5196 nursing consults presentation dvn_hands_chloe
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5196 nursing consults presentation dvn_hands_chloe
- 2. Nursing consults can free up time for the vet. Can spend more time with clients Promote products and services Enhance practice image Generate at least their own salary in sales Cost less than a vet
- 3. More time Cost less Qualified Job satisfaction However your nurse can not do this without your help and support.
- 4. First we need a consult room for nurses What will the nurse be able to achieve alone? Is Further training needed? Appointment times? Appointment costs? Advertising?
- 5. Removal of sutures and drains. Weight loss consults Dental consults Repeat blood/urine tests Nutrition
- 6. We can make it a new year goal! Starting in January we can offer nursing consults to clients starting with the basics. This may include removal of sutures and drains. Start the relationship building between clients and your vet nurse. Then we can aim by the end of the year your nurse can be doing dental consults, repeat lab tests, weight management etc. Make it a full service available to all clients.
- 7. January – admits and discharges as well as removal of sutures and drains March – add in weight management programmes. May – add in dental consults August – add repeat lab tests December – full service.
- 8. Currently – A client comes in with a dog for desexing. The patient gets admitted via the vet. (2min) The client gets discharged by the vet. (2min) Client comes back in 2weeks for removal of sutures sees a vet. (2min) Don't see client again unless they do vaccinations or animal gets sick.
- 9. Potentially – A client comes in with a dog for desexing. The patient gets admitted via the nurse. (5- 10 min) The patient gets discharged via the nurse. (5- 10min) The client comes in for removal of suture appointment and sees the nurse. (5-10min) Client makes another appointment with nurse, makes more visits to the clinic per year.
- 10. Currently – client drops in patient for a dental. Patient gets admitted via the vet (2min) Patient gets discharged via the vet (2min) Patient comes back for a revisit if any concerns or major extractions took place.
- 11. Potentially – client drops in patient for a dental. Have the option of free dental consults to pick up on dental issues early. The patient is admitted via the nurse (5- 10min) The patient is discharged by the nurse (5- 10min) The client has booked in a revisit appointment with the nurse (5-10min)
- 12. Nursing consults can benefit our clinic but we have to give it a 100% commitment and support. We can : - Generate more visits to the clinic per year. Increase the clinics relationship with our clients. Increase the amount of money spent in a visit. Up selling our services Inform the public of our services.
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for giving me time to talk to you today. I would like to bring up the topic of nursing consults. This is something our clinic has not taken advantage of yet and I believe with enough thought and planning it will work well within our clinic and advantage us in many ways. In most clinics the vet nurse is under used. Vets end up over working themselves doing revisit consultations, removal of sutures and dental consults when they can be using their time doing more specialised work such as surgery and diagnostic work. Its situations like this where you should take full advantage of your qualified vet nurse who can do the consults for you. The role of the vet nurse has evolved greatly from being a kennel hand to a fee-earning regulated professional. Nursing consults gives your nurse a chance to specialise in an area that interests them whilst benefiting the clinic and making them feel like a valued member of the team with great job satisfaction. The idea is not to create mini vets but to allow the qualified nurses to do the jobs a vet currently does that they can do also.
- A consulting nurse in your clinic can be so valuable for may reasons. When a nurse goes into a consult she can spend more time with the client to possibly generate more business and more frequent visits from the client per year. For example a removal of sutures consult with a vet may take less than 2mins as they don't have time to sit and chat with the clients when there is other business waiting such as surgeries and other specialist consults. Where as your nurse can go in and spend 5 to 10 minutes with them talk to them about things regarding their pets and things that may be worrying them, recommend flea treatments, worming, diets, puppy preschool training, dental checks and much more. The client then leaves our clinic feeling like their visit mattered and much more informed about the services we offer here at our clinic. Not to mention from that ‘free’ visit to the clinic to get the sutures removed the client could potently walk out having brought $100 worth of products from the clinic and booking in for further consults with your nurse. Overall the nurse has more time for these consults, can bond with the clients, up sell products and services as well as make the client feel valued in return recommending us to their friends and family (grape vine effect)
- As discussed previously the nurses time cost less than a vets and there is more of it. Your nurses are qualified and trained to give advice to clients so why not use these qualities to benefit our clinic, at the same time your nurse receives job satisfaction with space to grow within the clinic. The nurse is not trying to take over the vets role but assist in helping free up their time to do specialist work such as surgeries. However your nurse can not successfully achieve the set up of nursing consults without the help and support of the veterinarians of the clinic. Its important you reassure your clients your nurses are fully capable of doing the basic consults. The sudden change from seeing your vet for a dental check up to seeing a nurse they may have never met can be unsettling for some clients but with your support and encouragement they will feel at ease and may even rebook to see the nurse again. The nurses then have more time to talk to the clients, find out what they may be too worried to tell the vet and help guide them on the correct path. As always if the nurse does not know the answer to a clients questions or problems we can research the answer or ask the vet that's available. But if they are not qualified to give advice in that area then the nurse will recommend they book in for a proper consult with one of the vets that specialise in that area. It is important a nurse is not booked to see a dog who is limping because its cheaper to see a nurse, this is a waste of the nurses time and patients as its out of their range and they must see a vet. The receptionist must stick to booking the limited consults the nurse can do.
- Before we start off nursing consults in our clinic the nurse needs access to a consulting room. This may be consult room 3 as it is our less used room by the vets so is available more often. Its already fully equipped with computer, internet and equipment so no further set up is needed. During a nursing consult it will be handy to have a information booklets to show or give to the clients for example vaccinations, what to vaccinated against and why. Worming treatments, flea treatment brochures as well as information on pre anaesthetic blood tests, why its needed and what it looks at. Clients may listen while they are in consult but quiet often will forget what you have told them so written information is very helpful. It also helps keep the consult on track so the nurse has all the information she needs there with her in the consult room. Also by having these information print outs the vets can be reassured the information your nurse is handing out is correct. Most of these information packs are already supplied at reception but not often handed out or explained to clients. Further training may be organised to train your nurse how you wish the consults to run, let them know the dos and don'ts during consults and share your knowledge from years of consulting the vet has already done. Appointments with nurses will need to run outside of surgery times so that the nurse is not needed elsewhere while trying to consult. So the nurse can help with admits in the mornings to clear more time for the vets to deal with hospital cases and then again at discharge times from 230pm to 4pm. As the nursing consults pick up we may open times for dental consults, weight management and other consults to run between 12 and 4 (excluding the lunch break half hour). Pricing off consults is one thing that needs to be decided by the owners of the clinic, do we charge to see a nurse and if so how much? The main point is that the nurse will be cheaper to see compared to the vet but may generate more sales from the consult with the more time spent with the client. By having cheaper consults available for the basic things such as dentals clients will visit the clinic more often in a year. Advertising may include a note on the TV in the waiting room, a poster on the notice board, advertised on our web page and facebook page. Once word of mouth gets around and people start taking advantage of the service then no further advertising will be needed.
- Consults the vet nurse will be able to do include the list here. First of all removal of sutures and drains. This consult is generally to check the wound has healed nicely take out the sutures and send the animal home. This can easily be achieved by your nurse but while in the consult can bring up the topic of diet, puppy preschool, flea and worm treatment and vaccinations. The topic brought up will be based on the client obviously we are not going to tell a owner with a 5year old dog about puppy preschool but we may choose to bring up flea and worm treatment or even dental care. During this conversation the nurse promotes products we sell in the clinic and turn a free consult into a money earner. Weight loss consults is another thing that can easily be taken over by the nurse. Both hills and eukenuba have a weight loss programme book based on an animals weight and target weight and using their weight loss formulated food. The amount to be feed can easily be worked out in consult and a plan drawn out for the client with regular weigh in consults and support given to the client. Dental consults are probably the consult which will bring the clinic the most income. Having time to explain basic dental care to our clients, have a look in the animals mouth and assess weather or not the animals will benefit from having a dental or booking an animal in for a routine dental before it gets bad. Using the dental models and charts to support what is being said to the client and book them in for a dental if needed. The nurses can also do repeat blood and urine tests. Once the sample is taken by the nurse they send it away for the appropriate tests the vet has noted in the previous record what that may be and when the results come in the vet can contact them with the results. During the consult the nurse takes note in the record if the owner feels the animal is doing better or worse, the animals weight and temperature. All notes in detail to help support the findings of the lab tests. Nutrient is also something often over looked but can be the cause of many issues such as weight and skin. By having a nutrition consult with the nurse we can plan a diet for the animal based on their individual needs.
- Nursing consults is a programme that is going to take time to get up and going. So based on a time line we can gradually introduce nursing consults into our daily routine. We can aim to have a full nursing consult service available to everyone within the year of setting it up. Starting with the basics and slowly introducing the more difficult things.
- Here is a brief time line of how things can work. Starting in the new year your nurses can start with admits and discharges of the basic surgeries such as Spey and neuters and the follow up appointments of removal of sutures and drains. This allows them to get to know the clients and let their face be shown out the front of the clinic. Once the nurse and vets is confident with the way these consults are running we can gradually add in more range till finally at the end of the year we have a full service available.
- Okay so I have two examples here to show how things currently go in our clinic and how they can change with nursing consults. I think its important that you understand that I know as a vet you not have a lot of time to chat in basic consults about things that the client is not actually in for so this is in no way criticising your work. So for our first example I would like to use the scenario of a bitch Spey or dog neuter. Currently the owner will book an appointment for desexing and the patient will be admitted by the vet between 8 and 830am this is one of the busiest times of the day where the vet has to check the hospital cases that stayed overnight as well as normal consults and admits so you don't have much spare time to chat with the clients about extra things therefore generally the admit will take less than 2mins. The animal stays the day and goes home usually anytime after 2 or 3pm. Then on discharge the client is told to keep an eye on the wound revisit if any concerns or if not then 2weeks to get the sutures out unless the client asks any questions then the discharge appointment can take less than 2 minutes. Then In 2weeks they will return again for a quick 2minute appointment to get the sutures out and go home. Then it is unlikely that we see them again unless they get annual vaccinations or the animal gets sick. In the area we are based in unfortunately this happens too often.
- So we want to change this by adding the consulting nurse to the equation. By doing this the client will see the nurse on admit and they will go through the procedure together, depending on the animals age offer them the choice to have a pre anaesthetic blood test and explain to the why this is recommended. Then offer the choice of vaccinations, extra pain relief to go home on and if there is anything else they would like us to look at while they are here. The client then gets a call by the nurse when the patient is awake and recovered from surgery and informed of a time they can come and collect their dog. On discharge the nurse sees the clients again discussed post op care and offers information on vaccinations, fleas and worms, just something for them to conceder before their revisit in 2weeks to get the sutures out. In 2weeks the clients return to see the nurse again this time she asks about vaccinations fleas and worms again adding in the topic of nutrition and our wide verity of food on offer and walk them through their options. While there mentions a dental consult recommended annually and that it can be booked in with a nurse and if a young dog give them an information pack for puppy pre school. Now with all this extra information the client has learned of the services provided at our clinic, products available for their dog and most likely learned something new during their visit. This increases the possibility of that client visiting the clinic again with shorter spaces between visits and more likely to pick up on illness early.
- Example two is a dental consult. When a patient is being brought in for a dental its usually at the point where they have stopped eating and have sever tartar build up bad gingivitis and needing extractions. They are seen by a vet and costs and the procedure is discused. Once the procedure is finished the patient goes home recommended to revisit if any concerns and quite possibly not seen again for awhile.
- The first point of having a nurse do a dental consult is to pick up on dental issues early. It can be a great idea to offer a month of free dental consults with a nurse. Although the consult is free the dental is not. So the client comes in for a free dental consult and the animal has minimal tartar build up and the beginning of gingivitis the nurse will recommend they undergo a dental scale and polish within the month before it gets any worse. Encourage the situation by informing them if they get it done early it will only cost $200 and if they leave it too long and their pet ends up needing multiple extractions then they could spend up to and onwards of $500. They have come to the consult so that shows they care. Also its important that a follow up appointment is always done to see how they are after having an anaesthetic and offer some dental care advice to help take care of their pets teeth.
- In conclusion our clinic can benefit from the use of nursing consults in many ways so why not give it a go? We can increase the number of visits per year for a client. We can reduce the work load for the vet to free up time for the more specialised jobs. We can put a positive impact on the way our clients and the public see our clinic. We can educate our clients more. The nurse can generate her own income in sales per year. There are so many positives I could go on and on all day but it needs 100% commitment to work out to the best it can.
- So have some time to think about the information I have just presented to you and please get back to me. Maybe we can start making our 1 year plan?!