An open letter to the NSVMA and all its members;

We in veterinary medicine, in the trenches and on the front lines, are well aware of the state of our industry. The pet owning public is catching on as well, from their own experiences, from my prior articles; it’s no longer an industry secret. However, those who sit on our governing body, the Nova Scotia Veterinary Medical Association, don’t quite seem to grasp the extent of the crisis we are in, since practicing veterinarians have been reaching out to them for help, for change, and are met with papers, policies and resistance.

So, to those on the council, let’s look at this in a way you might begin to understand, since up until this point, you haven’t seemed to. You are at work at your clinic, doing veterinary medicine like the doctor you are. You have a Terrier in front of you, struggling to breathe from congestive heart failure. There’s a cat in the waiting room, flat, and bradycardic from a urinary blockage. Your technicians rush in mastiff on a gurney, bleeding out from a lacerated artery. Which one do you work on first?

With the logic you’ve to date presented, you would elect to work on none of those critical and suffering patients right in front of you. Instead, you elect to continue on your scheduled, planned day of elective surgeries and vaccines and wellness exams. Because that was what was on your schedule for today. Those appointments were booked well in advance and you don’t change. But these are emergencies. So, would you make an exception? Do you save those dying right in front of you?

But wait, you first must ask permission, look up the rules and use those as your guide instead of your training, your eyes, seeing the plain as day dead walking in front of you. So, you ask your practice manager, “Can I reschedule my morning surgeries to help with these very sick animals?” Your practice manager hmms and haws themselves. “Sure,” they say, “Only if the clients are okay with being rescheduled.” So, you have your receptionist call all those clients, asking them if they are okay to have their safe, healthy animals neutered another day.

But all the while, you wait and watch your receptionist work, and you do not touch any of those patients, after all, you don’t yet have the go ahead, don’t yet have the I’s dotted and T’s crossed. The surgery patient owners could say no after all, so, best not to start stabilizing.

Meanwhile, the terrier arrests, the cat goes agonal and mastiff’s bleeding stops because all of his blood is on the floor. “Oh,” your receptionist says to you as you stare at the mess of your treatment room. “Your surgeries rescheduled …”

You stand next to the rigor mortis terrier, the cold cat and the pale mastiff. Do you feel guilty?

This wasn’t your fault… You didn’t have permission… You followed the rules, rules that are needed, right? Right? You did it, textbook style, it’s not your fault it turned out this way.

Now you must go talk to three owners of dead bodies. Will you tell them you did everything you could?

In case it wasn’t clear: We are the terriers that can’t breathe, drowning in this industry, gasping for air, barking for help. We are the cat, flat and comatose, our minds riddled with demons that come out of our ringing phones and long nights. We are the mastiff, cold, lifeless and empty, with nothing more to give.

And you are you, insisting that the very by-laws that are killing us, hold more value, more weight, more significance than our lives. Us – veterinarians, right in front of you. Living, breathing, loving, caring humans, come second to your textbook.

So, while we wait for you to obtain your permission, to dot your I’s and cross your T’s, don’t be surprised at your next Annual General Meeting, you’ll be looking at a very messy treatment room.