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T
hese were some of the
questions I discussed with
colleagues at lunch one
day (that elusive time in
the middle of the day when
one should be providing one’s body
with sustenance of some sort).
Not knowing how else to get these
answers other than asking the vets,
we threw together a quick survey
on Google forms and sent it off to
Vethouse with the request that they
distribute it to the members. We were
flabbergasted when we received 79
responses within the first day of the
link going out! By the time the survey
closed, there were 155 responses
representing at least 97 practices.
The majority of practices that
responded were multivet (three or
more veterinarians) followed by
practices with only one veterinarian
(see Figure 1). Because of the nature
of the survey (spur of the moment, no
research proposal submitted) we made
a few rookie mistakes – for example
not providing definitions for terms like
rural, city, generalist and specialist and
expecting that everyone will have the
same understanding of them.
The majority of practices that
responded were general practices
situated in city areas. (Figure 2)
Categories were not defined and
practices were allowed to choose
whichever categories they fell into
and this was not restricted to a single
selection, so a practice could choose
city and then both specialist and
general for example.
To try and capture all the possible
variations of an appointment system,
respondents were given free choice of
the following statements:
• Appointments are compulsory
• I only see emergencies without an
appointment
• Walk-ins get the next available
appointment
• Clients with appointments are given
priority over non-emergency walk-
ins
• I prefer clients to make
appointments but allow walk-in
clients too
• I never use appointments
• I try to use appointments but it
doesn’t work in my practice
• Clients late for an appointment may
lose it and have to take the next
available appointment
• Other
36 practices (23% of respondents) chose
‘I never make use of appointments’
and provided the following reasons:
NEXT! vs “Please
come in, Mrs Smith.”
Survey results of the use
of appointments in
South African veterinary
practices
How many veterinary practices in South Africa make use of an appointment system? For those that do, what are
the advantages and disadvantages? For those that don’t, what is the reasoning behind the thinking?
Dr Aileen Pypers
Figure 3: Reasons selected for not making
use of appointments
Figure 1: Number of practices grouped by
number of vets
Figure 2: Practices characterised by type
8
Mei/May 2015
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