THREE TENETS
Accuracy, completeness and speed in hamster surgery. The hamster cannot
survive if anaesthesized for over 5 minutes, in my experience. How to
achieve this? Prepare well in advance and plan the surgery. No distraction.
Very short gas anaesthesia of less than 10 seconds. Be observant and alert.
The surgeon must review his case and see what improvements can be done in
future surgeries. This means that the young surgeon must do more surgeries
and be humble enough to get advices from experienced surgeons. He must read
more about other surgeries. Unfortunately, very few vets like hamster
surgeries as these little ones are high anaesthetic risks. From what I know,
the vet universities in Australia devote 0.00000001% of the time to
hamsters. I was told Australians don't keep hamsters at all and so our vet
graduates from Australia seldom encounter any case.
PERFORMANCE COUNTS
Successes in veterinary surgeries give confidence to the client who may
refer their friends to you. I spoke to one of my clients, an administrator
in the Kandang Kerbau Hospital. She said: "The older specialists get
overworked and therefore they leave the public service for the private
sector."
"Why don't they farm their surgeries to the younger ones?" I asked.
"It is not possible," she said. "The clients are referred to them."
So the overworked old surgeons leave for the private sector and there is a
dearth of experienced ones to teach the younger surgeons.
I anticipate that our hospitals will eventually be staffed by younger
specialists since there is an exodus of senior doubles who are offered
double and treble their pay to join the private hospitals.
Referrals are an important source of clientele as this case of the Shih Tzu
puppy with a deep ulcer shows. The client was referred to me by her family
member as I treated the massive cauliflower ear wart in the niece's hamster
successfully.
"There is a string hanging out from the ear!" the mother told me when I
enquired about the hamster. "But no more warts."
She had brought in the Shih Tzu puppy 30 days after my tarsorrhaphy surgery
on the left eye as the puppy was rubbing her left ear and face.
30 days later
"The eye ulcer has healed," I said.
"The problem is the infected left ear, not the eye. You can remove the
e-collar nowadays."
"Will the white spot disappear?" she asked.
"No," I said. "It may become much smaller when the puppy grows bigger."
I took a picture of the eye for record. I should have used reflectors but
did not. So I had the eye angled facing the sunlight and got a picture for
readers.
In vet surgery, two types of referrals are important to build up a practice.
One is the existing client. The other is the internet. Price under-cutting
can also build up a good clientele.
TOA
PAYOH VETS
