Vet med idiosyncrasies

Started by JSpitz
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J

JSpitz

Illinois CVM c/o 2015
10+ Year Member
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Anyone else notice things that vet professionals do that you don't see in other professions? (fix my sentence structure please :laugh:)

- Quite a few vets or techs always have this BIG, WIDE eyed stare when listening/instructing/correcting clients. I always feel that they got trained somewhere (perhaps RVT or vet school?) to do this as part of client communication. When I first saw people doing this it was freaky with a mix of 😕 - now I just think its hilarious.

- TALKING TO THE PATIENT WHEN THEY ARE TALKING TO YOU!!! Oh man, this still catches me off guard sometimes. For example,
Dr: "Oh Fluffy, you are so cute! Are you feeling cold?"
Me: "...." *stands and stares*
Dr: *4 seconds go by* ".........hmm...jspitz, can you hand me a thermometer"
Me: "wh- OH, its 101.6!! i got it a few minutes ago and it was normal"
No one ever gets mad at me for it, but I used to always have this delayed reaction.

- If you say something wrong, they never say "no" or "that is wrong". They always start with something very general, like "when it comes to antibiotics, you want to..." I really love this, it made me very comfortable, but it can be frustrating for people who learn better in a more binary "correct/wrong" style from their mentors. I think vets and their techs do this with clients too.

- Ignoring "bad" or inappropriate comments or questions. Some clients ask the doctors age, marital status, etc. I am never sure if silence or ignoring it is really the way to go, but I notice that it is docs' go-to response.

All of these things are anecdotal, of course. I am sure there are straight shootin', "get out of my clinic you fool" type of vet professionals out there.
 
JSpitz said:
Some clients ask the doctors age, marital status, etc.
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I have previously been asked by Amish farmers if I was the daughter of the one vet (only 10 years older than me), or the girlfriend of another (7 years older than me).

Awkward, but funny.
 
JSpitz said:
Me: "wh- OH, its 101.6!! i got it a few minutes ago and it was normal"
No one ever gets mad at me for it, but I used to always have this delayed reaction..
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Sorry, just wanted to clarify--I thought 99.5-102 was normal for dogs??
 
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For dogs and cats I go by 101-102.5; horses 99-101. The range is dependent on many factors though and can deviate from these ranges.
 
NStarz said:
Sorry, just wanted to clarify--I thought 99.5-102 was normal for dogs??
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99.5 seems a bit low? I have been told that each vet school will tell you different value ranges. I am more comfortable with 100.5 on the low end and 102 on the high end.
 
I could be wrong but I think she meant that she took the temp of 101.6 a few minutes ago and it was normal (as in 101.6 is normal). But she forgot to tell the vet because the vet was busy talking to the cat asking if the cat was cold. I thought what you guys did the first time but I reread it and got what I wrote above.

In terms of temps I was taught 100.5-102.5 for dogs.
 
I know a vet who ignores anything that he doesn't want to deal with/answer, but I just figured that was his personality. 😉
 
I've never known a medical professional to keep a human remains in an exam room. And yet I've known vet offices to keep dog or cat bones or even a whole skeleton displayed as . . . decoration? Educational material? One of the exam rooms at the e-vet's had a mounted skeleton that my anatomy professor would have envied. I'm not sure that the clients who received Very Bad News there appreciated it quite so much. I've decided that if I ever have my own practice I'll make sure that anything that used to have a face stays in the back, preferably in my own office. Or maybe the break room. Then we could let the techs dress it up for Christmas.
 
I've seen that sort of thing used for education, e.g., to illustrate the relevant anatomy and normal appearance when showing people their horse's radiographs. The private practice I used to work at even had a preserved, bisected horse hoof and pastern - it was pretty cool, and useful for explaining things like laminitis. They didn't have an entire skeleton, but they had legs and skulls. At Davis, it's not in an exam room, but there's a full horse skeleton in the hall of the LA radiology department. I've seen clinicians use it to illustrate things to clients to help them understand what's going on. Maybe horse people are more laid back on average about that sort of thing ??? I personally think human skeletons are cool, too, and wouldn't mind a doctor that had one in the exam room. It would certainly make sense for specialties like orthopedics.

Some of the stuff in the OP sounds very individual. I've worked with brusque, straight-shooting, no-nonsense vets, vets who were afraid to even raise an issue with a tech, and everything in between. In some cases, the vet may not want to piss off a client by correcting them because the client brings a lot of money into the practice, really cares about their pet, etc., and wasn't trying to be malicious. In those cases, simply ignoring the question may take care of the problem and even send a message without being confrontational.

I think the wide-eyed stare is a side effect of trying to look concerned, trying to remember everything and think without that tongue-sticking-out-eyes-closed concentration look, or maybe just trying to keep the brains from leaking out after the client says something that makes your head explode. 😛
 
Disarticulated dog skeleton is one of my next major purchases. Like a morbid model, except not in plastic.
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
I once opened a drawer in the trim room to get out cutting instruments and found...wait for it....wait for it...a uterus. Just sitting there. Fresh. Attending pathologist walks in "Oh! That's where I left it!" and grabs it. 😱
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:laugh: Too funny!
 
Pathology has the best idiosyncracies.

If we have a real bloated one, we need to have coin flips on who has to pop it ....I've seen some wonderfully spouting rumen contents. Like the fountains at the Bellagio.

We also play classic rock on the floor. Like Nip/Tuck, only not surgery. And not people. And yeah, not prettiness either. But there's a lot more awesome.
 
Once the vet's dog stole a tumor that he had just excised. He had the tumor on the counter and he was getting ready to put it in a formalin jar - reached down for the jar, turned back around, and the tumor was gone. The dog was carrying it around in his mouth...luckily he didn't eat it :laugh:
 
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lareinesoleil said:
Once the vet's dog stole a tumor that he had just excised. He had the tumor on the counter and he was getting ready to put it in a formalin jar - reached down for the jar, turned back around, and the tumor was gone. The dog was carrying it around in his mouth...luckily he didn't eat it :laugh:
Click to expand...

😱😱 Why was the dog awake enough to do that right after an excision of something big enough to carry it around in his mouth? Did I miss something?
 
HopefulAg said:
Disarticulated dog skeleton is one of my next major purchases. Like a morbid model, except not in plastic.
Click to expand...

The disarticulated ones cost more, for some reason...

http://www.skullsunlimited.com/record_variant.php?id=3280

vs.

http://www.skullsunlimited.com/record_variant.php?id=4818

Which is the one I have.

You can find some for a bit cheaper, but I trust the company above to do a good job - no bones will be missing, it will be cleaned well, and it will be packed correctly to ship.
 
Whoa! Holy crap that's a huge difference. Maybe I'll just get an articulated one and pretend I put it together, and just use the saved money to bribe anyone who doesn't believe me.

We also play classic rock on the floor. Like Nip/Tuck, only not surgery.
Click to expand...

Guess I'll have to remember to take the Pathology electives.
 
HopefulAg said:
Whoa! Holy crap that's a huge difference. Maybe I'll just get an articulated one and pretend I put it together, and just use the saved money to bribe anyone who doesn't believe me.
Click to expand...

While it would be soooooo fun to put together your own... You would need to drill holes in some places, which would be delicate. Otherwise, you'd have to wrap wires around stuff, and while that would be epic in an artistic sense... not as much for study. I dunno.

Maybe someday. It would be so cool.

The cheapest assembled one is probably from china or something. And it really is crouched like that. Meaning, I like it, I'm glad to have it, but it's not as nice as the one my vet has. The glue is rough, too.
 
lareinesoleil said:
Once the vet's dog stole a tumor that he had just excised. He had the tumor on the counter and he was getting ready to put it in a formalin jar - reached down for the jar, turned back around, and the tumor was gone. The dog was carrying it around in his mouth...luckily he didn't eat it :laugh:
Click to expand...

The same thing happened at my first clinic . . . except that the dog *did* eat it. No one realized it was gone until they spotted the vet's Golden strutting around with blood on his lips. Fortunately, that tumor wasn't supposed to be sent to the pathologist. Clinic pets are <i>fun!</i>
 
Nobody else has had a testicle fight between the OR and prep room? Another fun one I had was disarming the vet while she was in the middle of a surgery without braking sterility. She usually put her pistol in a drawer before dressing, but with the Iraqis running around the clinic, she kept it on her thigh. Being the only American in the room who hadn't scrubbed in, I got the task of retrieving it from her thigh holster.
 
- When a dog (ahem..... a lab) comes in that has just eaten something, we give it a shot of apo and everyone in the treatment area stops what they're doing to watch it vomit...

....when we know its a gardening glove or sock, we take bets on the color

- at one of our staff meetings there was a reminder to please shake out the drapes really well before putting them through the wash... someone had found a shrunken teste.
 
lostbunny said:
- When a dog (ahem..... a lab) comes in that has just eaten something, we give it a shot of apo and everyone in the treatment area stops what they're doing to watch it vomit...

....when we know its a gardening glove or sock, we take bets on the color

- at one of our staff meetings there was a reminder to please shake out the drapes really well before putting them through the wash... someone had found a shrunken teste.
Click to expand...

When I first read this, my mind went straight to living room drapes and I was thinking "man, you guys take testicle wars to a whole new level! Then I Put on my vetmed brain and realized you were talking about surgical drapes. Not nearly as funny as picturing a client moving a curtain in an exam room and having testes fall out!
 
heylodeb said:
When I first read this, my mind went straight to living room drapes and I was thinking "man, you guys take testicle wars to a whole new level! Then I Put on my vetmed brain and realized you were talking about surgical drapes. Not nearly as funny as picturing a client moving a curtain in an exam room and having testes fall out!
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing! I was like wow, how did the testes get all the way over to the drapes? the vets must have been really messy, flinging stuff everywhere! and why would you be putting drapes in the wash?

d'oh!🙄

and I don't doubt how easy it would be to accidentally wash body parts forgotten in surgical drapes.
 
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lostbunny said:
- at one of our staff meetings there was a reminder to please shake out the drapes really well before putting them through the wash... someone had found a shrunken teste.
Click to expand...

When I was a kennel attendant years ago, the clinic I worked at performed a decent number of declaw surgeries.

A few members of the kennel staff were notoriously bad about dumping everything in the hospital laundry bins directly into the washer lest they encounter something "icky".

Stray toes were not an uncommon find in the dryer. :barf:
 
Cautionary Tail said:
When I was a kennel attendant years ago, the clinic I worked at performed a decent number of declaw surgeries.

A few members of the kennel staff were notoriously bad about dumping everything in the hospital laundry bins directly into the washer lest they encounter something "icky".

Stray toes were not an uncommon find in the dryer. :barf:
Click to expand...


We had the same problem with dew-claws and tail docks. Yuck.

Years and years ago, a vet did an amputation of a kittens tail. Another vet stole the tail and put it on a pen. and proceeded to hand it to the other vet (post op!) to write up his chart. The chart (and the pen, and the tail) all ended up in different corners of the room.

I was about 13 at the time, and highly entertained.

(and that, my friends, is right around when I fell in love with vet med...)

As revenge, when the second vet was spaying her own cat, it was recovering on the table next to her. She got up for a few minutes to go do something, and came back and found her kitten on the floor. Ensue freaking out about the kitten falling four feet to the ground, when it was still too zonked to move, while Vet #1 snickers to himself in the corner.
 
cowgirla said:
We had the same problem with dew-claws and tail docks. Yuck.

Years and years ago, a vet did an amputation of a kittens tail. Another vet stole the tail and put it on a pen. and proceeded to hand it to the other vet (post op!) to write up his chart. The chart (and the pen, and the tail) all ended up in different corners of the room.

I was about 13 at the time, and highly entertained.

(and that, my friends, is right around when I fell in love with vet med...)

As revenge, when the second vet was spaying her own cat, it was recovering on the table next to her. She got up for a few minutes to go do something, and came back and found her kitten on the floor. Ensue freaking out about the kitten falling four feet to the ground, when it was still too zonked to move, while Vet #1 snickers to himself in the corner.
Click to expand...

I think vet pranks are possibly some of the funniest you can find.
 
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