Vetnews | Junie 2024 48 « BACK TO CONTENTS South Africa is going through a very tough time an indication being Pick and Pay is broke! Who could have expected that of a colossal operation? Most of us are feeling the pinch and as far as veterinary practices are concerned things are not that bright. In my area of practice, several small practices have just closed their doors and some of the bigger ones are tightening their belts. And many of the big practices have sold out to consortiums with both good and bad results. Doing“Stress Relief”for the SAVA is also proving to be extremely demanding with many more shouts for help than in the past. Some of these cries for help are really pitiful, with many of them coming from younger colleagues who just cannot see a future or even a way to clear their financially stressed exitances. Is it their fault? Definitely not! The future years back when they were accepted at OP was rosy and the possibility of a secure future looked relatively easy if one could get out of college; jobs were readily available in a respected profession. Today the jobs are still advertised but the question of a respected profession is now being debated in every pub. The profession to many is seen as a bunch of rip-off artists. Is this the case? I have tried to answer that and there are pros and cons to every account, the major difference to years gone by is the high-tech nature of medicine now – plenty of machines to help with the diagnosis and these all cost money! One can understand the need and desire to obtain results from such technological advances but then one can also question how “us vets of old” managed. That answer to many may be very easy – we did not! No, we probably did not but overall, the results were very good. I recall a rural vet of old stating, in a very serious discussion on cattle practice, that he was confident that his diagnosis overall was more than 75% correct and this was justified by the recovery rate of his patients. And in the field, he had no help other than his skill, a thermometer and a stethoscope. So where do the stress levels come from? Many, from the inadequate performance of practices, of debt overloads and the difficulty of meeting commitments which in fact may not have been necessary and then a major one is the attitude of clients who believe they can demand of the vet because of the size of the accounts. A recent problem I had with a broken-down lawyer explains a lot. This person came in with a dog that was salivating severely, was extremely vicious and could not swallow. On checking the vaccination records it had not been vaccinated for rabies for 4 years! On average I think I have seen about three cases of rabies a year in all species, and I have had three clients succumb to this dreadful condition in my 50 years in practice. These three have had lasting effects because of the nature of each death and just who was involved. The first case was an elderly gentleman who had gone to his dog’s assistance in a fight in this garden. His dog had attacked a little stray. He released the stray, and the next morning brought his dog in. She was up to date with all her vaccinations so was not at risk. He however had not noticed a slight cut on his one hand. He died of rabies 4 months later. Then there was an 8-year-old boy who was scratched by a feral cat at a local shopping centre one Saturday morning. He was taken to a doctor who thought all was alright. It was not and he died within 6 weeks. There had been a feral cat vaccination campaign in the area a few weeks earlier. Vaccination failure or possibly the cat not being included. And what about load-shedding and temperature-dependent vaccines? The third case was a farmer who was bitten by a stray dog which was destroyed, and the brain taken for examination. The test result was a false negative and he died. I also recall as a final year student a little dachshund being brought into the hospital at OP. It spent a week or two in surgery with no diagnosis and was then moved to medicine with also no specific findings until one morning it was found dead in its kennel. Off to PM where nothing was found until about 4 weeks later, Prof Tustin was examining bran smears and there was the answer. Panic set in as all the final-year students had handled the dog at some stage and none of us had been vaccinated. Eventually, it was decided to do nothing about it and fortunately, none of us contracted the disease. Back to my lawyer lady. I tranquilized the dog and did an endoscopic examination just to eliminate the possibility of a foreign object – there was none but the bloody saliva had originated from several bites to the tongue which I am sure were self-inflicted. I had a senior veterinary nursing sister visiting and she too was convinced it was rabies so we euthanised the dog and sent it off. The result - negative for rabies! And then all hell let loose with me being accused of gross negligence and that I should have caged the dog and observed it! Oh yes and never a suggestion of her being at fault for neglecting the law and doing the annual vaccination as is required in Natal. Needless to say, she has refused to pay my account despite signing an agreement. Is that why vets commit suicide? If the answer is yes, it is just not worth it; there are more pleasures to life than a broken-down lawyer who fails to accept responsibility for her negligence. v Life plus 25 without parole Mike Lowry Mike Lowry has been in veterinary practice for "life plus 25" years. In this column, he shares his experiences and opinions. Regulars I Life plus 24 +25 Mike Lowry: mikelowry@heritagevet.co.za Pieter Grimbeek: pigvet@agrifarmacysa.co.za Asking all members of the class of 1974 to contact me or Pieter Grimbeek about a class reunion (potentially scheduled for OP in September 2024).
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