Trip to the Vet - How long do you wait?

[Horsegal984]

[QUOTE=beowulf;9030991]
My current vet is extremely punctual. Occasionally he gets an owner who wants to talk more after the appointment, but I have almost never waited - I ‘check in’, fill out any information needed, and I’m usually seen within 2 minutes.

Emergency vets are a different story - I waited over an hour with a screaming, crippled dog last year with a friend - it was awful. I vowed to never go there again and not even a month later my own cat had his hind limb degloved by a dog – no other emergency vets in the area and we still waited over a half an hour to be seen.[/QUOTE]

May I ask, did you wait that long for the vet to talk to you or for them to start any treatments on your pets? Many times if we’re slammed on ER it can be an hour or more before we can talk to the clients, but in both of those situations we would have at least triaged the pet and given pain control medications while the owner waited. Our clinic is a firm believer in prompt proper pain control, we also prioritize euthanasias when possible. If you’ve made the decision to let your beloved pet go we’re not making you sit in the lobby or exam room for hours waiting to do so.

[MustangSavvy]

[QUOTE=Marshfield;9035151]
That’s IMHO a lack of adequate training of front desk staff. They didn’t ask the questions needed to schedule appropriately. We schedule different slots for well pet and sick pet visits. I’m nearly 15 years in, and have very rarely run late, less than 10% of the time with seeing my own emergencies during the day and sometimes the ones which neighboring practices don’t want to deal with. I get a fair number of new clients that way. My mentor ran on time and still does. It can be done. He also sees his own emergencies during the day. If he’s out of town, I’ll take his sick ones and vice versa. I designed my schedule with catch up time at lunch where I can fit things in if I need to.[/QUOTE]

I don’t agree with this. Clients frequently don’t tell the whole story to the front staff or the vet tech. I can’t tell you the number of times, I have gone into a room to take a history and when the vet comes in the clients magically remember 6 other complaints. Not every routine appointment is going to be routine, not every routine procedure is going to be routine. We cannot always plan for this and this is the nature of the job.

We frequently fit things in during lunch and stay late. I work at a extremely busy large and small animal practice. We have a dozen doctors on staff and twice as many techs. We have floats in place to help rooms and procedures run smoothly. But stuff still happens. On Thursday, I took a 10 minute lunch to accommodate a pig neuter and rooms in the afternoon. I stayed a hour late when we had a goat emergency. Trust me the clients needs definitely come before my own.

[SquishTheBunny]

So what would the standard schedule be for a dog who is lethargic and vomited a few times? 1 hour?

So, pet needs exam - then blood, then xrays, then ultrasound, then FNA of abdominal fluid, then in house cytology, then emergency surgery. Sounds like more than an hour to me. THIS is what can happen during a routine exam. Most vets can see patients while some diagnostics are being run, but in between appointments they need to review bloodwork to schedule next step, then review xrays etc.

For those complaining they have to wait 20 minutes, if that was YOUR dog, and you were sent home to book an appt another day or sent to an emergency clinic because “sorry your time is up, I have to go see another client”…id think youd be a wee bit upset.

[EverQuest]

Man I wish I knew of a small animal practice that scheduled an entire hour for ANYTHING! The ones I worked at were 15 min appointments. Period. The schedule would fill up and anyone that called would be told to come in as a walk in. The vast majority of the time I would 3-4 animals all “scheduled” for the same 15 minute slot in my day. They may be vomiting, hge, pyos, whatever. If the office manager (wife of the vet that owned the practice) caught wind of a vet “turning a client away” it was the end of the world and screaming ensued. Didn’t matter that the vets didn’t have enough time to completely work up any one case, that clients were pissed that they were waiting forever, etc. Just don’t ever turn anyone away. I lasted a year before I broke. Never once got a lunch break and would often work 12 hours straight without enough time to even pee all while being verbally abused by clients for their wait time. Paid off my loans in that hell year though!

[DrBeckett]

we “schedule” an hour for lunch. But in the past year that I’ve been here, I’ve had a break for lunch a total of 3 times. Usually we all eat on the fly.

[2tempe]

I split my animals between two vets (long story for this). Vet #1 is very punctual, rarely wait more than a few minutes. BUT there is always a sense that you are part of assembly line. If you have a question it better be quick. That’s fine for much of my vet needs, but not so great when things are unclear healthwise.
Second vet is not quite so speedy, probably more like the 15 minute total wait time. But he will take time to address any questions, and generally seems to take more interest in the individual patients. Personally I prefer this.

[HappyTalk]

@DrBeckett;9035317

I don’t see it as a front desk problem when someone calls for a yearly. They say they want vaccines, a heartworm test and a fecal. So they schedule 15 minutes. But then someone will bring something up to me, as the doctor. One of those “btw” moments. The front desk can’t help that. I can’t help that. It happens a lot.

I am a receptionist and it is a front desk problem. I get a request for an annual and I ALWAYS ask if there are any other issues that the client would like to discuss with the doctor. The people that answer “yes” get a double appointment. We also make notes on the charts of the owners that need extra time during their appointments.

[DrBeckett]

Fourth rule of veterinary medicine - all clients lie. They will tell you, and even my tech before I get in the room, no problems. I get in the room, suddenly a huge list of problems. Not a front desk problem.

[My_Two_Cents]

When I schedule a vet appointment I go to it thinking I may have to wait for my turn due to some emergency ahead of me. I don’t mind waiting when I can get an idea of how long it might be. 10 minutes? Fine not a problem. Going to be a half an hour? Fine I’ll go find some coffee and come back in 20 minutes. I don’t like being left to guess how long it will be (but I understand sometimes they don’t know). The last appointment was running about 15 minutes late but sadly watched the guy before me leave with an empty collar and leash. Clearly he was having a tough day.
When we have an emergency or an unexpected sudden need for a vet, I appreciate a speedy response. At least a once over and a “We’ll get you fixed up”. Last spring we had a dog looking pretty tough first thing in the morning. The vet was booked up but said if we could drop him off they would fit him in. They had him in and called me by 11. I appreciated that they worked him in. We had recently lost a Great Dane to bloat and sure didn’t want to do that again. They did x-rays right away and determined his guts weren’t plugged and then worked in an exam after that. The vets protocol was “Emergency? Maybe? No? Ok slow down and we’ll see him when we can”
I love our 24/7 vets? I cannot thank them enough for answering a phone at 3 AM.

[DrBeckett]

I had the exact issue some seem to blame the front for not an hour ago. Dog came in for a T4 check. And that only. Gets in the room. “My dog is having trouble getting up, and his stomach looks distended.” Suddenly, I’m taking x-rays and additional blood work. It wasn’t even supposed to be an appointment with me. I spent 30 minutes explaining cancer to an owner. Someone else had to wait 30 minutes. Sorry, not sorry. I’m not rushing someone through a cancer talk because Fluffy needs her anal glands checked. People are going to have to get used to waiting.

You have alternatives. You can go to Doc-in-a-box that will schedule you and see you at the exact time of your appointment, but be rushed out if there is a problem or be sent to me when there is a problem because they don’t have time for you, or you can wait. The Banfield near me does NOTHING that can’t be done in 15 minutes. Everything else gets sent to us. Parvo tests - sent to us. Possible foreign body - Good Lord, that would be surgery. Send to ER. Good for me. More animals for me.

[danceronice]

Depends. In the afternoon if most vets have been on farm calls there might be a delay. The longest wait I had was at the Fancy Place back in MA (I boarded my cats there when I went away, and they had things like Poland Spring in crystal bowls) when I brought my cats in for routine shots. We sat for forty minutes, but after about twenty the vet had stuck her head in the door and said they’d had an emergency come in (dog got into trash and might have eaten pills). I’m okay with that. Every vet I’ve used has always tried to stay on time and generally delays have been because someone else was more serious.

[trubandloki]

My human doctor is MUCH worse than either my large animal vet or my small animal vet. I admit, there have been times where I was waiting longer than I liked, but those are all OK when they take my emergency or show all the compassion in the world at a euthanasia appointment.

My vet(s) never hesitate to answer a question or explain something. They are also friendly, asking ‘how is your mother doing?’ and such.

If I see the vet gabbing while I wait for an appointment I assume one of several options: she is waiting for the room to be prepped, she is waiting for the results of a test on another animal she is dealing with, she is waiting for her tech or (gasp) she is taking a minute to be human during a very busy and long day.

If the service at your vet does not out weigh the annoyance of waiting for your vet then find a different vet.

[drawstraws]

If the person at the vet clinic doing the scheduling were to ask the simple question “Is there anything else you’re concerned about?” or something of that nature when they actually make the appointment while on the phone with the owner, do you think it would help to get some of these “Oh, by the way, there’s this one other thing” issues out in the open right away so that an appropriate time frame could then be scheduled? I’m sure you’d still have some come up, but maybe at least a few of them would be mentioned over the phone so that the vet could be prepared before they got there.

[DrBeckett]

No, it does not help to ask “is there anything else you’re concerned about?” Most of the time, people don’t think about it until I walk into the room. They would say no on the phone, they would say no to the tech taking a history, but when I walk in the room, it’s a totally different story. The receptionist will ask “how much naproxen did your dog eat?” They will say 40 tablets. They then realize that sounds terrible, so when the tech asks, it changes to 30 tablets. When I get in there and explain how toxic naproxen is, it’s suddenly just a couple of tablets. Clients change their stories allllll day long.

[EverQuest]

I did a day of relief work yesterday for my good friend who owns a small animal clinic and needed to be with his wife yesterday while she had their first kid. Day started off fine and I trucked through about 15 appointments averaging roughly 15-20 mins per appointment. Then the full moon this weekend made itself known.
In the space of 20 mins I had two HBCs, a dog fight (bad/surgical), and a flat out hge “walk in”. Let’s just say the walk in ear check appointment was not still waiting patiently for me in the room by the time I triaged and stabilized all those over about 40-60 mins (although three other very patient owners were). And they let the front desk know how angry they were. Oh well, nothing died on my watch yesterday so I’m still calling it a good day.

For anyone reading this thread though: PLEASE for the love of god do not “walk in” to your small animal vet with a non emergency. Those terribly infected ears did not happen overnight, they can wait one more day for a real appointment and it won’t screw up the entire clinic day or take away from clients with real emergencies that have no choice but to just show up (and minimize the wait for those that did make appointments). At the very least call ahead so we can try and tell you a better time to show up.

[trubandloki]

What does the abbreviation HGE stand for? (I figure it something to do with the ear infection, but not guessing what the words are.)

[keysfins]

Hemorrhagic GastroEnteritis. Bad stuff.

[fordtraktor]

I try really hard not to surprise my vet with new stuff but sometimes it just happens – a couple of weeks ago I had a simple X ray turn into sedation (young horse nervous about the process), a nerve block we had to wait for and then since the sedation was hell we went ahead and did her yearly vaccinations when she was half asleep. I appreciate my vet being willing to roll with things and spend the time here in times like that. (when I suggested the vacs the vet was SO HAPPY to oblige and take advantage of the moment! haha.)

[fordtraktor]

Oh, I also really appreciate when vets prioritize euthanasias. A month ago I put down a horse I’d had for 20 years. My appointments are usually late/evening and at uncertain times because I’m very flexible but I really, really appreciated my vet coming out first thing to put my old guy down. I find the waiting so hard. It was really thoughtful.

[DrBeckett]

http://www.drandyroark.com/the-real-reason-your-wait-at-the-vets-office-is-so-long/