Pre and post-operative care is important to understand. Despite our bounding energy and best intentions, sometimes things can get missed. Everyday conversations can be the hardest to deliver when time is short. These new videos can help ensure a full and consistent message reaches clients regarding preparation and aftercare for surgical patients.
With ops lists longer than marathons, may these videos help save you valuable minutes, and unnecessary mistakes.
Why does perioperative care matter?
In most practices, surgical cases are a significant part of the day-to-day workload. Every patient admitted deserves the best preparation and aftercare. It’s not just about the patients either – appropriate prep and recovery help to make life lovely for us too.
We all know what a difference it makes when a patient arrives clean, appropriately starved, and having been to the toilet. What a relief for the furry fellow that he’s not sitting cross-legged in his kennel. What a relief for us when, as an ET tube goes in one end, a column of faeces doesn’t exude from the other! It really is such a glamorous job.
Equally, we appreciate our post-op checks when patients arrive having been rested, clients know the answers to key questions and their expectations are appropriate regarding recovery. There’s nothing worse than an owner offended by clip patches or surprised by pink-stained dribble post-dental, for example.
How do we communicate our patients’ pre- and post-op needs?
None of the passing of information happens by accident. Your dedicated teams are communicating instructions several times a day – in consults, clinics, and over the phone. Most of us also have forms we print – to hand out or go through in person.
Even when the system works perfectly, without emission or error, considerable time is given to ensuring that’s the case. Our videos aim to give another level of reassurance that perioperative care advice is consistent, appropriate, and delivered clearly in a simple, step-by-step manner.
Caring for your pet after surgery
Where can it go wrong?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t carry a script with me, I often chat off the cuff about surgical prep and proceedings. There is a good chance my addled brain might miss something important. Luckily there’s an equally good chance someone else in our supportive team will pick it up – but it could be too late – the patient isn’t starved, and the op is cancelled, perhaps. A big waste of time and diary space for everyone. Or, more mildly, the client has had bad experiences with a buster collar but we’re lacking a bodysuit in the appropriate size. Minor and major irritations – all of which can be avoided – ‘communication, communication, communication’ as my tutor used to say.
Why is TV a top choice?
The Vet Channel waiting room TV service provides an excellent channel of communication that serves to support the messages you’re giving in the practice. The perioperative care message is such a vital one – these videos are an excellent and helpful addition to the modes of communication you’re already using.
As with many of our videos, these short informative videos help prepare clients for the conversations that occur within the consulting room – they help target questions, highlight specifics and save our clinical time. Yes – exact details of pre-and post-op care are very much a case-by-case situation, but if clients have a sound grasp of the general principles, the finer points are much more readily received.
There’s a large volume of information for clients to absorb around their pet having surgery. It doesn’t hurt for it to be heard more than once. Visuals often help information stick, so videos are so useful as an adjunct to face-to-face conversations.
To add the pre- and post-op care videos to your playlist, log in and download from our library today. www.vetchannel-media.co.uk