Episode 75: What was the client thinking? That was not really what I meant!

The Vetpodcast - Talking About Animal Health

Welcome back to another episode of Better Work Stories by The Vet Podcast. I'm veterinarian, Dr. Bryan Gregor. Now, relaying bad blood results to clients can sometimes be difficult and stressful for veterinarians. But this [00:01:00] discussion with a client just takes the cake. Can you imagine, or more likely not imagine, What was going on inside this poor old guy's head?
This is, this is one of these situations where you really have to wonder what the client was thinking. It was a busy afternoon and I got a phone call from my receptionist, got a call from my receptionist and she said that Mr. Smith's on the phone and he would like to talk to you about his. Yep, that's fine.
Flick through my files and found a file there for a cat belonging to Mr. Smith. Now these cat results, blood results, didn't look particularly good. They indicated end stage kidney failure. The cat was stuffed, not too much to do so. Picked up the phone and, uh, Mr. Smith, how are you got through the normal pleasantries?
He says, right, tell me about the blood results. So I said, look and went through them. The kidneys aren't that flash and went through all of the parameters and anemia and all this sort of thing. And he was okay. So what do we do about that? I put on my best bedside manner and said, um, look, I think. Probably the best thing that we can consider would have to be euthanasia.
I think it's just the kindest. It's going to stop any suffering, which is if not happening already, will be happening soon. There was a stunned silence on the phone. Nothing. It was just dead. About 10 seconds, 15 seconds later, he came back to me and he said, Can you do that? And I said, do what Mr. Smith? And he said, Euthanasia.
And I said, yeah, of course, euthanasia is not a problem at all. Um, we can do it whenever you want, actually. And my advice would be sooner rather than later. Again, a stunned silence. And I said, Oh, do you want to book that in? Or do you just need to have a think about it or have a talk to the family? And he says, Oh, look, I would actually really, really like to talk to my family about this.
This is a huge step. I did two things. One, I didn't know you could do that. And two, I wasn't expecting these results from the blood tests. All I did was called into the doctor for my regular six monthly blood tests. And I said to him, hang on a minute, what do you mean called into the doctor for your six month blood tests?
And he says that, well, I called into the Highfield Medical Center to get My blood test taken. Then the penny [00:04:00] dropped. We are the Highfield Veterinary Center and just by coincidence we had run some blood screens on a cat belonging to a Mr Smith and this poor old bugger thought that I was suggesting that he be euthanized.
Better work stories everybody.
If you are a veterinary professional and you have your own better work story, why don't you email me at [e-mail] or search your socials for vetpodcast. If you can, why not tell the world? Better work stories, eh?