Geriatric/senior pet clinics

Re: Geriatric/senior pet clinics

lucy ashton — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 15:36:26 GMT

Heya, I've recently set up geriatric clinics, so am in the same boat. I found the consulting nurse book by nicola ackerman a god send! :) good luck!

Re: Geriatric/senior pet clinics

Leanne Butterwick — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 14:36:02 GMT

Hi there,

We run a lot of nurse clinics at our practice. We do juniors, seniors, weight watchers, diabetic and renal clinics. These have all been pretty successful but they do come in waves. We may not see any for a while and then all of a sudden we see a lot. All of our nurses run these apart from the diabetic and renal clinics, these have a specific nurse (I am the renal nurse).

With regards to the senior clinics ours are set up as 30 mins for both cats and dogs. What we aim to do is a health check i.e. ears, eyes, nose, mouth. Check teeth! Weigh and if you can then body condition score them. Ask the owner questions about eating/drinking/eliminating habits and also how their pet is moving around. Then you can discuss common diseases and conditions e.g. arthritis, renal disease, hyperthyroidism etc. The patients that attend our senior clinic are offered a blood test. This is just a pre-surgery with a T4 for cats and this is reduced in price than if they had come in for a normal appointment.

You can also talk about diets. There are some good senior diets out there so do some research. There is a webinar on www.ecpd.co.uk for senior clinics, that may help you.

Good luck. Don't be disheartened if you don't have any for a while. It is definitely worth doing these permanently instead of just one week. It helps the vets and can pick up a lot of things that may get missed until its too late.

Re: Geriatric/senior pet clinics

lesley Aylett — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 14:16:14 GMT

royal canin have some great info and hand outs for senior clinics.

Re: Geriatric/senior pet clinics

Leigh Hinsley RVN NCert(BDev) MBVNA — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:56:19 GMT

Hi Ceri

There was a brilliant article in the Vet Times a few issues back about the minimum health screening for geriatric cats. We're launching nurse clinics one clinic at a time, but we do charge for all our consults unless treatment is taken, then the fee is credited off the treatment/tests. This is because at my previous clinic we ran free senior checks for 1 month hoping they would bring in revenue but we found that recommended treatment was not taken up, people wanted the free stuff but put lots of the findings down to that clinical disease "old age". We did get a few dentals and a few arthritis cases accept trial treatment, but the other problem was people who are already very pro-active about their senior pets care attending so there was nothing new to alert them to apart from general advice.

That said, every client base is different!

We included urine analysis and questionnaires and also blood pressure readings for cats only.

Good luck x

Re: Geriatric/senior pet clinics

les punton — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:24:46 GMT

How about generate a report on patients over 8 and write, text or email.them? Keep in touch with clients if they have concerns follow them up. Offer reduced urine sample or bloods to find early issues, free blood pressure for cats? Just some ideas