Practice Tour

 
Reception & waiting room.
You are welcome to "pop in" to any of our surgeries to ask our staff for advice, to weigh your pet, or to purchase from our selection of foods, health-care products and accessories.
We will deliver orders of over £25 free of charge.

Dispensary.
We stock over 500 items - including medicines, pet health care products, prescription diets, and lifestyle diets.
Having an on-site dispensary at each of our surgeries allows you to collect the correct drugs at the time of your consultation with the minimum of inconvenience. We realise that when you have the worry of a sick pet this is helpful. Our dispencing staff are very willing to give advice on any of these products.

Consulting rooms.
We have vet and nurse consulting rooms.
All of our surgeries are linked to each other by computers and all of our records are computerised. This means that you may attend any surgery that is convenient for you but your records are up to date and available anywhere in the practice should your local branch be closed.

Laboratory.
Our in-house laboratory produces blood results within minutes enabling rapid pre-anaesthetic checks or constant monitoring of your pet should the need arise.


We have a daily courier service to transport other samples to a Independant Laboratory. These results are faxed back to us, usually on the same day. This enables more complicated blood tests or sensativity testing to be carried out with the minimum of delay.

Pre-op prep room.
This is a seperate room where we induce anaesthesia and prepare the patient for an operation. With almost all of our patients being very hairy they need to be clipped prior to surgery, unless this is done away from the operating theatre there is an increased risk of contamination and infection.

Theatre.
This is where all of our surgical procedures are carried out. We use this room only for these surgical procedures, all other anaesthetics are performed elsewhere, preparation in the prep room, dentals in the dental room, and x-rays and ultrasonography in the x-ray room.

Dental Room.
We offer a range of dental treatment from routine scaling and polishing to specialist endontics and orthodontics for improved oral hygiene. The bacteria involved with infected gums (gingivitis) causes bad breath but, more importantly for the health of your pet, enters the blood stream and can lead to damage elsewhere, notably your pets kidneys and heart. It is, therefore, very important to keep your pets teeth and gums healthy. Our nurses and vets are happy to discuss with you how to keep your pets mouth healthy.

Radiography room.
We have a powerful X-ray machine and an automatic film processor that enables us to produce consistant x-rays quickly. As most veterinary x-rays are taken with the pet sedated or anaesthetised, speedy and consistant x-rays are essential. We also have Ultrasound, endoscopy, and blood pressure monitoring to hand to further investigate problems that are occuring deep inside your pet without the need for open surgery.

Ultrasonography
St Anne's has just invested in a new ultrasound machine, this machine is more powerful and can produce larger and much clearer images. It also has "colour dopplar" so that blood flow can be shown, this is useful in for example, examining hearts to look at valve function.
Ultrasonography can take place any where in the Practice, even in a consulting room. Here it is being used in the X-Ray room.
Ultrasonography is often used in conjunction with x-rays to aid diagnosis but has an advantage over x-rays as it can be performed without needing sedation or an aneasthetic, especially important in the older patient, as it gives moving images in "real time".

ECG.
We use a small ECG unit that measures heart rythm and rate. This is portable so that it can be used anywhere in the building, thus reducing the stress of taking the patient to a special area.
Here it is being used in the kennels on an "in patient".

Kennels.
We have seperate dog and cat areas and a totally seperate isolation kennel to prevent the spread of disease. This allows intensive medical nursing day or night.
Our kennels are of stainless steel to ensure efficient cleaning, but all of patients have cosy "sheep-skin" type vetbeds for comfort. We are very happy for clients to visit their pets if they are having to be hospitalised as we feel that this contact with their "mum & dad" speeds recovery. We will only hospitalise a patient if it is absolutely necessary.

Nurses Station
Pets are monitored pre & post anaesthesia by our Kennel nurse. We have a nurse station so that information can be collated, added to the pet’s general clinical record or more in-patients records such as anaesthetic monitoring chart, hospital stay chart, or intravenous fluid usage chart.


Jay (the cat in our picture) is our resident cat, not an escapee "in-patient".

Office
Running a Veterinary Practice of this size involves an organised office. As well as admin staff our office can also contain up 6 staff pets ….. this prompted our Health & Safety Assessors to comment that ..”animals should be banned from a veterinary practice as they constitute a trip hazard”. But at St Anne’s it’s a case of “love me, love my dog”.

Puppy Parties
Puppy parties take place in our waiting room. This has the benefit of not only socialising the puppies but also they associate coming to the Practice with enjoyable experiences and are, therefore, less worried when they visit us in the future.

Puppies come in all sizes!
Some parties are very popular.

Charities receive food donations.
Every year before Christmas we collect food, from our clients, to give to local charity organisations.

Pictured here is our local RSPCA Inspector, Rick Maskell, receiving some donated food for the local RSPCA Rehoming Centers.

We would like to thank all of our generous client who so kindly donate food in this way.

Anaesthesia at St Anne's.
We realise that owners are always worried about the risks of their pet undergoing an anaesthetic. We strive to minimise this risk. Prior to being admitted your pet receives a full health check by a vet. We advise a pre-op blood test to assess kidney and liver function in all “over eights”. Once admitted, your pet will receive premedication to calm, sedate, and provide pain relief. The patient is placed in a warm comfortable kennel until it’s anaesthesia time. If intravenous fluid is required it will start now. Each patient is allocated a vet and a nurse who will stay with it continuously until he/she goes to recovery. The patient is quietly sent to sleep with an injection, then a tube is placed in it’s airway to provide oxygen and anaesthetic gas to maintain anaesthesia. From this point vital signs will be continuously monitored and recorded on an anaesthetic chart by the nurse. This enables the nurse to assess stability and pick up and correct abnormalities as early as possible. In theatre the patient is placed on a protected heat pad, wrapped, given socks, and the room temperature is kept warm to ensure the patient does not lose too much body heat. Patients are monitored using; Oesophageal stethoscopes – to monitor heart rate and rhythm, Pulse oximeters – monitors heart rate and oxygen levels in the blood, respiration, pulse, and circulation are monitored. All of our surgical cases are given pain relief. Once the patient wakes up and the tube is removed he/she is returned to the kennel to recover. Recovery is monitored by the kennel nurse until the pet goes home.