What's Been Happening - A Mid Year Update

We’ve been officially into our new premises in Linlithgow for almost five months now, and it’s fair to say that it’s been pretty exciting times all round! Both clients and staff have been loving all the space, more opportunities to come in and say hi, and just getting to know even more new friendly faces. We’re all especially loving the car park!

Over at Linlithgow, we were the last vet practice to host a charity event for Stray Cat Rescue where the prize was this wonderful goodie basket! Vet Graham and one of our nurse's dog, Kiwi, did the draw for the lucky winner. Overall, Stray Cat Rescue raised over £1000 which is absolutely amazing!

Linlithgow receptionist Hannah and vet nurse Lauren both worked hard and put their thinking hats on to make up some fun kitten and puppy packs for new clients as a treat for their little ones for coming in and being brave. Both packs are full of information and goodies, including a free bag of food! 

At our Linlithgow branch, we hosted a CPD event on Dermatology, with the topic being “Managements of Allergic Skin Disease. This CPD allows us all to further develop our skills, further our learning and get together for a wee chat and a catch up in between. We were able to learn new information about managing skin disease but also able to ask some questions, both with our lovely speaker but also amongst the staff gathered there and we had some great questions and conversations going around. The talk was invaluable to our team, but also those who have a special interest in the topic and are currently working with clients and their pets.

This was the first of, hopefully, many other CPDs that we want to have in the building and we also want to open our doors to have more vets and nurses from other practices come over for these events.

We also celebrated Receptionist Awareness Week, which happens between 23rd-29th April. We have an amazing customer care team across the three branches who all try their best to make every client feel welcome and special. We have two receptionists that work out of our South Queensferry branch, Gail and Audrey, one who works out of Drumbrae, Wendy, and four that work out of our Linlithgow branch, Hannah, Susan, Julie and Jessica. Our receptionists are in charge of welcoming the clients into the building, booking appointments, checking client information is up to date and taking the client through their journey while in the building. Every one of our customer care team wants to make sure they give clients and their pets first class treatment and that they know they're at the top of our priority list while they're with us.

May is Veterinary Nursing Awareness month, and this was a fun month to show off more of our staff across our social media. Our nursing team gets involved in all aspects of our practice - from doing nurse consults, to helping on reception, to x-rays and anesthetics. They’re all just wonderful and always willing to lend a helping hand when you need them (not biased - just facts!). Across our 3 branches we have 22 wonderful nurses, all of whom make coming into work and coming into the practice an absolute pleasure because of how friendly and welcoming everyone is.

One of our vets, Graham, who jumps between all three branches also completed the West Highland Way walk in a week with a few of his close friends. They did the walk while raising money for Asthma and Lung UK, and together they were able to raise over £1500 for the charity. Graham said “it was a great crack” and had many photos of hills and green landscapes to show for it when he came back! Thankfully, no blisters were gained from Graham and he put it all down to his £20 socks!

South Queensferry nurses Fiona, Chloe and Gillian, and Linlithgow receptionist Hannah also all went along to Dalmeny Church where they had their first pet fair. They had a stall where all proceeds went to Dogs Trust - with a parasite treasure hunt and a guess the birthday of the lovely bear. While the fair was going on, we got to meet lots of lovely friendly faces and some very waggy tails - a lot who had come for the blessing that the Church was doing for our furry friends. It wasn’t just dogs that showed up to have their blessings - we also had some guinea pigs too!

And then suddenly we’re in June - where has the year gone?!

For June, we celebrated vets with a “Meet The Vets”. Across the branches, we have 14 vets who are all wonderful (again, not biased, just facts!). The vets are the ones that are responsible for making sure our furry friends are given the best possible care that we can give and also they’re the ones working hard in the theaters during operations. Our vets have a range of specialities as well which makes it so much easier to do internal referrals - for example, Rachel who works primarily in our Drumbrae branch completed a general practitioner certificate in Veterinary Western Acupuncture and Chronic Pain Management in September 2022 and has been working so hard in helping as many pets as she can. Stuart is a big fan of cruciates and orthopedics and is currently the only vet at Westport that can do these big operations. We also currently have 3 of our vets that can do laparoscopic spays which have a reduced recovery time, meaning our lovely dogs can be bouncing back to themselves much faster!

We had a couple of things happening on the 11th June. In Linlithgow, we took part in the Linlithgow Fun Day 2023 with a stall raising money for Walk for Jock at the Linlithgow Round Table Funday. The stall raised a wonderful £257 for the charity. Across the water, Stuart joined Rob Walker on part of his fundraising journey where he is raising money for The Brain Tumour Charity and Jessie May Children’s Hospice at Home. Between the 5th-23rd June, Rob was cycling and running from John O’Groats to Land’s End in memory of three great mates and his son’s best friend, all of whom tragically passed away in the last 18 months.

Continuing with trying to have as many CPD events as we possibly can in our new Linlithgow building, we recently held Scott Kilpatrick from Veterinary Thought Exchange who did an absolutely wonderful presentation on liver disease in dogs. He made what can be quite a tricky subject much more easy to understand and were able to give great, practical steps to take to get to the bottom of this condition. There were over 20 vets in attendance, both from our practice and from many other local practices at the event and there was a suggested donation for our friends for coming along where all proceeds went to Dogs Trust. Veterinary Thought Exchange is a brilliant veterinary continuing education company who run loads of courses for vets and nurses so that we can continue our own personal development.