have you guys ever answered any questions about the cat friendly practice program? i learned about it recently and am considering telling my vet about it, so i was curious if you guys had any experience with the program. i'm also kind of curious how it came to exist in the first place; idk much abt vet school but i assumed youd learn enough that the existence of a program to help vets handle cats better wouldnt be needed. or is it just for ppl not specialized in cats?
gettingvetted here.
Your vet is probably aware of the Cat Friendly Practice program offered by the American Association of Feline Practitioners. You don't have to be a specialist to participate and they also offer certificates for individual vets and techs as well as educational information for owners on how to create a Cat Friendly Home. In order to be a Cat Friendly Practice, at least one vet in the practice has to be a member of the AAFP (which involves membership fees and requires a certain amount of cat-specific CE to be obtained over the course of 3 years, as well as attending the AAFP conference at least once every 3 years to maintain membership - this is also not free) and there is a lengthy list of qualifications required to obtain Cat Friendly Practice status.
I am a Cat Friendly Veterinarian (which required 8 hours of CE and $300 in and of itself) and if I was going to stay with my current practice, we would be working toward Cat Friendly Practice certification. However, as an associate and not a practice owner, I really have no power to make some of the decisions that would be required for Cat Friendly status of the practice overall. Most things are "common knowledge" or otherwise simply just best practices, like refusing to perform declaws as a practice, or making sure each patient receives pain relief before, during, and after surgical procedures. However, some of them are a little nitpicky or otherwise difficult to achieve. For example, we have one dentistry instrument pack in the practice. If there are multiple dentistry procedures in a day, the instruments are cleaned between procedures, but we don't have additional sets of instruments for the next patient(s). That's okay because dentistry isn't a sterile procedure, but in order to be Cat Friendly Practice certified we would need to have individual instruments for each dental procedure. That's several thousand dollars of investment for the practice. Each staff member also has to have 5 hours of cat-specific continuing education each year, even if it's informal (for example, discussing feline handling or a certain disease during a staff meeting) but that still eats into clinic time and must be prepared by a staff member.
Feline handling (or honestly, most handling of animals in general) isn't really discussed in most vet schools. Education on restraint and handling is often limited to a checkmark during clinical rotations - "demonstrate restraint of patient for an exam", "perform jugular blood draw on a cat or dog" etc. And for every vet student that does get good feline handling education, there is a vet that is 70+ years old that still boxes cats down and handles them by scruffing. That's why the program was created.
