A Day in the Life: Answers to Your WTF Questions at the Vet

Marty and I talk a lot. Like we talk pretty much, maybe not daily, but we talk every week. And I interact with people on a daily basis who work in veterinary clinics. I think it’s really hard, sometimes, for us as clients to appreciate what’s going on in the veterinary clinic. ‘The receptionist just snarked at me. I’ve been sitting here for 45 minutes, like, what the F?’

So I thought it would be really great if Marty would talk to us about what the F? Like what’s going on? What’s a day in your life like and your staff? And if perhaps we as clients can then come with that extra grain of compassion that knowledge should bring. I think that that benefits everybody.

“Clients pull in, they may see one or two cars in the parking lot, but they may not know that that means it’s a C-section with 14 puppies, which is what we just did on Friday. Or they may not be aware that there’s a hit by car or a bloat or, you know, some really terrific trauma that’s happening or something really awful that’s happening.

“And if we only have one doctor working, there’s only one place the doctor can be in at a time. And so it may not look to you as a client that it’s very busy. It may look like they’re just sitting around having coffee and gabbing in the back. But in reality, there’s probably something pretty significant going down if you’re having to wait, and that’s the important thing.

“We don’t have HIPAA on the veterinary side. But from a confidentiality perspective, I’m not going to walk into the exam room and say what just happened. It may have been a euthanasia. It may have been a critical diagnosis of something that’s really terminal, and we had to do some counseling for the client, it may be a litter of puppies that are being born. And quite literally, we’ll have sometimes 16 or 17 puppies in a litter, which means all hands on deck. It means everything else gets dropped. And in our practice, because we do a lot of reproduction, C sections are a priority, but so are major traumas. So are bloats.

“It may not look to you like as a client’s perspective that there’s that much going on, but if you’re waiting, either they forgot about you, which doesn’t happen very often, but I’m not going to tell you it’s never happened at any veterinary clinic or something bad is going down. And you probably should just like sort of sort of chill a little bit.”

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.