Keeping Clients "In the Dark"

Today I did my first consult ever. It was kind of awkward and confusing because there is a form on the computer system that we're supposed to fill out, with boxes to tick off or fill in as we take the history and perform the physical exam. I had never used it before, and it's also more designed for medicine (and I am on referral surgery). History taking for referral surgery is kind of like "Dog jumped out of car window, broke leg. Vet sent us here for surgery." The form, however, has a thousand spaces for every detail of diet and lifestyle and what have you, and some of them seem redundant. Combine that with fumbling my questions because I'd never actually spoken to a client alone before, and you can imagine how awkward it was.

On top of that, it was pretty light out and I don't have a very high light requirement threshold, so I didn't even notice that the lights were off. I left the client in the room and went to go get the surgeon, who is very elusive and it took me like twenty minutes to find him, and the entire time she was sitting in this room in the dark. It wasn't until one of the interns was talking to me and mentioned "Oh is that the client sitting in the dark in consult room one?" that I figured it out. To be fair, she could have turned the light on pretty easily.

The other awkward thing about it was that there was some difficulty finding the xrays, and I hadn't thought to ask about them. So once I finally find the surgeon, he wants to know if the client brought the xrays with her, and sends me to ask. She says no, the referring vet promised they would be here this morning. I go back to the surgeon and report this, and he asks if they were digital or film. I don't know, because I didn't ask, so I get sent back to find out. So imagine you're this client, sitting in the dark, and this vet student keeps popping her head in every five minutes to ask details about these obviously missing xrays. It turns out the films got couriered to radiology rather than surgery, and the surgeon eventually found them and the consult proceeded as normal.