Christmas cheer and emergency care: A festive visit to Leahurst
Posted on: 18 December 2023 by John Woodward in December 2023 posts
With Christmas just around the corner and a well-earned break on the horizon for many of us, we caught up with Briony Alderson, Head of the Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH), and Professor Mark Senior, Head of Department of Equine Clinical Science, to find out about the festive period at Leahurst and the emergency response provided at the SATH, Philip Leverhulme Equine Centre and Leahurst Equine Practice.
What type of work do you and the team do over the festive period?
Briony Alderson (BA): We typically have two types of days at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital, we do emergencies-only days which are similar to our weekends where we have a core team of staff working, three junior staff (Interns and Residents) who help manage the inpatients and admit any emergencies and senior specialist staff and and a Senior Anaesthetist who are on call.
Our Nurses are so important to the team and the hospital does not manage without them. Over the emergency days we'll have 4 or 5 nurses in the building managing the inpatients, helping prepare cases for procedures, imaging surgery, things like that. We also have Senior Imagers on call, as most of our emergency cases need some form of imaging so our patients will get admitted and be dealt with immediately.
On the University closed days we have more staff on site because the small animal practices who send us cases are open as normal on those days. We expect to see more cases between Christmas and New year because the vets are seeing more cases, so we come in and we deal with urgent cases which are the things that we feel can't wait until after the New Year. Over that period, we typically have about 20 people in the building during that time.
Mark Senior (MS): There are two levels, the Equine Practice provides first opinion care for horses that are owned by clients and members of public, so our Practice team will provide support and an out-of-hours veterinary service throughout the Christmas period. If someone has a problem with their horse, they’ll phone us and one of our vets will go out and see them. Most of the time the problem can be fixed where the horse lives at the client’s property.
The Equine Hospital is a bit different as we only see cases that are referred to us by vets. Often these will be urgent cases, and we can have horses sent to us at any time of day or night. Over Christmas, the hospital will continue to look after the horses we have as inpatients, who might be recovering or having ongoing treatment, they may need either treatments or to be examined every couple of hours throughout the day and night, so we will have a team in around the clock to do that.
What type of emergencies do you respond to over Christmas?
BA: The most common emergencies that we see on Christmas Day are animals with a spine or a disc disease. They'll come in and have an MRI or CT, depending on how severe they present and then they'll go straight to surgery. Over Christmas we see quite a lot of animals who’ve eaten chocolate which is toxic to dogs and cats, and dogs tend to eat it a lot more so we'll see and manage those cases as well as those who have eaten things such as bones and tinsel. We've also removed baubles from a dog’s intestine, and my most memorable was when a dog ate the centre of a Kinder Surprise egg which was stuck in its oesophagus, and we had to get that out using a scope (camera). When we pulled it out, there was a lot guessing about what the toy was going to be, so that was added entertainment!
MS: Mostly emergencies will fall in to two categories, with the first being colic cases (abdominal pain). We probably get about 350 cases a year and around 70% will require surgery. Christmas is one of our busiest times because there is a particular type of colic that peaks between November and February, and these are the cases we can often see on Christmas day. We also get orthopaedic emergencies where horses have had an injury. A horse’s hoof is the like our fingernail, and they have no soft tissue there so a thorn wound into their leg can inject infection into one of the joints. A horse can’t live on three legs so being able to diagnose and treat quickly and efficiently is really important to the horse’s survival. Horses might also come to us with problems with their eyes and require eye surgery or other medical emergencies such as colitis or liver problems. We see all sorts and get about 1800 horses referred to us each year.
How have you personally found working over Christmas?
BA: We're a very close team and the whole Christmas period feels like a family celebratory atmosphere. Even though there's about 170 of us in the department, we describe ourselves as like a little village. Over Christmas everyone's generally very cheery and in the Christmas spirit. There's still that serious aspect of dealing with emergencies and the very worried clients and its always difficult over Christmas if your animal gets sick because it adds to the stress and the strain of everything, but if your animal is with us at Christmas, then it gets special Christmas treatment.
MS: I’ve worked in this hospital for 24 years and as a young Resident, I did the millennium year celebration night on call, I remember being the only sober person at the party! When you know what your duties will be, you mentally prepare for it, we do this job and we know that we’re here to look after the animals, they don’t choose to be ill or to ruin anyone’s Christmas, so mentally you know you’re going to be on call and there are different ways of dealing with it. You still enjoy it, and often colleagues who know they’re going to be here on Christmas day and any students we have in with us will have a little celebration in the hospital. There will be mince pies, often someone will cook for everyone and bring it in, and they’ll eat dinner together.