Re: unwanted equipment

albatross — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:04:51 GMT

it's always lovely to help those are charities and who get by (just) with donattions rather than government, or private funding, but also remember those closer to home. If you have enough spare equipment please think of us as well as the charity mentioned above. I personally will either collect or contribute towards postage if we can get some more equipment (we source from ebay and other places for second-hand where we can, but buy new when it's the expensive stuff like autoclave and anaesthetic machine), if delivery/posting is an issue.

I work for an animal sanctuary which has a veterinary side, and run one of two vet clinics. We recently took out a loan to equip an operating theatre. It is in use once a week for an op day and available twice a week during consultations for emergencies.
We only charge minimal rates because people are (or profess to be) on low income. Charging £5 for consults isn't going to bring in the money to fund more equipment or even fully fund the ops (for instance on Friday we did a pyo spey for a staffy - charged £100 for the op, plus overnight stay in the sanctuary while on a drip).
I personally have raised over £850 since January 2008 so we're over 10% of the way...

We could do with buying/replacing the following but athe moment can't afford to get these: dental elevators, drip stand, knock down box, heat pads, cat cradle (the boss pinched the cat one from the set of 3 for her theatre at a different site), animal blood glucose machine (I hate using the human one and would prefer a cat/dog one), microscope and slides, blood testing machine (the boss has one at her theatre but struggles to use it and won't transfer it to our clinic), monitoring machine for use in ops, steel kidney dishes, any spare instruments (we have a small and a large kit but it would be nice to have a third kit as otherwise I have to stay late to prepare the kits for next day in case they are needed), steel cages for pre/post op. We could also do with unwanted old issue vet books, especially a formulary (the boss forked out for a new NOAH this year but we'd like a more recent formulary than the 2001 edition we sourced years ago). We also would love to have some computer software for registering clients and the new drug register requirements, but at the moment have two old donated charity pc's and use record cards and hand'written notes. I've developed a spreadsheet for drug stock-taking, but if anyone has a spare legal copy of any vet software or knows a company who may give us any that would be wonderful. We would eventually require three copies of the software (as single user at each site) but they would only be updated via manual merging of the databases as we won't have internet access between the three sites. As well as our two static sites we have a mobile ambulance which for lack of places allowing us to park up, means it only goes out one afternoon a fortnight. Anywhere in Kent which (is on a bus route or in a town for easy access by clients) which will allow us to park for a couple of hours for our low income clinic please get in touch.

With a 100% + increase in the number of clients this year, and a big increase of referrals from ordinary vet practices for clients who haven't got insurance and suddenly need to find in excess of £250 for ops, we are only going to get busier and busier. Animals seem to be suffering from the effects of the credit crunch (people seem to be able to fund their hobbies or addictions (cigarettes, alcohol etc), but unwilling to pay for treatment for their pets). The alternatives are for the sanctuary to take on the animals, and then pay for the treatment themselves, but we've been full for the last 18 months and MUST reserve some space/money for the real needy cases where for no fault of their own the animals need a home or operations.

The only up side of the cedit crunch in regard to vet clinics, is that there is more work for me, and so while we personally struggle to keep our heads just above the surface, I am getting more hours from my part time work while I wait for that elusive training position.