Minimising Stress for Patients in the Veterinary Hospital: Why It Is Important and What Can Be Done about It

Abstract

Minimising stress for patients should always be a priority in the veterinary hospital. However, this is often overlooked. While a “no stress” environment is not possible, understanding how to create a “low stress” (sometimes called “fear-free”) environment and how to handle animals in a less stressful manner benefits patients, staff and the hospital alike. Many veterinary practitioners believe creating a low stress environment is too hard and too time consuming, but this need not be the case. With some simple approaches, minimising patient, and hence staff, stress is achievable in all veterinary practices. This article provides a background on why minimising stress is important and outlines some practical steps that can be taken by staff to minimise stress for presenting and hospitalised patients. Useful resources on recognising signs of stress in dogs and cats, handling, restraint, behaviour modification, medications, and hospital design are provided.

WSAVA Animal Welfare Guidelines

“…Similarly, olfactory stressors should be avoided (Lloyd, 2017). • Medical and surgical interventions and husbandry practices must be assessed for the potential of causing injury or harm.…”

“…• Consider providing enrichment and encourage play behaviours. Animals can be provided with rugs and toys, given supervised play time and use of food puzzles (Lloyd, 2017). • Cheap food enrichment toys for cats and small dogs can be made using cardboard toilet-paper rolls with dry food placed inside and the ends pushed in.…”

Investigating risk factors that predict a dog’s fear during veterinary visits

“…This suggests a potential for fear to be underreported in dogs with inexperienced guardians. It also constitutes a significant risk to companion animal welfare as accurately recognising fear is essential in reducing fear in the veterinary context [52][53][54][55][56]. Overall, the predictive weight of guardian experience relative to all other demographic factors is small, although it highlights the importance of guardian education focusing on dog training, behaviour and communication.…”

Influence of low stress handling during clinical visit on physiological and behavioural indicators in adult dogs: a preliminary study

“…Low stress handling techniques or "Fear Free principles" in veterinary clinics are becoming an important research area aimed at improving small animal welfare (Yin, 2009;Overall, 2013;Lloyd 2017). If an animal experiences inadequate handling at the veterinary hospital, it is likely to become more fearful and difficult to handle during its next visits due to the poor association between the experience and the environment/personnel (classical conditioning) (Lloyd 2017).…”

“…If an animal experiences inadequate handling at the veterinary hospital, it is likely to become more fearful and difficult to handle during its next visits due to the poor association between the experience and the environment/personnel (classical conditioning) (Lloyd 2017). In a previous study 78.5% of dogs exhibited fear reactions during clinical visits, particularly on the examination table; those with only positive previous experiences were significantly less 'fearful' than those who had previously had a negative experience (Döring et al 2009).…”