Open Day Ideas Please!

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

Laura Ringsell — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:29:19 GMT

i can't beleive how many brilliant ideas there are here. I was involved in one a few years ago -in addition to some of the things here we also did:

face painting for the kids
guess how many balloons in the ambulance
guess what's under the microscope
guess what's at the end of the endoscope
treasure hunt for kids
nurse clinic room - advertising everything nurse
all rooms were set up as if to work - ie dental room, theatre, stuffed toys in kennels with someone there with a display and answering questions
don't forget to invite the local press!!
dog agility in the garden and dog competition - waggiest tail type stuff

Good luck - i miss doing these

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

Yolander Wright — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:42:19 GMT

Hi We done an open day last september.

we had a raffle and the money was given to our local rspca branch and the cinnamon trust, we also had loads for the kids do to face painting, spot the fleas and ticks(pictures of these were hidden around the practice and they had to write done where they had found them) and simple questions that were based on things/items a round the practice and by asking staff and reps for the answers to specific questions and from looking at displays and mock ups that we had done.

It was alot of hard work but the day went really well and our clients really enjoyed the guided tours that we gave of the practice as they got to see behind the scenes on how we work and then made their way to our staff room for some light refreshments[quote user="MissVetNurse"]

We just had a really successful open day

We had a treasure hunt (small photos of a part of equipment or item) in the surgery n they had to guess what/where it was
X-ray slide show
Practice renovation
Goodie bags including info, leaflets, pens, freebies from reps, blue cross (who our open day was in aid of) provided loads
Cuddly toy in theatre all draped up with equipment around, anaesthetic monitoring, circuits, IVFT etc
Teddy in kennel - name the lion
Guess the instruments
Info on ectoparasites and some gory photos
Info about each room laminated on each room door
Tea & Coffee, sandwiches and cakes for sale
Colouring in and join the dots for kids
Count the paw prints (we have some paw prints on chairs, reception and doors)

I can send you most things we had, a lot of them are on an editing programme called FreeHand 10 (can get it on www.downloads.com) so if you have that I can send you anything at all

Good luck and enjoy it, we had a fab day x

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Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

Claire Cameron — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:25:15 GMT

We just had a really successful open day

We had a treasure hunt (small photos of a part of equipment or item) in the surgery n they had to guess what/where it was
X-ray slide show
Practice renovation
Goodie bags including info, leaflets, pens, freebies from reps, blue cross (who our open day was in aid of) provided loads
Cuddly toy in theatre all draped up with equipment around, anaesthetic monitoring, circuits, IVFT etc
Teddy in kennel - name the lion
Guess the instruments
Info on ectoparasites and some gory photos
Info about each room laminated on each room door
Tea & Coffee, sandwiches and cakes for sale
Colouring in and join the dots for kids
Count the paw prints (we have some paw prints on chairs, reception and doors)

I can send you most things we had, a lot of them are on an editing programme called FreeHand 10 (can get it on www.downloads.com) so if you have that I can send you anything at all

Good luck and enjoy it, we had a fab day x

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

dinkyd — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:20:36 GMT

We had a guy who had recently opened up an exotics shop - he brought along snakes, milipede things spiders etc - the kids loved it!

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

les punton — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:01:17 GMT

we were going to have an open day and I had the staff organised, everything sorted then it all fell through (gutted).

I had planned to have a parsite room in one of the consukting rooms where the microscope would be set up to inform owners of worms/fleas (to promote selling some too).

we also had some competitions of spot the soft teddy and a colouring comp for the kids.

guess the dogs birthday, weight of the jar of sweets etc to raise money for local charity.

also some good xrays to show.

we were going to set up the ops room with a stuffed toy on the table to show what things are used and why (rather than heaps for people going in and out) but we have windows in our theatres so this may not be poss?

hills were going to have a stand, also the abbot rep was willing to donate some time and have a stand .

As I say I had it all planned but unfortunately money was an issue (I asked for approx £50 for advertising and some bits and pieces)...............lame excuse

good luck with it though xx

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

Dippy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:51:24 GMT

Get some local charities involved if you can. You won't make any money out of it but people love touchy fewely things ie guide dogs, hearing dogs, PAT dogs, police dogs etc and it all adds to the attractions and helps create awareness for them.

I've also done things in the past like xray competitions for the kids - xray some household objects and ask them to guess what they are.

Stuffed toys in kennels, on mock drips, bandgaes on, on the operating table attached to mask and cicuit - basically showing them as much of what you do as you can. And perhaps some good displays about what nurses do too - add a bit of value to our role!

Re: Open Day Ideas Please!

Viking Dog1 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:25:31 GMT

Hi,

I have just done an open day for our clinic and found that some reps will not donate anything whereas others are really good! The best places I found:

Go online to James Wellbeloved site, register your event and they will send some nice ragger dog toys.

Also petlife international donate vouchers.

The reps I found most helpful were the ones that we do the best business for, Novartis, Pfizer and royal canin were extremely generous as wel as the company that do vetmedin (cant thnk who they are!). Ceva and petplan reps are unable to donate as are the feliway rep (again fogot the name but think).

Vetdirect tend to donate lots of chocolate!!

Hope this helps, but get asking now as some reps will need to buy something like wine / chocolates and then pop them into you. Gone ae the days where they send you logo-ed caps, mugs, tshirts it seems!

Jen x