Medical Excellence and the Four Foot Tall Milkweed

An important life lesson I have learned is that when you think you have things going really well, think again. At The Cat Hospitals of Denver we really (okay, I really) strove for excellence in our delivery of medical care and customer service. Over the years, I saw that about one percent of my employees did too.

We had weekly meetings to teach our staff and doctors medical knowledge and excellence in customer service. A true "learning organization." Everyone got paid over-time to be at these three-hour long, Wednesday afternoon meetings, that were very fun and interesting. I even had some employees that could parrot back some of our key service axioms like, UA-Fecal-EAG, and "it's not customer service, it's customized service."

So with all this going on, I thought our staff members had a real grasp on doing an excellent job in taking care of the clients and patients. I even didn't feel it necessary to make weekly stops in at all my five Cat Hospitals to check up on the people working at them. Then one late summer afternoon, I had to deliver some special surgical instruments to my Lakewood Colorado office, and I was aghast at what I saw.

As I pulled up and parked in front of the hospital, I saw a client coming out the front door with her cat in a carrier, and she lifted her leg up high as she STRADDLED OVER a three to four foot tall milkweed right in the center of the front step. I was so embarrassed, I sat in my car until the client drove off. I went inside and asked who let a four foot tall milkweed grow right in the middle of the front steps.

Of course, no one knew, and it must have just grown up over night. After all, we had daily duty rosters that included sweeping the front steps and making sure there was no trash or debris around the entrance of the vet hospital. But I have to give them credit, because the duty rosters did not mention anything about pulling up milkweeds if they were growing right in the front step, where the clients walked in.

The even odder part, was that two of my supposed top people, let's call them Carol and Brent, were working at this hospital and were entirely responsible for it. They were let go soon thereafter, because the inside of the hospital was a pig-sty as well and those two employees had also worked it out that they were clocked in all the time and were rarely even there.

So it comes back to the lessons I learned from reading William Marriott Junior's book about his Marriott Hotel Chain. You have to check on everything yourself. Bill Marriott actually goes into his various hotels and checks under the beds, and behind the toilets, and under the sinks to make sure his hotels are actually being cared for to the standards that are the Marriott Brand. You would think the president of a multi-billion dollar Hotel conglomerate would have better things to do, and he does, but it is this single step that rattles the chains and keeps his well paid employees actually doing what they are paid for. I wish the world was a better place.

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/

http://www.lifeextensionbooksbydrdougikeler.blogspot.com/

Old Doctor Burr and Coster's Cascade of Criticism

During the eight years that I worked at Wilshire Animal Hospital in Santa Monica, California, I had a chance to tell my employer and friend, Dr. Ian Coster, about the first vet I ever worked for when I was younger. His name was Dr. Isaac Tucker Burr, and he had a very general country practice in Walpole, New Hampshire, and he was quite a character. Dr. Coster reminded me though, that I was just in my twenties and even though I liked to tell "Old Dr. Burr" stories, that someday too, people would be telling "Old Dr. Ikeler" stories. It probably is true, and I'm sure they're good stories.

The best stories though involved unique elements of Dr. Burr's personality. He was raised in Boston and went to Harvard for college, "just to be educated" as he would describe it. He then went to Cornell Veterinary College after his time in the military, after the second world war, and he told that the only reason the Germans were defeated was because they had ten times the power fighting against them, and still it was close!

My years with Dr. Burr were spent rambling through the countryside of New Hampshire delivering calves, testing for mastitis, splinting broken dog legs, and spaying and neutering a lot of cats and dogs. Dr. Burr had the most eloquent vocabulary, but he liked to swear and sometimes it came out so comically. During a Saint Bernard ovariohysterectomy (a dog spay) one time, a ligature slipped, spurting blood everywhere, and Dr. Burr yelled out, "Oh Jesus, Jesus," and then with a little reflection added, "I wish you were here", as though a little help from above was needed and appropriate at that time.

Dr. Burr also did not understand the modern form of the Learning Organization. Because I was a teenager and wanted to be a vet, he somehow assumed I knew everything there was to know about what to do in a veterinary hospital. Instruction was minimal and so I took it upon myself to know everything for how to be a great veterinary assistant. Self-taught, of course.

Dr. Coster was different. He was very much a teacher and, in reality, taught me how to be a great veterinarian. The twelve years of college I have attended only filled in the details. One thing Dr. Coster did though that was very funny and unusual was he couldn't stop himself when he had to tell an employee they did something wrong. He started out with the mistake, and stated it clearly, but then he had some unconscious need to continue, as though to get to the real underlying reason why this person made the mistake in the first place.

He would go beyond the first criticism, then add that they must have done it due to something inherently wrong with themselves, then go further to add that it must be something wrong with the gene pool of their relatives that was inferior that lead to the mistake made in the hospital. I labelled the phenomenon "Coster's Cascade of Criticism" to let Doc know he didn't need to go that far when telling someone they had goofed up. Luckily, I somehow escaped the cascade for the eight years that I worked for him during college and vet school.

Dr. Coster had lived in the back apartment of Wilshire Animal Hospital where I lived while I was finishing up my undergrad studies at UCLA. He said I was the last of the line to have lived in that apartment and then gone on to become a veterinarian like he and his boss, Hal Snow had done before him. I think there was even one vet before Hal who had done the same thing. Johnny something comes to mind. He had a bad drinking problem and Hal spent a lot of time covering for Johnny while he left Hal alone in the hospital to play veterinarian while Johnny went off drinking.

Being able to live and work at a vet hospital was quite a privilege looking back on it. I got paid good and got a free apartment and amenities. Quite helpful to a young man from New Hampshire working his way through college. It wasn't a simple place to live in though as friends would point out when they visited. My brother Fred, summed it up perfectly: He said, "Is it ever quiet here? All day long, it's just ring, ring, ring, ding, dong, and woof, woof, woof, and what am I sleeping on here, some dead dog blanket or something?" "When do you ever get to take a break?" "At night, when I watch the hospital, that's the only time I need a break," was my answer to him.

He just didn't understand the privilege of living at a veterinary hospital.

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/

http://www.lifeextensionbooksbydrdougikeler.blogspot.com/

Slaughter House Earth and the Evolution of Veterinarians

Charles Darwin called our lovely planet "Slaughter House Earth" back in his hay day around the 1850's. He called it this because he noticed that life was so brutal. From insects vomiting up digestive acids on their prey, while they're still alive, to the cruel and vicious deaths brought upon prey by their predators. My own experience is that mankind isn't much nicer, even a hundred and fifty years later.

Veterinarians have been around since man began to domesticate animals thousand of years ago. The profession didn't evolve to a doctorate program though until about a century ago. Harvard had one of the most prestigious veterinary programs, but it dropped this curriculum with the advent of the horseless carriage, thinking erroneously, that veterinary medicine would go away with horses. Surprisingly, their are more horses around now than there were a hundred years ago. Harvard should have kept the Vet Med curriculum and kept turning out top notch vets.

When I entered the profession thirty years ago. The big controversy was between vets who hunted and those who didn't. Today, the debate is between vegan vets and those that still eat meat. Even my best friend from vet school, Dr. Richard Thoresen, who was a hunter, evolved (most probably from the influence of his wife) to become a vegan veterinarian, and he doesn't hunt any more too.

Before the hunting controversy, there was an arrogance among veterinarians that treating cats and dogs was a waste of time and below the dignity of a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Most vets today just treat dogs and cats. I am personally glad the issue now is whether or not we should be eating animals for food. It is a brutal industry that raises and slaughters millions of animals each day. That figure is correct. Millions Of Animals Each Day. Billions each year, worldwide.

A little known fact about one veterinarian, Dr. Dunlop, is that he invented air filled rubber tires that we all drive on now in our cars. He thought the cobble stones were too rough for his son to ride his tricycle on, so he made air filled rubber tires for his son's trike. Dr. Dunlop went on to expand his product line for car tires, that many of us drive on still today. You should know the tire brand, Dunlop, pretty well.

There is a little kindness on the horizon as slaughterhouse techniques are becoming less brutal and more people are eating less meat. I was beef raised and we even said with disappointment to my mother,"oh, steak again" when I was a child, because we ate so much of it. The starving children of Africa might think I was a little spoiled, even back then.

The future is bright though, as organizations like PETA, who are unfortunately too far ahead of their time, will bring about more changes to improve the lives of people and animals. The change is needed, and will surprise you. One day we will even look at keeping animals as pets as cruel too. For the luxury lifestyle that my two cats live though, that day is far away. They happily hog my bed and cover the furniture with cat hair. I feed them twice daily and clean their litter box twice daily too. I think if we asked my two cats if keeping them as pets is cruel, they would answer with a resounding, "No." I know this to be true as Moe got out and was lost for over a month last summer and he couldn't have been happier to have me find him and bring him back home after he had lost half his weight. He ate constantly and purred for a week straight! Me and Bunny are glad to have him back!

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.drdougikeler.com/

http://www.lifeextensionbooksbydrdougikeler.blogspot.com/