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The veterinary-client-patient relationship is important for both you and your pet. Photo credit: tobyotter/Flickr.com
For a pet owner, the veterinary-client-patient relationship (VCPR) is one of the most important relationships in your life, or at least in your pet’s life. Without a proper VCPR, your pet cannot receive adequate health care. It’s as simple as that.
What Is a Veterinary-Client-Patient Relationship?
This is what the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has to say in their FAQ about the veterinary-client-patient relation:
“A Veterinarian-Client-Patient Relationship, or VCPR for short, exists when your veterinarian knows your pet well enough to be able to diagnose and treat any medical conditions your animal develops. Your part of the VCPR is allowing your veterinarian to take responsibility for making clinical judgments about your pet’s health, asking questions to make sure you understand, and following your veterinarian’s instructions. Your veterinarian’s part of the VCPR involves making those judgments, accepting the responsibility for providing your pet with medical care, advising you about the benefits and risks of different treatment options, keeping a written record of your pet’s medical care, and helping you know how to get emergency care for your pet if the need should arise.”
Why Is the VCPR So Important?
The veterinary-client-patient relationship is based on regular examinations performed on your pet by your veterinarian and regular communications between you and your veterinarian. Both you and your veterinarian play an important role in the relationship. It is important that you understand all of the treatment options (including the risks and benefits of each) and it is important for your veterinarian to explain all of these options to you so that you can understand them.
Whether these communications between you and veterinarian take place via social media networks (hopefully in a private setting), email, text messaging, telephone conversation or face-to-face conversation matters very little.
However, one thing that is essential to the veterinary-client-patient relationship is an actual hands-on examination of your pet performed by your veterinarian. This is something that cannot be performed online. It cannot be replaced by video or other forms of imaging. Every pet deserves to have a physical examination performed on a regular basis. These regular exams are very important in keeping your pet healthy. In addition, every diagnosis for your pet should start with a thorough physical examination. Without that examination, accurate diagnosis is often not possible. And an accurate diagnosis is essential to determine the best treatment protocol for your pet.
Of course, there’s also a legal issue involved as well. Without a valid VCPR, a veterinarian is not allowed to diagnose or treat an animal or even prescribe or dispense medications for that animal in some states.
Can a strictly online relationship qualify as a veterinary-client-patient relationship? The legalities involved with giving veterinary advice online is still in a grey area in a legal sense. However, I honestly don’t see how a valid VCPR can possibly exist without an actual physical examination. And, as a result, I don’t see how any veterinary professional can accurately diagnose and treat an animal with only online contact with that animal’s owner.
As a veterinarian who is active online, in both this blog and in many social media networks, I am frequently asked for advice regarding pets. And I’m always open to advising friends, acquaintances, pet owners and pet lovers to the best of my ability. But that ability to help and advise is always tempered by the fact that I have not actually seen and examined the pet in question. As a result, the best I can ever do is offer general knowledge perhaps with a best guess.
Contrast that with what I am able to do in my veterinary practice, where I am able to actually perform a hands-on examination. Performing that physical examination gives me so much more information than I able to receive otherwise. Being able to actually see, touch, listen, etc to the pet is invaluable and cannot be replaced with an online relationship.
So, while I see nothing wrong with asking for additional advice or guidance through an online alternative, I think it is important, even essential, to find a veterinarian (or group of veterinarians, if necessary) that you can trust with whom you can develop and maintain a veterinary-client-patient relationship.
About Lorie Huston, DVM
Lorie Huston is a veterinarian, pet health and pet care expert, professional writer, blogger, social media and blogging consultant, and SEO strategist.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
That is one of the reasons why we like Jasmine seeing one vet (well, one of each); so they are familiar with her and her history.
Of course nobody can remember everything and having good medical records is also important – and that is way too often not the case!
For the longest time I wanted to get a family doctor, simply as in the clinic you get a different one each time and there is no comprehensive care. Guess what? Now I have a family doctor and he doesn’t remember anything; has some records but never looks in them. So that’s pretty pointless too. He can even ask me a question (while having the patient record on the screen and sitting right there); clearly not write it down and five minutes later ask me the same question. Why are you asking if you’re not going to retain the answer for longer than five minutes, nor write it down?
So to me, the importance of such relationship, when it actually is truly there, is comprehensive medical care. God bless our vet for being on top of that.
Hey, I don’t expect anybody to remember every little bit about their every patient. But at least write it down and read it before dealing with a new or a repeat issue. Otherwise you’re really starting from scratch every time and miss an important part, the medical history.
Apart from that I totally agree that at least every once in a while the vet needs to actually see and examine the animal. Online communication is awesome when discussing treatment possibilities for ongoing issues, and stuff like that, doesn’t work when something new crops up.
Hi Jana.
Yes, keeping accurate and up-to-date medical records is an obligation for any medical professional, whether it be a veterinarian, medical doctor, dentist or any other type of doctor. To do less is in violation of most practice acts also, I believe, and can cost a doctor their license to practice.
Well, you should have seen the records that our present vet received from our previous one. Three pages of useless scribble. And that was a record of a patient visiting at least once monthly with various issues.
Then, of course, having the records is one thing, using another. Gotta keep’em and gotta read’em.