Quote:
Originally Posted by DP807  One thing to look for is an AAHA accredited hospital. You can be sure there will be staff there 24/7. |
24/7 care is NOT an AAHA standard, FYI.
The reason for overnight stays after routine surgical procedures is actually for the animal's benefit, not the vet's wallet -- in most cases, with proper anesthetic/surgical protocols, there is not a very high risk of complications once the animals is awake and mobile.
The reason for the overnight stay is to avoid the risks associated with sending a pet home. Being away from home, undergoing a surgical procedure, etc is stressful for the animal. No doubt when they see their owners, they get very excited, when they get home, they get very excited. Staying at the clinic - confined in a cage with little stimulation - most pets will curl up and sleep through the night after surgery, allowing their bodies to heal.
My experiences:
I've worked as a tech in multiple day practices that performed routine procedures and left animals overnight alone afterwards. Other than kinked lines on IV catheters or soiled cages, I haven't seen any other complications in post-surgical patients left alone overnight.
I also work in the regional 24/7 emergency clinic. The majority of the spay/neuter complications we see are in pets that had surgery in the last 24 hours and did not stay overnight at the clinic where the surgery was performed. Most of the complications are: internal bleeding caused by too much activity too soon (how many people with cats really keep them confined to a cage overnight when that is what i recommend to them?!) or owners thinking the animal was groggy from surgery and thus not heeding the advice to keep the e-collar on at all times so animals come in with wide-open incisions with all kinds of organs hanging out.
For any surgical patient in day practice -- the patient is always observed through the day and evaluated before we leave for the night. If anything about the case was not strictly routine or the patient is overly anxious or the patient is not recovering as well as hoped or any number of other red flags, we ALWAYS call the owner to inform them that the patient should NOT stay in our hospital overnight. We tell them what is going on, that we recommend continued monitoring at a 24 hour facility, etc. If they absolutely refuse to transfer, we send the pet home with strict discharge instructions and a card for the closest emergency clinic.
BackInBlack - in reference to taking pets in the back treatment area: The day practice I work in is much more accommodating to people that do not want to leave their animals. If it is slow, we'll allow you to come back to the treatment area, if its busy, we'll do our best to do whatever we can in the room. The exceptions are: owners are NEVER allowed in surgery, dental, or radiology.
The ER I work in however, has a very strict employees only in the treatment areas policy. The one exception we will make is if we have an animal that is so critically ill (ie it is intubated and someone is manually breathing for it, it is anesthetized/unconscious and hooked up to monitoring equipment, etc) that it cannot be transfered into an exam room for the owners to be present during euthanasia or it cannot be removed from an oxygen cage for a visit. However, the employees only policy is for the safety of all involved... You never know when we could be working with fractious animals, and people just love to walk up to the table and pet fluffy while we are drawing blood, etc. We routinely have sterile fields set up in the treatment area (IV caths, U-caths, laceration repairs, etc) and we cannot allow owners to be milling around and potentially jeopardize other patient's quality of care, etc. We're not torturing your pets back there -- I don't get paid enough to do this job for any other reason than pure love of doing it. And to top it off, you never know when an owner is going to freak out at what they see --- It really helped when we had a GSD that was hit by a car and rushed in without warning to have some owners standing with kitty in our back tx area (new vet, didn't know policy)... The GSD started vomiting gallons of frank blood down the front of my scrubs... One owner nearly passed out and the other started vomiting in the trash can! Both in the way while I'm trying to start an IV, get fluids and a transfusion started, stabilize open fractures, etc.
And again, we have policies because like everyone here generalizing about the people that work in veterinary medicine, we have to generalize about this country's pet owning population. And by and far, most of them are not nearly as intelligent or educated as the people on this forum. Our policies are designed to keep owners safe (we do live in quite a litigious society, afterall), to give us the opportunity to do our jobs unimpeded so that we can give your pets the highest quality care possible.