NAVTA Co-Sponsors Heartworm CE Course, Vet Tech ContestJuly 30, 2014 The National Association of Veterinary Technicians in America (NAVTA) is partnering with Merial Ltd. on a client education campaign and with Pets Best Insurance Services on a nationwide contest. The Merial partnership involves a continuing education course designed to teach veterinary technicians to have effective conversations with pet owners about the importance of year-round heartworm disease prevention. “Empowering veterinary technicians with the tools and knowledge needed to offer sound advice is paramount to Merial’s commitment to pet health,” said Sarah Cloud, a marketing director with the Duluth, Ga., drug maker, which produces the heartworm preventive Heartgard Plus. “With NAVTA’s approval, Merial is now able to offer this course to all veterinary technicians.” The free online course, available at JoinPowerOf12.com/education, is RACE approved for one continuing education credit. The material also addresses misconceptions and miscommunication. “This course provides simple tips on how to make that conversation more constructive and truly showcase the need that year-round protection serves,” said Julie Legred, CVT, NAVTA’s executive director. Also announced July 25 was the “Why I Love Being a Vet Tech” contest, which asks veterinary technicians to write a short essay explaining how they …
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Must-Have Summer Reads: 5 Books Featuring VeterinariansJuly 10, 2014 Follow Veterinary Practice News on Twitter at @vetpetnews. Have you ever picked up a novel and read the back cover only to discover the protagonist is a veterinarian? It’s possible you purchased it for that reason. You read it, either reacting to the inaccurate portrayal of a veterinarian’s job or perhaps you were pleasantly surprised that the author had done his research. Or maybe a veterinarian wrote the book, relaying tales from her experience. You related to it, shared her experiences by reading about them. As a book lover who also happens to write for a veterinary magazine, I couldn’t help wondering about these books about veterinarians. I discovered Goodreads’ list of 135 and narrowed it down to the following five, in no particular order (based on descriptions and reviews): goodreads 1. The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes: And Other Surprising True Stories of Zoo Vets and their Patients: Edited by Lucy H. Spelmand and Ted Y. Mashima, "The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes” is a collection of stories by exotic animal …
What Do They Teach In Vet School?July 10, 2014 A few years ago, John Taylor Gatto, multiple-time New York City Teacher of the Year and one-time New York State Teacher of the Year, wrote a scandalous, revolutionary, irreverent article about what schools should teach students. He starts the article by listing a set of 10 critical skills suggested by one of the schools at Harvard (“perhaps the School of Government,” he ponders). Here is the list: The ability to define problems without a guide. The ability to ask hard questions that challenge prevailing assumptions. The ability to work in teams without guidance. The ability to work absolutely alone. The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one. The ability to discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye to reaching decisions about policy. The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into new patterns. The ability to pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant data. The ability to think inductively, deductively and dialectically. The ability to attack problems heuristically.* * You probably should check out the meaning of this word if you were to learn, well, heuristically. If you did that, you would learn that heuristic relates to …
7 Reasons You're Better Than A PhysicianJune 20, 2014Sure, we’re veterinarians so we’re biased. Nevertheless, it’s true that plenty of you will concur that our clients are often better served by our kind than by our physician cousins. I got to thinking about this after writing my last column detailing my many misadventures related to a Rottweiler-induced broken nose. Fielding the glut of collegially sympathetic comments I received in its aftermath, I realized our clients have lots to be grateful for compared to their encounters with our physician counterparts. 1) Cost Intelligence Concerns Let’s be honest: Physicians often have no idea how much their services cost. Unless they’re working in a fee-for-service environment (my nose-mending plastic surgeon, dentist and dermatologist are three exceptions), they’re typically clueless as to the price of their services, the diagnostics they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Even after Massachusetts installed a law requiring physicians and hospitals to disclose their fees, receiving even a rough estimate from a provider or hospital in advance of a procedure, for example, is essentially impossible. In fact, a recent NPR report revealed that securing an estimate for something as standard as an uncomplicated vaginal delivery was almost …
Is Your Clinic Receptionist Losing $6,000 Per Month?April 17, 2014 When a phone shopper calls your veterinary hospital, does a confident receptionist answer? If grumpy Gloria quotes a price and hangs up without scheduling the exam, she could be costing your clinic $6,000 per month. Let’s say your clinic gets 10 phone-shopper calls this week, and your receptionist schedules eight appointments. Most calls are from new pet owners who need preventive care or spay/neuter surgery. Your practice can’t afford to lose more than $71,000 annually in new patient care. Phone shoppers aren’t just checking prices—they’re looking for long-term relationships with your practice. At Communication Solutions for Veterinarians, we have provided phone-skills training to more than 3,500 veterinary staff (www.csvets.com/training.htm). During screening calls to determine employees’ current skills, we listen for attitude, confidence, what information is provided, and most importantly, whether they ask for the appointment. Out of 3,500 calls, the average score is 2.5 on a 5-star scale, which is below average. Only 6 percent of receptionists asked for the pet’s name and used it during the conversation. Only 46 percent asked for the appointment. Elevating phone skills of your front-desk staff not only improves client service, …
Human Resources: Why Should I Care?April 2, 2014 If you are NOT a member of your practice's management or leadership, you may be asking yourself this question: "Human resources? Why should I care?" As it turns out, the human resources protocols and policies should matter very much to you, and every other person on the team no matter the position. Here is a sample of why: Would you like to know what is expected of you when you interview and consider being hired by an organization? Then you'll want to see a job description. Would you like to be trained on what is expected of you, so that you have every chance to succeed on those specific tasks? Then you'll want to see the training program, which uses the job description as the backbone of essential training. Would you like to be evaluated on those things that are expected of you, that you were trained to do correctly? Then you'll want to see the performance evaluation process, and one that evaluates those tasks on your job description, in your training program. Would you like to know when you do something RIGHT, or are you comfortable with the unwritten policy of "no news is good news?" …
Dr. Gerhardt G. Schurig, Dean, Virginia-Maryland Regional College Of Veterinary MedicineMarch 19, 2014 Dr. Gehardt G. Shurig has traveled a long and winding road on his path to becoming dean of Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine--from his birth in Santiago, Chile, to a stint as a meat inspector in a slaughterhouse, to academic experience on opposite ends of the continent . It's due to his colorful background, and that long road he traveled, that VeterinaryPracticeNews.com chose to launch our Vet School Dean Q&A series with Schurig. Name: Dr. Gerhardt G. Schurig, Dean, Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine Age: 65 Degrees and Schools: 1977 – PhD, Immunology, Cornell University 1974 – MS, Immunology, Cornell University 1970 – DVM, University of Chile 1970 – Licentiate in Animal Husbandry, University of Chile Family: Ginger (wife), Michelle (daughter), Pablo (son) Hometown: Blacksburg, Va., (current); Santiago, Chile (native) 1. Why did you enter veterinary medicine? At the time I joined veterinary medicine, there was much talk about the need to feed the world. I was interested in improving farm animal health and productivity and also had great interest in studying diseases that spread from animals to humans (zoonosis). I wanted to contribute to the discovery of new ways …
We Should Have Learned These Lessons BeforeMarch 6, 2014 Everyone learned that “What goes up must come down.” Anyone with money in the stock market in late 2008 saw accounts drop seemingly by half almost overnight. Real estate values went down and the banks became unstable. As a result of the economic meltdown, the Gross National Product fell and the unemployment rate rose. All in all, not a good time for most people from 2008 through 2010. The specific numbers are still being crunched, but the veterinary profession was not as affected as most other business sectors. Most veterinarians felt lucky they were not automobile dealers, real estate salespeople, bankers or stock brokers. Were veterinarians hurt? Absolutely, but not to the extent many others were hit. The specific effect depended on your practice location, practice type and your attitude about the recession. In most cases, veterinary practices were somewhat resistant to the recession, although not recession-proof. From various surveys done by AAHA, AVMA and NCVEI, reported gross revenues vary from being up 10-15 percent to being down 25-30 percent. As Dr. Karen Felsted, CEO of NCVEI, has said many times, “Flat is the new up.” Some practices on both coasts of the …
Marketing 101: Open Letter To New (and Existing) ClientsFebruary 12, 2014Dear Client,* Welcome to our practice. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to serve you and help your pet. Here are a few suggestions to make our relationship as pleasant as possible in the long run. 1. Bring along as many small children as possible. More than three is preferred. If you don't have that many, borrow from your neighbors (look for the most poorly behaved). Make sure they all have juice and crayons, because we love to clean. Also, we encourage them to jump on the furniture, play rough with the hospital cat, and go through our drawers. Our favorite is when they jump up and down on our scale in the waiting room. 2. Do not put your dog on a leash or your cat in a carrier. Just let them loose as soon as you walk in. Our staff enjoys chaos. And our doctor loves stitching up bites wounds. 3. Do not bring any prior health records for your pet. Calling other practices gives us time to catch up with old friends. 4. Insist that we follow your breeder’s recommendations, especially about anesthesia or vaccine protocols. Our schooling …
Business-Interruption Service a Safety NetFebruary 10, 2014 Insurance professionals put business interruption insurance high on the list of coverages a business should have to protect itself from a worst-case scenario like a flood, earthquake, extended power outage or fire. But this insurance is often overlooked by those responsible for managing a company’s risk because it’s either wrongly-believed to be included in a company’s existing policies or it is thought of as unnecessary. It’s a common misunderstanding that funds for rebuilding and compensation for losses are the only key elements to getting a business back up and running after an emergency. When disaster strikes, one of the biggest losses can be the loss of business. Without people coming through the door, losses can mount by the day. When business is interrupted, a company may be faced with closing, laying off or furloughing employees, deferring payments to debtors and hoping its customers return when the company is back on its feet. Or an operation can find and pay for a temporary solution, such as leasing a vacant building to re-establish clinic operations, and bankrolling the lease and extra cost of operating with cash on hand. But those are options for those without
