Today's Veterinary Practice provides comprehensive information to keep every small animal practitioner up to date on companion animal medicine and surgery as well as practice building and management.
PRACTICE TO PRACTICE Is Your Practice Proactive or Reactive? Michele Wright, DVM I
Practice to Practice, Peer to Peer Welcome to Today's Veterinary Practice's newest column—Practice to Practice. This column allows veterinary clinics to share their personal experiences with our readers—their peers. We'll bring you stories about how clinical medicine and practice development concepts became a reality for veterinary team members and their patients and clients. Whether you're inspired, cautioned, or educated by these narratives, our goal is to create a column that brings practices together, one tale at a time.
grew up as the daughter of two great veterinarians who helped me realize that as a medical professional, we cannot heal all disease. Sometimes, the outcome is predetermined, not a reflection of our passion, knowledge, and skills.
However, we can prevent many infectious dis-
eases by understanding how diseases are trans- mitted and through the advancement of vaccines. Following my parents' footsteps, I applied to
veterinary school with the goal of educating pet owners on why preventive medicine is the best medicine. I wanted to be a proactive doctor; one that protected pets from diseases, such as parvovirus and distemper, rather than hope patients are fortunate enough not to be affected by serious disease.
THE INFECTION BEGINS In the fall of 2011, I worked as the relief veteri- narian at my mother's clinic. Two dogs that had been boarded at the clinic a few days earlier were coughing. They exhibited classic "kennel cough" clinical signs: mild green/yellow ocu- lar and nasal discharge, hacking cough, mild lethargy, and a slight fever. The owner was
upset because her dogs were vaccinated against Bordetella. "Why do they have kennel cough?" she asked. My husband, Dr. Travis Wright, took a nasopharyngeal swab from each dog for an upper respiratory polymerase chain reac- tion (PCR) panel (Canine Respiratory Disease RealPCR Panel, IDEXX.com). Over the next few days, every dog that boarded
during the same time as the first two dogs was coughing. Even our clinic blood donor dog had a high fever and was showing signs of pneumo- nia. When the PCR panel results came back, we finally had an answer regarding the cause of these signs—the dogs tested positive for H3N8 (canine influenza virus; CIV).
January/February 2012 Today's Veterinary Practice 69