PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
Before the End
Prepare highly attached clients to face their pets' death
Sarah J Wooten, DVM
Article reprinted with the permission of DVM360, February 2016, Veterinary Medicine
is a copyrighted publication of Advanstar. Communications inc. All rights reserved.
Planning for the inevitable can alleviate the complications of uncertainty and grief, allow clients to better assess quality of life, grieve in
a way that honours the human-animal bond and provide you with
the privilege to guide clients through what can be one of the most
difficult decisions of their lives.
The importance of animals in the lives of humans has
never been so pervasive or celebrated—spend two
minutes on the Internet for countless examples. It
seems this emotional public perception of animals as
connected to humans, seen also in the aversion to
animal deaths and killing, will inevitably become more
emotional and more contentious.
In many ways, animals are playing a larger role in
peoples’ lives. People are more isolated. The growth
in one-person households (people living alone) is
responsible for most of the increase in non-family
households over time — and the corresponding decrease in family households1. But people still need
companionship and emotional support, and they are
finding it in their pets.
This personal and emotional attachment—even a feeling of being more bonded to their pets than they are
to their human family—can make end-of-life decisions
for these beloved pets overwhelming. In order to
guide pet owners through difficult decisions, veterinarians need to be able to navigate the relationships
people have with their pets and understand the current expectations and needs that pet owners have regarding humane euthanasia and end-of-life decisions.
I recently attended a session on euthanasia and endof-life care by Elizabeth Colleran, DVM, DABVP (feline)
at the CVC in San Diego and came away with the following thoughts on this arguably most difficult aspect
of practice.
“Doctor, what would you do?”
Pet owners give us remarkable trust and authority, and
during loss, look to us to provide strength, guidance
and leadership. Given these expectations, compassionate communication should be considered both a
core clinical skill and a standard of care for veterinarians, says Colleran.
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