Preventative care is an essential part of practicing the best veterinary medicine. The first AAHA/AVMA Preventive Healthcare Guidelines for Dogs and Cats will help you accomplish that, and a suit of free, online tools will make it easy, giving a step-by-step process to align your entire team around preventive healthcare protocols.

Partners for Healthy Pets (PHP), an alliance of 100+ veterinary associations, veterinary colleges, and animal health companies focused on preventive care led by AAHA and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), is offering free, downloadable tools to help your practice put the AAHA/AVMA Preventative Healthcare Guidelines for Dogs and Cats into place.

The 2-sided, single-page guidelines are in PDF format and downloadable, and feature an easy-to-use, checklist style format that offers information on: recommendations for frequency of visits, assessment components for a health evaluation, and a client communication and education plan.

Some tools to help you implement the guidelines include:

Team Meeting Guide

This six-meeting guide was designed for veterinary team leaders who want to prioritize preventive pet healthcare in their practice. An agenda of topics has been prepared for each meeting, designed to last no more than 45 minutes. The team meeting guide also include suggestions for short individual assignments to keep team members thinking about preventive pet healthcare and client relationships.

Practice PowerPoint Presentation

This ready-to-use PowerPoint will help guide your team through discussions around prioritizing preventive pet healthcare and strengthening client relationships. The presentation also offers team leader the option of editing and customizing the slideshow to suit their selected content and presentation style.

Practice Action Plan

This workbook works in conjunction with the Team Meeting Guide and PowerPoint presentation. It provides a place for the team leader to record the team’s core values, strengths and opportunities for improvement, and a protocol for implementing the AAHA/AVMA Preventative Healthcare Guidelines.

Taking these implementation tools together, you can plan a series of meetings to get your entire team onboard with the new preventative healthcare policies and create a system that everyone can follow. Putting new protocols is easier with a plan and with the entire team on board, an objective that can achieved using the free, downloadable tools provided by PHP.

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