Vet Watch: Compassionate end-of-life-care

On this episode of Vet Watch with Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, welcomes guest Coleen Ellis, CT, CPLP, to talk about veterinary end of life care. Throughout the episode, Ellis and Lee talk about the importance of personalizing the experience for clients and patients, such as including the pets favorite things and foods, preparing for multiple end-of-life scenarios, the importance of including the entire veterinary team in end-of-life care, and more.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity:

Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM: From your experience, doing it both at home and seeing the clinic, any lessons that you know we should be changing with how we do it in, maybe in the clinic?

Coleen Ellis, CT, CPLP: Probably just what I said to you, start setting the stage before the appointment. Tell them some things to do before they come in because when in grief, we have a huge need to be understood, but very little capacity to understand. So if we say to them, I want you to bring his favorite toys, okay, make a list. Get a piece of paper and make a list, because I know right now your head is focused on the appointment at 2 o'clock this afternoon. Get a piece of paper. I want you to bring his toys. I want you to go buy McDonald's and get those French fries that he loved. I want you to bring a bouquet of flowers. I've got paper here. Don't worry about it. I've got that here. We'll write a letter to him. Okay? I want you to bring the things that are important to him, the things that he needs to have it, that are around him, that were his little, little places of happiness, I want you to bring that stuff.

And so again, by setting the stage before they even come in. And then we do the same thing when we go home. I want you to gather all these things up and have that there. When, when I get into the into the, into your home, you know, and just listening, I'll never forget. I was at an amazing operation up in Canada, and we had set the appointment for one of our veterinarians to go out that night. And the comment was made to the person taking the call. The comment was made about from the woman that, after tonight, they will forever know where her husband's socks are, because the kitty hid the socks all the time.

And I said, 'Well, I'm going to tell you, if it was me when I got to that home, I would say, how about we put him to peace in the sock drawer, because that sounds to me like that was his little place of happiness.' And that's what they did, Dr Lee, they put the kitty to sleep in the sock drawer.

And now, can you see in your head and in your mind how it took that event of euthanasia now forever, when they close their eyes, they see that little kitty in the sock drawer. What a lovely visual. What a lovely, lovely visual. And then, do you know what they do? They tell their friends, and they tell social media. They tell them how perfect the ending was, how perfect.

Lee: And that is also, I think, one of the ironies, whenever you talk to practicing veterinarians, that it's interesting that the amount of thank-you gifts and what they remembered, it is very different. You get a lot more at their end of life than when you have life saving emergencies where you end up saving the pet, you will still get a lot more thank yous and people remembering the end of life.

Want to learn more on end-of-life care from Ellis? Join us and Ellis at our final Fetch conference of the year, Fetch Long Beach! Learn more and register here today.