Hey! I'm really curious, I work after hours phones at my local (extremely rural) vet clinic, and I know one other clinic does it an hour or so away, but is it common practice to have a dedicated after hours phone person with Australian vets? For our vets, it's so they don't get calls from idiots wondering when we open at 6am or get constant questions about mundane things. Especially from farmers, who are a combination of 6am and mundane things
It’s not common practice, but it really should be.
I know of one set up for a group of independent mixed practices, which all have a high dairy workload. In calving season they are very busy after hours, and a centralized after hours service to triage phone calls and send the closest available vet works out better for the vets’ mental health, and the welfare of the cattle.
It also, as you suggested, filters out some of the more annoying phone calls. It was a particular frustration of mine when I still did after hours work in mixed practice to get the called between 6 and 8am (we opened at 8) either asking what time we opened (even though is says so in the message before the after hours number) or to book an appointment (which I could not do, as I had no remote log in from home) or to ask something mundane about fleas or worming.
These were particularly frustrating as they interrupted my little sleep, it’s not great to be woken up half an hour before you have to be. People are not all that respectful of the ‘emergencies only’ stipulation on the message.
So it’s not common practice, but I would have liked it back when I still did it.
