Finding The Safety Net

Most veterinarians who own a practice have experienced it before...it's the stressful and regrettable job of having to "fire" a client. This happens so rarely (thank goodness), but it is an amazingly stressful experience for the entire hospital staff.

Last week, we had to face this stress and ask a client to never come back to our hospital. There's no doubt that we did the right thing (he made several overt threats to our staff members; and he mentioned bringing a gun each time). He started coming to us because another veterinary hospital had fired him the week before. It feels so wrong to turn away a sick animal, but we simply had no other choice. We're lucky because this other hospital warned us when this client requested his records to be sent to us. They helped us to be prepared and it was nice to know that competitor or not, we're all in this together.  

At our staff meeting, we discussed our frustrations about the situation. It's always so hard to see an innocent animal suffer at the hands of a disturbed person but this situation allowed us to talk with our employees about safety policies. You never want to think about those things, but it's necessary and we took this time to debrief. Everyone on staff told us that this debriefing was quite helpful.

I'm curious about your thoughts. At what point is it necessary for a veterinarian to "fire" a client? How should the veterinarian determine these things? I'd like to hear from you!

--Dana

Comments

[jan]

If he made threats against your staff, he has committed a crime. I hope you alerted the pollce department. He could be a danger to the community and they need to be aware.

[turtlecookie]

I agree with Jan. And while it's difficult to turn away an injured or sick animal, it sounds like it was absolutely necessary in your situation. It's never ok for a client to threaten the staff. I'm glad you were able to debrief. It sounds like you handled things very well.

Turtlecookie.

[Lindsay]

Yikes. I have never thought about this. But just like any other business, if a client is dangerous, then of course you should fire them. I hope his pet is OK, hopefully the dog or cat was just in for a check up and nothing serious.

Great to hear that you and the other local vet are working together by warning each other. I think it's good to work with the competition.