starting up nurse clinic's

Re: starting up nurse clinic's

Alison Daff — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:29:31 GMT

Hi Suzie

If you are Royal Canin stockists the your Veterinary Business Manager will be able to provide you with training on clinics and running them ( Obesity, Puppy Parties, Mobility, Cardiac, etc etc). We also have a huge range of support materials that you will be able to give to clients and to help you set them up. If you could get the Vets involved at the meetings they would be able to see the huge benefit of running clinics in terms of client loyalty, increased footfall and bonding with your clients. We see huge benefits for practices who run clinics.

If you dont have your VBMs contact details just send me a message and i will send you more information

Re: starting up nurse clinic's

Gemma Burden RVN — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:18:46 GMT

We run a lot of nurses clinics at my practice, and like others have said, the puppy clinics are probably our most sucessful. We offer an appointment with a nurse at first vaccination where we cover preventative meds, nutrition etc. We then see them back for their second vaccination, and monthly for worming and weighing up until they are six months old (although we aim to see them monthly for a weight check until they are a year old, but this doesnt always happen). Buy this time the clients (and puppies) are really bonded to the clinic, and I think it makes a huge difference to the dogs attitute towards coming to see us - we very rarely have dogs that aren't excited about coming to visit. We also do this for kittens as well, and are now in the process of setting up puppy parties as well.

Whilst most new puppy and kitten owners seem keen to take part in the puppy and kitten clinics, other clinics to seem to be a lot harder to make sucessful. I run the practice weight clinics, and whilst there is obviously no shortage of animals in need of these clinics, getting owners to participate is much harder, and this seems to be the case with our other clinics as well. The one thing I find most frustrating with my clinics is when a vet would get me to "have a quick word" with someone after a consult, only to end up doing a full weight clinic then never see them again, To prevent this frustration I have produced a leaflet for my clinics giving the client all the details so that they can make the decision to book in themself, meaning that the clients I see actually want to take part in the clinic, rather than just seeing me because they didnt want to tell the vet that they didn't want to try the weight clinics. Making sure that you see the people who actually want to be seen will help with the sucess of your clinics as well.

it would be worth you contacting reps from relevant companies to see if they produce any client materials or samples that you can use, as lets face it, everyone likes a freebee. You could also ask the reps for relevent training. We have recently had a nurse training session on DAP so that we knew how to best advise clients on its use at our puppy parties, and it has proved very useful, the information we were given has grately uncreased our use of DAP collars and has lead to us having a lot of very happy puppy owners who cant believe the difference the collars have made for them.

Our nurses clinics do make a lot of difference to our practice, they have produced very loyal clients who come to us a lot more regularly, are more likely to buy their wormers and diets from us, and really get to know us so are more likely to ask us for advice sooner rather than later. Whilst we might not directly bring in a huge amount of revenue from the clinics, the bond we form with the clients during them and the repeat business definetely makes them worthwhile.

Re: starting up nurse clinic's

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:46:40 GMT

[quote user="suzanne reeve"]

hi all,

i recently started at a new practice and at the moment they run no nurse clinics. me and some of the nurse's are intesrested in getting them started and the other vet thinks they are a good idea, the main vet who owns the practice want us to do them. as the old head nurse didnt like doing them.

i was wondering if any one had any ideas on how to try and convince him to let us do them if only for a trial basis?

the only idea's ive come up with is do a client questionaire and ask if we did them which would they be interested in eg wieght, dental, senior. so then he can see what the client thinks. also bringing it up at a staff meeting [as we only have two vets and 4 nurses so every one is on the same meeting].

any ideas would be great thanks

[/quote]

Hi - if it's any help the VN TImes ran a feature on nurse consuts in January which you can dowload at vetsonline.com

I think also money talks in these situations so you could put together some finacial predictions beased on exactley what you think clients will buy and how much etc.

Good luck

Re: starting up nurse clinic's

Helen Tottey — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:29:42 GMT

I would say to start at 1st vaccines is the best. Most of what clients want to know about new puppy do not need a vet to answer. The vet may think they "do everything" if they mention fleas and worms but there is house training, socialising, insurance, correct feeding, neutering and many more questions. By answering all of these for the client they are more likley to bond to the practice than go to the local pet store and be talked to by an unqualifed /untrained member of public.

the additional revenue for the practice will be seen by repeat business of food, greater uptake of neutering and flea/worm products.

once this proves it you can move on to dental, obesity, post op checks, senior clinics....

Re: starting up nurse clinic's

GremlinNurse — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:52:41 GMT

Puppy clinics are fantastic...we start them at either first or second vac then have them back every month until 6 months then at 9 months and then they go into the Adult care clinic and we see them every 3 months.

We have only been doing them for 18months, maybe 2 years, and the pups that attended are much much miore relaxed now when coming in for boosters and neutering. They are great for socialisation, client bonding and making sure owners keep upto date with preventative care.

I'd say start with these, but they can be time consuming, the first one especially, I remember my longest one being almost 2 hours long! When someone hasn't owned a pup before you have EVERYTHING to go through...the pup normally falls asleep So make sure you have enough time set aside for the nurse to not feel rushed.

Good luck, I think nurse clinics are fab