PETE WEDDERBURN Animal Doctor

care they need in emergencies.

There are two ways, introduced in the past decade, that vets have changed the way that after-hours care is provided.

First, many vet practices have organised shared rotas: for example, two three-vet practices might join together to offer a joint on-call service. This means a one-in-six on call rota, rather than one-in-three. The vets will be busier when they are on duty, but at least it happens less often, so they have more proper time off to be with family and friends, and to unwind away from work.

Second, in some areas, vets have set up dedicated pet emergency clinics. These are centralised premises that are staffed with vets and nurses who are scheduled to work only at night, weekends and bank holidays. The difference is that these individuals are not “on call”: they are actively working. They do their busy shifts, then they go home and sleep in the daytime. These emergency vets and nurses work the opposite hours of other veterinary staff. The lifestyle doesn’t suit everyone, but for some people, at certain times of life, it offers a useful alternative to a standard working life. Vets who work in emergency clinics are given special training, so they become experts in dealing with emergencies, including a wide range of surgical and medical crises. The result is that pet emergency clinics offer the optimal type of veterinary care. When your pet is seriously ill, rather than the on-call vet just treating your pet then going home, there’s a dedicated team to stay with the sick animal all night, observing them continuously, making sure that they are safe and receiving the best possible care.

Pet emergency clinics need to be “fed” by a high number of vet clinics to be able to generate a case load busy enough to justify the financial cost of continuously employing a team of vets and nurses. This means that they can only be set up in areas where there is a sufficient density of population. In Ireland, at the moment, there is only one pet emergency clinic, in Dublin, servicing over thirty clinics in Dublin and surrounding areas. For people who use them, the down-side is that they usually need to drive further than they’d normally have to travel to reach the vet. The up-side is that when they get there, the service for their pet is likely to be as good as it can get.

You may never need a vet after-hours, but if you do, there’s always one waiting for you.