

You may need to come back for further consultations, subsequent consultations for the same condition are provided at a reduced charge.

As you can see there is a lot that needs to be done in some consultations and sometimes we do not know how long a consultation will take until we see the patient and start the process. Inevitably this can sometimes cause delays and may result in later appointments having to wait. To minimise the likelihood of long delays we operate an appointment system based on 10 minute appointment intervals for the consultation list so that we can most effectively manage our time. This is not an absolute time limit on your consultation as not all appointments are for full consultations and often we have more than one vet seeing clients at the same time so if your consultation needs to be longer we have and will take the necessary time for you.

With significant advances in animal healthcare more and more options for diagnosis and treatment have become available. We offer a complete range of services directly through our practice or through other specialist referral centres. We can supply the best treatment necessary and will advise you on the appropriate course of action. We also recognise that not everyone feels they can afford the absolute best option and so we are happy to work with clients to come up with the right solution for them.

We do however strongly advise our clients to take out “Pet Insurance” so that they can ensure that their pet gets the best treatment as and when needed.

As part of our Right Start in Life puppy pack we offer a voucher for 4 weeks free insurance. We do advise that not all insurances are equal when it comes to covering costs so it will pay you to do some research not just about the cost of your plan but also about it covering every eventuality.