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Yesterday, Feb 13, 2011 Sunday
I was at the Surgery at 9.30 am. Neutered a cat for one Indian lady
and her friend or daughter. "Did the cat claw you?" she asked. "No,"
I said. "He hissed when he was held by my assistant for sedation
before surgery. So, I had to be quick on the draw and injected him
very fast." The older woman laughed and said: "I have two female
cats. They are wild and will not permit strangers to touch them.
Will you be able to spay them?"
"Yes," I said. "Provided you bring them in separate cages. I will be
able to sedate and spay them." The most ferocious cat can be sedated
safely for the vet and the cat if you know how to do it.
I showed Nat, the young man of 17 years in his 2nd day of internship
how the cat was handled for injection. He is a lucky man as I don't
accept interns who are not accepted by the Vet School as time and
resources are needed to give him the veterinary experience. I told
him that he had a good father who bothered to get him this
attachment as that was what he wanted. His father was my wife's
colleague some 20 years ago and had kept in touch with the group
regularly. Otherwise I would not agree to have him. I was shocked
that he did not know whether he had Microsoft Excel in his laptop as
I thought all Secondary Schools in Singapore teach the students how
to use Excel. "You better know," I told him off. "Or I will complain
to your father. Your answer should be a yes or a no." I have no
patience for young people who don't know what software they have in
their laptops when they want to do internship as I am quite busy and
have better things to do. I asked Michelle to check.
I asked Nat to take a dog with extensive maggot wound on the neck,
treated and bandaged by Dr Vanessa Lin yesterday, for a walk outside
as he had not kept any dog, being prohibited by his father from
keeping dogs. The dog walked a bit and stopped. He also stopped. I
checked on him standing on the grass patch with the dog. "Walk the
dog a step at a time," I advised him. "He needed the exercise."
As for the other intern Michelle, I instructed her to do inventory
control and database. "Being an intern does not mean that you just
watch the vet and assist the vet in the treatment of animals," I
told her. "Veterinary medicine is much more than that. It is a
business as for all professions. Starting a vet surgery is not a
guarantee of success for every surgery. It has to be properly
managed and one of them is to check on stocks and costs and that
must be done regularly. Otherwise medicines, microchips and sutures
can get lost if there is no inventory check and over-ordering of
drugs mean money spent and tied up for a long time."
I think that Michelle is getting to know more about veterinary
medicine at the 4th week. "As for database management, it is good
practice to keep two databases to get fastest retrieval of data. One
for client particulars and one for pet particulars."
She had said that the Toa Payoh Vets database was small and in any
case, the client and pet particulars were already in one file. This
file was accessed easily and fast. This was a good question.
"The retrieval is fast now," I said. "However, there is a limit to
the number of records being permitted by the old versions of Excel."
"But you have a newer version," Michelle speculated.
"In any case," I said. "Data will accumulate to slow down the
retrieval speed over the years. Not in 2011 but 5 years from now.
Also, there is a lot of wastage of hard disk space when the two
databases are combined in one as not all particulars are filled up
when there are absence of data from the owner or pet. These empty
reserved fields take up the hard disk space and delay retrieval."
I don't know whether she understood what I was saying as this sound
too technical to anyone who has no knowledge of the structure of
database and database management. This was an intelligent discussion
and would help Michelle, the intern in understanding more about
veterinary administration.
A woman in her late 40s was sitting at the corner of the waiting
room reading a textbook on childcare education. She was sneezing and
had runny nose. The younger lady gripped the top of the crate which
had her rabbit and pressed the crate down onto her lap and chest. I
was surprised. Then I saw the associate vet's dog trying to sniff
the rabbit.
I had not known that this young lady was worried about the dog and
now
she told me why she did not place the crate on the floor. This vet's dog
would try all means to get out to the waiting room when banished to
the back room. Sometimes he would bark uncontrollably at me or at
clients.
I ignored his barking as paying attention would encourage more
barking. Barking at clients is not acceptable to me and if this dog
persists, I would step in and let the vet know that her dog has to
be kept away from the reception area and the consultation area. The
problem was that he would sneak out from the back room whenever the door
was opened by our workers.
There are some vets who have well behaved dogs and this
one is definitely well known amongst clients for his barking. Some
clients don't mind but as you can see from the rabbit owner, there
are worries and great unhappiness. As Asian Chinese are
non-confrontational by culture, there is no complaint from the
rabbit owner and her mum.
The lady with the rabbit was having runny noses and red eyes. She
was allergic to the rabbit but would not put the crate on the floor,
holding it firmly on her lap. "Put the crate on the table," I said
and asked Nat to clear the table. Her mother also had runny nose but
was allergic to the air in veterinary surgeries. So, it was a
surprise to me. As I did not link both together, I thought it was a
coincidence that two persons were allergic to animal-related
environment. I did not see both coming to the surgery together as I
was busy with the administration and the two interns. Actually it
was a mother and daughter suffering runny noses at a vet clinic.
It was a bright sunshine Sunday but very hot and humid in the
afternoon. It was the first Sunday that was without James Ang, my
76-year-old receptionist who really could not work anymore. He had
been with me for over 20 years.
Sometimes, "blind loyalty" according to the book "The Breakthrough
Company" by Keith McFarland prevents small businesses from being
extraordinary. Therefore, the vast majority of small businesses stay
small and not by choice.
Talents and character of employees make a
business expand to become large. What Mr McFarland said is that
employees who are not up to scratch and don't perform are best fired
and not retained for years. They drag down the company's performance
and may destroy the company. Many people had asked me to retrench
James as they complained about his service. I did not do so but this
year, he had asked to resign and I think he would be happier
enjoying the winter years.
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TOA
PAYOH VETS
