It is in the nature of small animal work that staff will often be dealing with highly emotionally charged situations, involving clients who are desperately concerned about the health of their animal, disappointed with the results of treatment, or concerned about their ability to pay the resulting fees.

Having staff who can deal calmly and effectively with a stressful situation will be much appreciated by both colleagues and clients. There are fewer situations more difficult in practice than dealing with pet owners who have lost their temper. So, those attending next year’s BSAVA Congress should take the opportunity to hear from an expert on how to deal with an angry and aggressive client.

An expert’s view
Liverpool vet school lecturer Carol Gray will give the presentation as part of a series of four sessions on communication skills on Saturday 4 April. She will be presenting the session with Irish-based veterinary surgeon and journalist Jenny Moffett. Although this is part of the veterinary nursing stream at the Birmingham conference, Carol hopes that all members of the practice team may learn something useful from the session.

There have been no statistics collected on how frequently incidents of bad behaviour by clients occur in veterinary practices, but the experiences of sister professions suggest that it may be increasing. Old fashion deference towards members of the professions has largely disappeared, and a recent survey within the NHS found that three out of four GPs have been physically or verbally abused at their surgery.

Carol will point out that although we know it occurs in our profession, it is wrong to assume that it is just particular groups of clients who will cause problems in veterinary practices. “Every person coming through the door has the potential to become an angry client; it just depends on how well they are treated. Of course, when a client becomes angry it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will become aggressive. But the important thing is to be able to recognise the early signs when things are beginning to go wrong, so that you can do something about it.”

Showing empathy
Empathy can be a very effective tool in turning down the emotional thermostat in a stressful situation. Carol will demonstrate how, through words and non-verbal language, it is possible to allow an angry person to calm down enough to be able to explain exactly why they have reached that state. She will then show how to adopt the right tone in acknowledging that the person may have a good reason to be upset, before looking for ways that both sides can find a strategy for moving the situation forward.

From her own experiences of working as a vet in charity clinics, Carol knows the value of empathy as a tool for defusing tense situations. “There was a case when a man came in who was really angry before he had even spoken to anyone. As the only vet available, I took him to one side and tried to get him to explain what had happened. It appeared that his dog had been brought in for a couple of days and had died.

“The name didn’t ring a bell and I asked the nurse to look up the records and she couldn’t find anything. Eventually, he calmed down enough to explain that it was his wife who had brought in the dog. He rang her and then we discovered that he had come to the wrong place. It was another clinic five miles away. We were able to warn the staff there he was on his way – but if we hadn’t talked to him and had refused to let him in the building, I am sure he would have been in an even worse state before he found the right place.”