A reader wrote to us on Facebook:
You posted information about veterinarians on duty; one on Lubańska Street is listed as being on duty around the clock. This is complete nonsense: at night, the telephone number for this veterinarian was switched off, and my barely breathing cat could not get help anywhere. None of the Bolesławiec veterinarians who claim that they can be called at any time of day or night in emergencies answered the phone. Where is the help for animals in emergency situations? Zero respect for these defenseless creatures.
Łukasz Nadwodny from the Veterinary Clinic S.C. on Lubańska Street told us that his colleague answered the phone at the time, but the connection was extremely poor, so he sent the caller an SMS saying that she could come to the clinic. According to the veterinarian, the reader then confirmed by SMS that he meant the clinic on Lubańska Street. Ł. Nadwodny’s business partner then waited for the cat’s owner from 3:30 to 5:00. She did not show up. As a precaution, he kept the text-message correspondence.
– It is not the way people imagine it: a doctor does not sit in the clinic around the clock and receive patients as at an emergency department – explains Łukasz Nadwodny. Veterinarians working night shifts primarily respond to sudden, unforeseen incidents: dogs fighting, traffic accidents, epileptic seizures or poisoning with dangerous substances, such as rat poison. – 95% of calls made at various times concern cases of this kind: my dog has been ill for three days, my animal has been limping for more than a dozen hours. I realize that these are real problems, but sometimes you have to ask yourself: am I treating my animal properly? It often happens that people expect their pet to recover on its own, and when that does not happen, they seek help at unusual hours – he adds.
According to Ł. Nadwodny, this may have been the case with the reader’s cat: – As a doctor, I do not see a situation in which a sudden condition could have caused breathing difficulties in the cat. If anything, it would have been either pneumonia developing over a long period or a viral disease, which also must have been developing for some time. Such diseases never proceed without symptoms. In my opinion, this cat had already been ill.
– The clinic is open from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. There are enough hours for anyone with a problem to arrive in time – the veterinarian emphasizes. – Sometimes we are out in the field, even at night, because farm animals give birth. In such cases, it is difficult to answer the phone, and we receive a great many such calls.
In such cases, veterinarians ask the caller to come to the clinic, for example, in two or three hours. – We never leave a situation without a response. Either we arrange a later appointment, or, if we determine over the phone that the situation is not directly life-threatening, we invite the person to the clinic during regular hours – the doctor points out.
The veterinarians from the clinic on Lubańska Street are considering removing the information about being on duty around the clock. – Nevertheless, we will continue answering calls – Łukasz Nadwodny assures us. – If someone calls to say that an animal has been hit by a car or is having an epileptic seizure, I will always admit it; above all, I am a doctor. We do not want to leave people without help.
What do you think about all this? We invite you to join the discussion.