Page 1 - Clinical Connections - Summer 2020

ECC DURING LOCKDOWN
Karen Humm, Senior Lecturer in Small Animal Emergency and Critical Care
Tand Co-Head of the Emergency Referral and Critical Care services
he RVC Small Animal Hospital was all the cases presenting to the hospital.
no different to veterinary practices Our students, who are present for 48 across the UK (and many other weeks a year in the hospital, were released
countries), with the day-to-day working of from clinical duties the week prior to the
the hospital being completely re-evaluated daily in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic. Following the government announcement and RCVS and BVA guidance, we cancelled
all routine appointments and started seeing urgent and emergency cases only. This meant that the Emergency Referrals, Critical Care, first opinion out-of-hours, Ophthalmology and Neurology and Neurosurgery services were seeing almost
lockdown, and changes were needed to keep staff and clients as safe as possible, whilst still delivering high standards of care.
We rapidly implemented new protocols so clients would not to have to enter the hospital. Clients remained in their cars while their pet was taken into the hospital for triage and full assessment. Owners therefore had to say goodbye to them upon admission, which could be difficult for them
as they didn’t know what the full plan for their pet was at that point.
History taking over the phone was fairly simple, but online consent forms were more of a challenge and we had to go through several iterations before we found a system that really worked. We worried about owners without mobile phones, but actually this transpired not to be much of an issue. However, we had other challenges we didn’t anticipate, such as owners needing the toilet after a long journey.
Before the full government lockdown was implemented, some owners felt our actions
CLINICAL CONNECTIONS RVC Clinical Services Newsletter Summer 2020
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RVC & FRIENDS HELP MAGNETIC RESONANCE LIMB SAVED BY TACKLING IMHA FROM IN COVID-19 BATTLE EQUINE IMAGING UNUSUAL GRAFT ALL ANGLES
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SHUTTERSTOCK