Clinical Excellence
Blood Pressure Monitoring
We fully monitor our patients. During anaesthesia blood pressure can drop, this can lead to slow recoveries, life threatening emergencies and potential long term organ damage. We give all our anaethesied patients intravenous fluids through a drip during surgery so we can adjust the rate up and down to maintain blood pressure at a safe level. This would be standard procedure for people undergoing General anaesthetic.
At the last survey (2015) Only 1-2% of veterinary practices in the UK measured blood pressure in dogs and cats hopefully with the stricter guidelines this will increase. We have taken the lead on this and are following guidelines for best practice. All our anaesthetised patients have their blood pressure monitored. It is essential that blood pressure is maintained during surgery and vital in our older patients or those in poor health.
We feel that this is an essential part of our “gold standard anaesthesia” and care. We are looking carefully at the drugs we use when tailoring anaesthetics to ensure we are using drugs that minimise decreases in BP and give the safest possible anaesthetic for your pet.
We have set protocols in place for when blood pressure decreases to ensure our trained team are aware of how to respond rapidly.
We monitor all our anaethetised patients with state of the art machinery that monitors blood oxygen, carbon dioxide, ECG & and blood pressure.
Compassionate Care
We are committed to compassionate care – optimum recovery from illness, injury or surgery and enhancing quality of life for our patients.
- We are committed to safe and gentle handling of our patients and high standards of nursing care.
- We use only gold standard anaesthetics on all our patients.
- We assess and grade our anaesthetics based on the ASA human grading system 1-6 and drugs are tailored to suit the needs of the patient.
- Our older patients (8 years plus) have bloods taken prior to and fluids during all anaesthetic procedures to ensure we maintain blood pressure (which we measure throughout our anaesthetics). Maintaining blood pressure ensures all the essential organs such as the liver and kidneys receive an adequate supply of blood during every anaesthetic. In older pets this is vital because as organs age they have less reserve/resilience to drops in blood pressure during anaesthetics.
- All our animals receive post operative pain relief as part of there procedure and also to go home with. Go home Pain relief is included in our neutering prices and is always estimated for in other procedures it is not optional.
- We will endeavour to provide an estimate of costs for any procedure and where possible advise our clients on expected ongoing costs.
- We try whenever possible to base our treatments and recommendations on gold standard and evidence based practice.
- We will offer our clients a range of diagnostic and treatment options which include gold standard and best practice options but we will work with you to provide a treatment solution if these options are out with your budget.
The PLATTER approach
We are committed to the PLATTER approach to pain management:
Plan: every case should start with a patient-specific pain assessment and treatment plan
Anticipate: the patients pain management needs should be anticipated wherever possible so that either preventative pain relief can be provided or, in the case of pre-existing pain, it can be treated as soon as possible
Treat: appropriate treatment should be provided that is commensurate with the type, severity and duration of pain that is expected
Evaluate: the efficacy and appropriateness of treatment should be evaluated using either a client questionnaire or an in clinic scoring system
Return: Arguably the most important step, this action takes us back to the patient-where the treatment is either modified or discontinued based on an evaluation of the patients response
We are committed to the PLATTER approach to pain management:
Plan: every case should start with a patient-specific pain assessment and treatment plan
Anticipate: the patients pain management needs should be anticipated wherever possible so that either preventative pain relief can be provided or, in the case of pre-existing pain, it can be treated as soon as possible
Treat: appropriate treatment should be provided that is commensurate with the type, severity and duration of pain that is expected
Evaluate: the efficacy and appropriateness of treatment should be evaluated using either a client questionnaire or an in clinic scoring system
Return: Arguably the most important step, this action takes us back to the patient-where the treatment is either modified or discontinued based on an evaluation of the patients response