“Within a minute of being placed in a wheelchair and getting into a car, she usually starts vomiting or having diarrhea. He is also very scared and starts meowing. And I don’t want to put her under that kind of stress,” describes Patience Warren, who, however, it seems uncomfortably familiar to those who have pets.

During the pandemic, Warren herself had to meet her medical needs online by visiting her doctor, her psychologist and nutritionist online. She wondered if there were any veterinarians who could service her online. And when I did the corresponding search, I was amazed at the abundance of options.

For veterinary medicine, Covid-19 “served as a catalyst for needed change,” Dr. Christina Tran is a veterinarian at the University of Arizona and board member of the Virtual Veterinary Care Association.

Some types of telemedicine are decades old, although online dating is a newer “discovery”. “Before the pandemic, the use of telemedicine in this way was not as common,” says the doctor. Laurie Teller, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, who partnered with Texas A&M University to develop the televeterinary program.

This was due to restrictive state laws, many of which for online admission, it was assumed that there had previously been a live exam animal doctor.

This, due to the lockdown, has loosened up in many cases, leading to an increase in the percentage of veterinarians offering online appointments. jump from 4% to 30% according to another study.

Some organizations are, in fact, pushing for more continuous expansion of virtual veterinary medicine Care.

“The pandemic has really opened our eyes to the use of telemedicine. We see this as the real ‘key’ to empowering patients and pet caregivers for much-needed veterinary access,” says Kevin O’Neill, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A televeterinary service can be extremely helpful for people with pets who live in rural areas and may take hours to get to the clinic, or for those who are short on time. Remote examination could, after all, make the first diagnosis of whether the pet’s symptoms require lifelong care.

Source: New York Times.