Idiopathic Issues

Ah, the dreaded task. We do everything possible to provide excellent customer service to our clients and the best medical care to our patients. Although rare, the need to fire a veterinary client from the practice may arise at some point during your career.

I have seen thousands of clients, and as I mentioned in my recent blog post (5 types of Clients and How to Handle them), have only had to fire  a few in the past (almost 14 years). The circumstances were beyond repair, and I was faced with having to actually carry out this process myself. So, what happens?

Is there a right way to do this?

Veterinary clients are just people like us. They all have different personalities, expectations, and pets with a variety of issues.

Identifying certain traits in clients can be helpful in how we manage their appointments, interaction, and also our stress levels, especially for new graduates.

There are lots of famous vet bloggers that we all enjoy following, but much of their material is geared more towards clients and not so much us in the field.

Whenever I have a patient with elevated potassium, my brain immediately jumps to Addison’s disease or urinary disease, because this was drilled into our heads during veterinary school.

If the rest of the lab work is unremarkable and especially if the patient is otherwise healthy, an elevated platelet count can be a cause of the potassium being elevated in the serum.