Common Laboratory Tests, Interpretation, Tips For Our Clients

Please join me this Wednesday, June 1st for our next webinar.  We've packed it full of great information for your veterinary team.  If you want me to send you an electronic copy of the information I'm showing below, just visit www.halowconsulting.com and shoot me an email.  I'll be HAPPY to send you the stuff!

And remember...

This is an excellent supplement to those training manuals I keep bugging you to build  :)

Common Laboratory Test Rules

Urinalysis:  Owner should collect a ‘mid stream’ catch and refrigerate the sample immediately afterwards or transport it to the practice ASAP.  Test should be run within 20 hours of capturing sample.

T4:  Can be run at any time except when the patient is on soloxine.

Free T4:  Can be run at any time with or without medication

Post Pill T4:  4-6 hours after administering medication

Phenobarb Level:  If patient has been on meds greater than 3 weeks, the blood pull can happen at any time.

Potassium Bromide Level:  If the patient has been on the meds for 3 months or more, the blood pull can happen at any time.

Digoxin Levels:  Patient must be on meds for at least 6 days, then pull the sample 6 hours after medicating.

Maldigestion Level:  Have patients fast 12 hours prior to test.

ACTH Stim:  Fast patients for 12 hours prior to test.

Fructosamine:  No requirements

Blood Glucose:  6-8 hours post insulin injection

EMERGENCY!!!!!

Emergency!

Join us May 17^th for a detailed look at the EMERGENCY.

We’ll go over:

Medical signs and symptoms in the companion animal that indicate an emergency.

The basic physical assessment we do for an emergency patient.

                                  Both dogs and cats have femoral pulses.

                                          Get in the habit of knowing how to find it

                                          on your pets at home or on your hospital 

                                          pets so that you don't misstep during an 

                                          emergency.

How we should handle all emergency phone calls.

How we should handle all emergency walk-ins.

Plus a look at some payment options and some tactful ways to handle billing of the emergency client.  Interested in attending?  Please send me an email at bash@halowconsulting.com

This patient's gums demonstrate it's vigor.  They are moist and slippery and their color, a coral pink, indicates good oxygenation and gum health.  This technician is pressing his forefinger on a portion of the gum and then removing it.  When he does, the gum will go from white back to its original coral pink color as the blood rushes back to fill the place it was pushed from.  This is called Capillary Refill Time and can only occur when the heart is doing it's job at moving blood through the body.   Normal capillary refill time is less than two seconds.  This same effect can be observed in the ear of some patients.  Simply squeeze the tip of the patient's ear to push blood from the site and observe how long it takes to flow back.