Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
What waste of time. Our local consult services have been given permission to defer exams and simply give phone advice in order to cut down on the strain on skeleton crews and protect clinicians.
We just had consult rounds by video conference with a huge turnout—I guess people are lonely at home. HIV positive guy with bad teeth and multiple hemorrhagic, ring-enhancing, lesions. Needle biopsy of brainstem lesion showed mycobacterium avium intracellulare. I don't know if I've ever seen an MAI brain abscess, but the surgeon said he saw a few before good antiretroviral treatment. Could it have come from the teeth? Pretty unusual.
Radiologist had to point his laptop camera at his PACS screen and anytime anyone else talked, the image switched to them.
Sadly it’s doesnt really work like that in vet med. Most GP vets are excellent and responsible and wouldn’t refer a case like those two. But some just completely become unable to think or apply logic/common sense if there’s any neurologic component to the case, they just throw up their hands and refer it. Those vets would not be interested in a video conference because they don’t want any further role in caring for that animal. The vets who *would* be interested in the video conference rounds wouldn’t refer cases like those two.
The old school ethic of being a vet specialist was that you were one of the lucky ones who got advanced training and your obligation was always to help GP vets for free. This ethic has dissipated somewhat but still pretty much any GP vet can call any specialist vet to get free consultation of their case and help with managing it. I used to do this tons, and it’s to my benefit because my referring vets get better at Neuro and I get better referrals.
But modern vet medicine has become about throughput and spending a lot of time consulting with a specialist is less time efficient for GP vets than making a referral. It’s a shame because that GP vet could learn a lot doing the free consult with me and at least trying to manage the case, and then he or she would get better at Neuro over time and improve their practice of vet med. But like all things, you’ve got to be willing to put the time into it to get better, and not everyone cares to do that.