Field Manual for Small Animal Medicine

Katherine Polak, Ann Therese Kommedal

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119243199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Veterinary Medicine

Field Manual for Small Animal Medicine offers anyone working in resource-limited environments a practical resource for delivering veterinary care outside the traditional hospital or clinic setting.

• Offers the only comprehensive resource for best practices when practicing veterinary medicine in resource-limited environments
• Integrates practical and cost-effective protocols where the ideal solution may not be available
• Presents information on vital topics such as operating a field spay/neuter clinic, emergency sheltering, sanitation and surgical asepsis, preventive care practices, zoonotic diseases, and euthanasia
• Serves as a quick reference guide for common surgical procedures, cytology interpretation, anesthesia and treatment protocols, and drug dosing

1
Introduction to Working in the Field

Katherine Polak¹ and Ann Therese Kommedal²

¹Four Paws International, 11th Floor B, Gypsum Metropolitan Tower, 539/2 Sri Ayudhaya Road, Thanon Phaya Thai, Ratchathewi, Bangkok, 10400 Thailand

²AniCura Dyresykehus Stavanger, AWAKE International Veterinary Outreach, Nedre Stokkavei 12, 4023 Stavanger, Norway

1.1 Overview

Veterinary outreach and field medicine projects are expanding across international boundaries at a rapid pace. Projects span from small, local initiatives to robust country-wide programs operated by international animal welfare charities. Both small- and large-scale disaster relief efforts involving animals are also becoming increasingly common. Although the majority of larger animal welfare organizations have operating manuals, guidance documents, and participant guidelines to follow, smaller groups often have few to no protocols or resources to use, other than a passion to help make a difference for the animals in a community. A Field Manual for Small Animal Medicine was born out of the editors' passion for providing a resource for those working in this exciting and challenging field.

This manual is intended to assist veterinarians, veterinary technicians, veterinary students, and those involved in animal welfare projects with improving the health and welfare of animals in remote, rural, and international contexts. The contributing authors recognize the challenges faced when executing field surgical clinics, disaster response, and treatment of free-roaming dogs and cats in the face of limited resources. Like many other textbooks, some gold-standard recommendations are provided; however, this manual strives to also provide practical and cost–effective recommendations where the ideal solution may not be available. Readers will encounter highlighted tips and tricks that suggest innovative ways to best allocate resources to provide the best animal care possible.

Practicing veterinary medicine in limited-resourced environments requires a multitude of skills and training in a variety of subjects ranging from soft tissue surgery to emergency medicine. The topics chosen for inclusion in this manual were those deemed most critical for small animal practitioners, spay/neuter surgeons, shelter administrators and program managers. On an individual animal level, treatment protocols for commonly observed canine and feline diseases, euthanasia considerations, emergency medicine, and diagnostic techniques are discussed. As fieldwork often consists of high-volume spay/neuter activities, information pertaining to humane handling and capture techniques for free-roaming animals, surgical asepsis, high-volume surgical techniques, and cost-effective anesthetic and pain management is included.

On a programmatic level, the editors also felt that it was necessary to include material on dog population management, methods of measuring programmatic success, and community engagement. Those working in limited-resourced shelters might find information on sanitation, wellness and preventive care, and emergency sheltering useful to their operations.

Although much has been published on these topics in the past decade in various journals, textbooks, and organizational manuals, the information remains scattered. The editors attempted to centralize such information in a readily accessible format. Although the majority of material included is derived from peer-reviewed sources, readers should be aware that some recommendations may be anecdotal and based on practical experience, particularly when published literature is lacking. Easy-to-read tables, charts, tips, and practical advice are included that can be quickly referenced in a field environment.

A total of 32 authors from around the world with extensive in-the-field experience contributed to the manual under the editorial guidance of Drs. Katherine Polak and Tess Kommedal. It is the editors' hope that it will ultimately improve the lives of animals worldwide by serving as a resource for practicing medicine in the face of limited resources. Readers should be compelled to not only take up the challenge of working in the field but also contribute to advancing and improving traditional medical and surgical standards and practices. It is likely that field veterinary medicine will continue to evolve into its own veterinary specialty one day.

1.2 Scope of This Manual

Although the editors appreciate that practical resources are needed for all animals, the focus of this manual is on dogs and cats. Large animals, pocket pets, and exotic animals are outside of the scope of this text. Readers may note a bias toward dogs in several of the chapters pertaining to humane animal capture and population management. In the editors' experience, most international projects tend to focus on dogs more so than cats due to the public health threat of rabies attributable to free-roaming dog populations.

1.3 What Constitutes “in the Field”?

Poverty and geographic isolation often make routine veterinary care inaccessible or unavailable due to a lack of resources; limitations may include medications, surgical supplies, staffing, local infrastructure, and even expertise. The expansion of veterinary medicine into rural and international settings has given rise to complex dilemmas on how to provide adequate medical care with minimal resource investment. Veterinarians may find themselves deciding how to best utilize limited resources to improve the health and welfare of as many animals as possible. When faced with such limitations, staff must be creative and adaptive.

For the purpose of this book, the term “in the field” will refer to any under-resourced environment that challenges the ability of workers to meet the standards of care that would otherwise be achieved in a traditional clinical or shelter setting. As veterinary professionals are increasingly involved in a variety of such settings, this manual is widely applicable to different environments including service-learning international projects, rabies control programs, spay/neuter clinics in low-income communities, rural and remote areas with limited veterinary resources, and disaster and emergency settings.

1.4 Who Is This Manual Written for?

Field-based projects tend to attract and recruit staff with a variety of skill sets and professional backgrounds. Therefore, although veterinarians and veterinary technicians are the primary intended audience, this manual is useful to a variety of readers:

• Veterinarians
• Veterinary students
• Veterinary technicians
• Emergency responders
• Animal care staff
• Animal welfare program directors
• Lay persons/volunteers participating in veterinary service projects

1.5 Benefits, Opportunities, and Challenges of Working in the Field

The opportunity to make an immediate and meaningful difference in the lives of animals in need is what draws most people to field medicine. Animals living in underserved communities often suffer from a lack of preventive health care, treatment, and spay/neuter services. For some, the motivating factor is the degree of animal suffering in some communities. For others, motivation may not stem from first-hand experience but rather indirectly, through exposure to the increasing media attention of international companion animal welfare issues. Most recently, these have included the inhumane culling of dogs following a rabies outbreak in Penang, Malaysia, annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China, and the systematic slaughter of dogs in Sochi, Russia, before the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, to name a few [1–3].

International and rural veterinary outreach programs help bring medical services to animals that would otherwise likely never receive it. Such programs may focus on providing care to the individual animal, or work on a population-level through mass spay/neuter and vaccination activities. Fieldwork can undoubtedly also have direct effects on human health. One Health initiatives are becoming more widely advocated for by the public health and medical communities to control zoonotic diseases and promote both human and animal health. Canine rabies is a perfect example of a disease in which One Health initiatives have been successful in eradication efforts. Around the world, mass dog vaccination programs underpin the success of rabies eradication programs. In light of the fact that up to 99% of human rabies cases worldwide...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction to Working in the Field
• Chapter 2: Stray Dog Population Management
• Chapter 3: Community Engagement and Education
• Chapter 4: Humane Canine Handling, Capture, and Transportation
• Chapter 5: Operating a Field Spay/Neuter Clinic
• Chapter 6: General Anesthesia and Analgesia
• Chapter 7: Regional Anesthesia and Local Blocks
• Chapter 8: Nonsurgical Fertility Control
• Chapter 9: Spay/Neuter Surgical Techniques
• Chapter 10: Ancillary Surgical Procedures
• Chapter 11: Sanitation and Surgical Asepsis
• Chapter 12: Euthanasia in Veterinary Field Projects
• Chapter 13: Treatment Protocols
• Chapter 14: Diagnostic Techniques
• Chapter 15: Emergency Medicine and Procedures
• Chapter 16: Wellness and Preventive Care
• Chapter 17: Prevention Considerations for Common Zoonotic Diseases
• Chapter 18: Emergency Animal Sheltering
• Chapter 19: Program Monitoring and Evaluation
• Chapter 20: Formulary
• Index
• End User License Agreement