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Parasite compliancethere's a hack for that.
Put parasite woes to rest with these client education and communication tips, as well as a few ideas to make those fecal exams stink less. Literally.
Hey, how'd you get that hack?
We asked you! No, really-in a survey, dvm360 Clinical Updates: Practice Hacks. Over a hundred veterinarians, practice managers and team members chimed in with ways to make life easier for you, your patients and your clients, which we've organized into categories (get the full list here). It's a hack jackpot (a hackpot?)! But we didn't stop there-we've also spliced in a number of Idea Exchanges from one of Vetted's parent pubs, Veterinary Medicine.
Client education:
> We use prepaid fecal testing. If clients don't bring a sample with them, we send a cup home to bring back. If they forget this year, next year they will remember, since they'll remember the test they paid for and then didn't complete.
> We have lots of photos of each condition at its worst, so people realize how ugly it can get unless they follow our preventive recommendations.
> We mention the possibility of people contracting some of the parasites.
> We use a thorough hands-on physical to show clients the parasites and/or let them take a look in the microscope.
> We keep a heartworm-infected heart in a formalin jar to show to owners. We also have parasite models of heartworm infection, tick and mite infections of the skin and parasite posters with endoscopic views of intestinal parasites.
Treatment efficiencies:
> We offer a reduced fecal float fee for samples provided by the client.
> We send all fecal tests out of the clinic to our reference laboratory, so there's no stinky mess and no dirty microscope.
> We encourage clients to bring a stool sample from home. This saves us time and we tell the owner we won't have to stick that long thing up the pet's rear end.
> I recommend the injectable heartworm preventive to clients who have a hard time remembering monthly prevention by telling them that they only have to think about it twice a year instead of 12 times a year.
Visual aids:
> Handouts from dvm360: dvm360.com/parasitehandouts
> Posters with larger than life photos of parasite infections, or heartworm infection
> American Heartworm Society website: heartwormsociety.org
> Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) website: capcvet.org
> Veterinarypartner.com
