Are vets money motivated

I think part of the problem is trying to predict what the client wants as well....

Some people really do want you to go all the way and treat the pet as if they are a human...sadly that's not always what's best for the animal...they cant see the possible good outcome of something like chemo they just feel miserable...but their owners can see a possible future with a healthy happy pet if they can just get over this bad time....and in that case is it worth a young dog feeling sick for a few days if it potentially will alow them a healthy life for another 5 or 6 years?

It up to the vet involved to make the judement call in that case and then as far as i can see it comes down to the vets personality and personal ethical belief's.
But its not really their call it's the owners and the vet has to convince the owner to do the right thing as far as they can see it....and that can be difficult particulaly with small animals.

How do you tell someone that they may be thinking selfishly without them taking it badly?How do you decide if they are thinking selfishly?

You still keep them as clients but you do have to think of the animal's quality of life

It comes down to judging the persons personality which isnt easy and differnet people have very different expectations....

Some are waiting for you to tell them if it was my pet id call it a day.other's are upset and cannot even imagine the idea of Putting a family member to sleep.....
and others on the other spectru of the scale would rather bring the animal home ot die natuarally(which isnt nice without painkillers) rather than payin the bill

How far do people expect a vet to go without using some form of emotional blackmail?even if its unintetional it seems like a skill that may be nessecary

sorry if its not really relevent just my ponderings of the day

Add to that that we dont actually do ethics in collage to(its an optional module where im studying) and you can see why its a mine field from the vets view as well as the owners....how far do you go to save before calling it a day?
 
do you really not study ethics Aru? we did heaps on it in the first few yrs and it was always cropping up in clinical studies as well. it's so important. so many clients have very skewed ideas about quality of life and want you to carry on doing everything possible for their animal when it is waaaaay past any hope and treat you like a murderer if you suggest it's time to call it a day. We dont have it easy working out which clients want you to do everything possible and which want nothing.
 
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do you really not study ethics Aru? we did heaps on it in the first few yrs and it was always cropping up in clinical studies as well. it's so important.

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It was an optional elective and after hearing "intresting stories" about the lecturer who disliked being disagreed with...as in expressing a pro foxhunting is a fail, i chose to do career's and forensic's and communications instead as my extra modules.
Ucd let you do anything you want in horizons so we had plenty of choice's ...a few people did it but most did vet communications or careers instead.

It came up as the odd question in PBL (we did 6 clinical cases in that) but PBl was a bit o a joke anyway so it was hard to take it seriously in them contex.....maybe it'll come up more in the later years

To be honest im not sure how much of ethics can be taught though...

particularly when its hard to take the lecturer seriously after our animal welfare and behaviour lectures where we were told by the same person sqeeky gates were traumatising cattle and that the research farm was filthy...its the cleanest farm ive ever seen.
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There was plenty of good info in that module too but it got over looked by the other crap lecturer came out with .....
she tried but it was hard to take seriously when she seemed so detached from real life sometimes...
 
mmm, we weren't really taught ethics - we studied it in group sessions by discussion. i think that's how you learn - discussing opinions in groups and deciding then what is reasonable. i dont think one person can just lecture on ethics.
 
We had a whole section of our personal and professional skills module in 2nd year based on ethics.

It was interesting to a degree, but also was run by a lecturer who didnt like being disagreed with and would twist your statements to what she wanted so she could prove you wrong (which was HIGHLY irritating and just resulted in people not contributing in sessions)
but the directed group learnings (where we work in teams together on a scenario or case) were interesting as everyone sort of "debated" their opinions on it

I think if people go into veteirnary for the money they are going to be sorely disappointed for a very many number of years of their lives!!! I am doing it as it gives me great pleasure and a sense of fulfillment when I do something (and I am only a 4th year!) and I cant wait to graduate and be able to really help animals AND their owners (as it is all a teamwork career!) to the best of my ability! But I admit it is also important for vets to realise their limitations and know when to say so and pass on to someone more experienced or qualified, even tho that may be a difficult thing to admit to yourself to do!

Wouldnt it be nice if we could all have footballers salaries?! Make life way easier!
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TarrSteps- it was your dog.
you know best.
you know that, and your vet should!!!

Aru - most of us ar elooking to you for some sensible, un-attached advice. is the animal suffering? is it going to recover?
theres your answer, not some splinters in the backside, sit on the fence option! People respect you for telling them as it is.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and think, by keeping this animal alive, am i lowering its quality of life to a point not worth living?

my old pony is on bute everyday. when he gets miserable or too stiff, he will be gone. not forgotten, but no longer suffering.

some things you can deal with. some things you just cant. and sometimes you need a vet opinion to help you with making a decision. it would be nice if vets would just give a human opinion sometimes!
 
Vets have to ask about insurance. If an animal is not insured then they have to discuss how far the owner is willing to go in treatment. Vets are not going to carry out expensive diagnosis and treatment if the owner is unable to afford it. In my experience as a vet nurse and then in the office at a large equine vets there was never any motivation by money, just trying to find the problem and the cure as quickly and accurately as possible.

Just don't get me started on Physio's!
 
I generally never open posts like this because they usually either upset or annoy me too much....but.... I've been doing this job for 16 years now. I didn't become a vet with the prospect of making money and its not my motivating factor now. I currently earn now the equivalent wage of what my sister started on as an accountant 20 years ago and my wage is unaffected by the turn over of the practice. Over Christmas the practice has been quiet but I still expect my wage packet to be the same as when I worked through my lunch hour and sometimes through the night as well. The hours are long and anti-social at times, and although there are heart-warming times there are a lot of very stressful and hard times too.
As someone has already mentioned we all have different views of our pets/horses and that tends to affect how far people want to go in terms of diagnosis/treatment. There are some that literally view their pet as a child and would do anything for it (not always for the better), there are some that view it as an animal and want to do what is best for the animal (and not themselves) and some that just think of animals as replacable objects and don't want to do anything at all. The difficulty is judging how the owner feels about the animal and thats not always to do with money or how much they are willing to pay. The thing I struggled with mostly when I first qualified was realising that just because people viewed their pets in a different way to me didn't necessarily mean they are wrong. I had a while getting my head round that I admit. Personally, with my own animals, I like to think I'm in the group that would do as much as I could for the animals benefit...but when it started to only be for my benefit I would pts or whatever. When I was newly qualified I naively believed that everyone would pretty much feel like this but it isn't the case. So now I try to take a careful history and listen to the client to try to work out what their expectations are. I will then give them all the option so.... tablets and see how it goes.....or bloods/x-rays etc to work out whats going ..... or pts. Its then up to the owner to decide how much or how little they are prepared to do. I can't force anyone to do anything they really don't want to - its an individual choice. Sometimes the decision isn't what I'd of done in the circumstances but thats life! And I would also say that I generally do ask people if the the animal is insured if its going to require any major work such as fracture repairs or long hospital care etc. Not because I rub my hands together and think great more money LOL....but because its not fair to run a load of tests without the owner being aware of the costs involved, particularly if they are going to struggle to cover the cost of it. Most vets now will provide estimates for costs of procedures and I try to give running costs for hospitalised patients because sadly money does become a factor in some cases. Sometimes payment plans can be set up but at the same time I would say the majority of veterinary practices have a HUGE debt problem and a lot of people simply default on the payment plan and never pay....and sadly this then affects the ability of the practice to extend credit to the very honest people who would have no intention of defaulting. Just as there may be a small minority of vets who are only thinking of money making ....there is an equal number of people who abuse the system when credit is extended and so everyone gets tarred with the same brush.....
Ah well better shut up now as have already been sat in front of this computer far too long and need to go off and squeeze some more money out of pensioners.............. only joking!!!!!!!
 
The debt issue is an important one to the conversation, I think. All the practices I know are owed significant amount of money. I suspect it starts to become a matter of self preservation to make sure someone will pay (i.e. an insurance company) before starting an expensive course of treatment.

This is not to say owners don't intend to pay but even for the best intentioned sometimes the temptation to "do everything" overrules an honest evaluation of what will be possible in the future.
 
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