Why YOU should incorporate exotic pet care into your veterinary practice

Today I wanted to touch on one of the biggest questions I get from vets thinking about dipping their toe in to the exotics world - WHY?

Here’s what I say when people ask why they should incorporate exotic veterinary medicine into their practice...

Add variety and excitement to your veterinary practice

First of all, it is fun and challenging! Dog and cat practice can get monotonous - ear infections, fleas, UTIs, rinse and repeat…With exotics you never know what is going to walk in your door. It's never boring and I am constantly being challenged to find unique solutions for problems that we just don’t have to tackle in small animal medicine, such as how to immobilize a fracture on a 23 gram Robo hamster. And then of course how do we keep him from bothering at the solution? 

This is an actual case I’ve dealt with several times. For this little guy, I was able to place a tape splint under anesthesia for immobilization and then placed an Elizabethan collar made from old x-ray film and made sure he had excellent analgesia. He was back to burrowing and munching on pellets almost immediately. We used dental radiographs for initial diagnosis of the fracture and then post-splint placement to ensure good apposition of the fracture segments.

Because of their small size, we often don’t have the same options that are available in larger species like IM pins and external fixators, so we choose the option most likely to give us a good outcome. In similar cases, I’ve placed hypodermic needles as IM pins, or even amputated when the fracture was open and intensive management was going to be difficult for the owner. 

In this case, he did great with the splint and we were able to remove it 3 weeks later to find a good callous had formed and he was using the limb normally.

Lifelong learning: challenge yourself as an exotic animal veterinarian

Along these same lines, practicing exotic veterinary medicine is always leading me to attempt new techniques, expand my diagnostic toolbox and challenge my brain with new puzzles.

Practicing evidence-based medicine is just as important for exotic pets as in other species, but is exponentially more challenging. There is frustratingly little literature covering even the most common exotic pet diseases. However, the amount of information available is increasing at an astonishing rate as new research is being published, and it is nearly impossible to keep up with the most recent advances in each species. As a result, conflicting information is often encountered, making it essential to interpret data with caution.

While the field of exotic vet med used to be the ‘wild west’, full of anecdotal recommendations and ‘MacGyver’ solutions, our standards of care have evolved and there is rarely a day where I’m not performing a literature search or phoning a friend to check in on the latest tools and advancements.

Increase your earnings potential and enhance your vet practice's success

Besides the personal gains you can experience by expanding into exotic veterinary medicine, there are tangible benefits for both associate DVMs and practice owners. 

Adding a new skill set to a practice and bringing in a new clientele is valuable when you are negotiating as an associate. Practices already seeing exotics are often desperate to hire DVMs skilled in or simply open to learning exotics, in order to provide continuity of care for their established exotics clientele.

While conventional wisdom suggests charging less for exotic vet care (because "it’s just a $5 gerbil"), you should actually be charging more for these specialized services. Practices providing exotic veterinary care have invested in specialized equipment, medications, and most importantly, time and effort of both veterinarians and staff to learn and keep up with the latest recommendations. Exotic pet visits often also take longer than small animal visits for a variety of reasons. 

It's also often assumed that exotic pet owners will not be willing to invest in their pet’s health (again, because it’s a $5 gerbil), and yes, those owners do exist. However, overwhelmingly, exotic pet owners are willing to go above and beyond for their pets, bringing them in for semi-annual wellness exams, checking baseline lab work, and even pursuing advanced diagnostics and surgical procedures. 

Meet the growing need for exotic pet care in your community

From a practice management standpoint, providing exotic veterinary care opens up an entirely new revenue stream, bringing in both new clients, as well as providing a needed service for existing small animal clients that also have exotic pets (you’d be surprised how many there are!). Further, there are exotic veterinary deserts where there are limited to no exotic veterinary services for hours and your practice can fill that significant void. 

It’s not enough to open your practice to them - you also need to invest in the additional expertise necessary to provide excellent care. 

Next we'll tackle how to start integrating exotics into your practice - it's not as hard as you think!

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