Phone eitquette Part 2

Let's say you have some questions and call your (human) doctor's office. The changes of getting a call back the same day are slim to none (at least, in my experience at a busy, multi-doctor practice). The chances that your actual physician will call you back are, again, in my experience, even slimmer. Usually its a nurse (nothing against nurses) who is parroting back whatever the M.D. told them to say and can't answer any additional questions.

Now let's say you have a question for your veterinarian. You call, demanding to speak to your DVM, and won't tell the staff what you're calling about. With no additional information, its hard for the DVM to triage phone calls, and so yours gets pushed to the bottom of the stack. Irate at a lack of a phone call, you call again. Sorry, the doctor is with other patients or in surgery, if this is an emergency I can see if I can pull her out of the room. Can you please tell me what this is about? Finally, after 4-5 calls to the office, the vet finally calls you back to discuss corn meal being listed as the first ingredient of your dog's food and your having just read on the internet that corn is bad for dogs. Sigh...was this really worth multiple irate phone calls to the staff?

Finally, I understand the anxiety that comes along with your pet being hospitalized. But when you call and demand hourly updates, and I spend that time on the phone with you, you know what I'm NOT doing? TREATING YOUR PET! And as hard as it is for you to comprehend, yours is not my only patient for the day. So between treating your pet, I'm seeing appointments every 15 minutes and doing surgeries too.

Try to keep that in mind next time you call your vet and demand an immediate call back. You might get it, but you're not dong yourself any favors in asking for it.