Kindness is Part of the Cure

This is a crazy moment in history. One we’ll look back on as a generation defining moment. And as our leaders seem to wobble and lose their resolve, all the more reason good people in local communities have to step up. We are resolved as pet healthcare professionals to continue doing our very best to care for your pets at the same time as looking after each other and the wider community we serve. One of the challenges we have been living with is in having to divide our team in two halves that work different halves of the week. We did this so that if one team gets sick and must isolate, the other can work on and the business can remain open. Sounds good in theory, but in practice this has placed huge demands on our small and very close-knit team. So, we’re looking at ways, as our understanding of coronavirus improves and newer tests become available, to help us to improve things. More on that in the future. In the meantime, we’d like to thank you all for doing your bit to help us run as effective a service as possible. In particular, given how limited resources and how under pressure the team are, we just wanted to let you know how you can play a big part in helping us to stay effective and sane! There are three things you can do that make a huge difference to both of these things. 1. Being on time – Right now, with kerbside visits and telehealth consultations, things are running slower and we have less appointment availability than normal. Being on time for your scheduled visit helps incredibly. Being late or not showing up causes many downstream problems and it’s much, much harder for us to catch up any time lost. 2. Being patient – A visit to the practice that would normally take 20-30 minutes is at present taking anywhere from 30-60 minutes depending on the complexity of a case. Also, because we have one vet at a time working, dealing with emergencies have a bigger impact than normal too. 3. Being kind – We totally get that you may have fears for your health, your family, your pet and your job. This is a really scary situation and we empathise greatly, because we share the same fears as you. But despite these fears, we’re here each day (like so many of the essential worker heroes). We don’t know when things will get better. But what we do know is that we are in this together and choosing to be kind to each other – while harder right now – is a choice we can all make that improves live a little for us all. There’s no downside. Though we do not know when, we are confident that we will get through this and one day things we get back to more normality. In the meantime, thank you for your help so far, we’ll keep you posted as things move forward.