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Concerned citizen is correct in his/her assessment of this board’s work.

The following is my personal opinion.

If you look at the last action taken by this board on Oct14, 2011 you will notice that all of the violations were related to such issue as “non” clinical violation, non clinical in the sense that no animal appeared to have been harmed.  Not that expired drugs and poor lighting and thermometer in the refrigerator do not matter, but again no animal appeared to have been harmed.

I like Concerned Citizen do not believe that this Board is capable of doing meaningful Peer Review and in my opinion the board is much more likely to cover up sub-standard of care to protect a vet that is not practicing a reasonable standard of care.  Or alternately, the Board in my opinion has set the bar so low for what is a reasonable standard of care that effectively for vets in Virginia there is not reasonable standard of care requirement.  

Without going into too many details, I filed a complaint with this board, which purports to serve the citizens of VA.

My healthy kitten, Molly Mittens, went in for a routine spay.

Her surgery ended at 1145 AM.

At 2:30 PM, we were told her “surgery went fine and she was waking up well.”

AT 4:40 PM, the vet notes “Molly is non responsive in her cage.”  The clinic closed at 5 PM and the vets left Molly.  No one called us to tell us that Molly had a problem.

In the morning Molly was dead.

We filed a complaint: many issues with the process

Prior to filing a complaint, we obtained a second opinion from an impartial vet, who said that the owners should have been called and given the option of transferring the kitten to an overnight clinic.

The process is flawed in my opinion for many reasons

1. We filed the complaint
2. The vets are allowed to see our complaint.
3. The vets respond but we were not allowed to see their response.
4. The investigation was completed; we were not allowed to see the investigation report.  The investigation contained 2 pieces of faulty information.  The investigator said that I had told her she could not contact our second opinion.  When in truth, the only reason we had a second opinion was so the board could check with that impartial vet.  There was another mistake in the investigation.

We were then told that the vets did not violate any standard of care, thus in VA this Board had determined that it is a reasonable standard of care for vets in VA to leave a nonresponsive kitten all alone for the night without informing the owners of the status.

Our Governor states that the ideal for our state government is to be open and transparent.  I believe that the board fails in this mandate.

(mollymittens7@gmail.com)