What’s the Wait? COVID and The Veterinary Industry

You know that Sunrise Boulevard Animal Hospital is always working towards bringing the most exceptional care to you and your pets. The pandemic has changed many things about the veterinary industry, and during COVID we need your help more than ever to keep bringing you the best care possible for your pets.

What’s Changed?

As with many industries, COVID has changed the way that we need to operate. In order to keep our clients and our staff safe, we have changed our protocols to provide veterinary care in a socially-distanced manner. These types of appointments take more time, more staff, more phone lines, and extra steps to keep everyone safe while doing a good job. 

In addition, as with many other jobs, the veterinary hospital is not immune from COVID. Staff illness and virus exposure, child care concerns, and mandatory quarantines sometimes have left us with less help than we would like.

Besides these more “normal’ COVID-related challenges, the veterinary industry is also experiencing some very unique circumstances that have added to the demand for our services on top of decreased availability. During the pandemic:

• There has been an increase in the number of pets being adopted.
• People seem to want to catch up on veterinary care that they have been putting off since the pandemic began.
• Pets are experiencing more accidents, injuries, poisonings, and stress-related issues due to their people being home more.
• Pet owners are more aware of problems in their pets and more likely to seek care.
• More behavioral issues are surfacing due to schedule changes and decreased socialization opportunities.

This perfect storm of circumstances has left our hospital and others around the country with a whole lot of patients who need us and not enough time or hands to do it well. 

Supporting Your Veterinary Hospital During COVID

Now that you understand the challenges that we are facing, please know that there are some things that you can do to help us navigate our COVID challenges.

• Listen to and respect the protocols we have established to keep you, us, and your pets safe. Stay up to date on our social media.
• Please call well in advance to have prescriptions refilled as it may take some time for us to accomplish this.
• Schedule wellness and routine appointments in advance and be patient if we are unable to accommodate your healthy and stable pet immediately.
• Be understanding if it takes a few days for us to return non-urgent calls. 
• Call us to cancel or reschedule an appointment as soon as you know you can’t make it – chances are someone else would appreciate your appointment.
• Remain flexible if you are asked to reschedule. We promise we wouldn’t ask you if we didn’t need to. 
• Know that we may be running behind. 
• Understand that if we refer you to another hospital or emergency hospital that it is because we are truly unable to provide your pet with the care they deserve in a manner commensurate with the seriousness of their condition. 

Please remember that we are people, too. At the end of the day, we want to help as many pets as we can while providing the best care possible. With your help, we should be able to accomplish that goal through COVID and beyond.