“I solemnly dedicate myself to aiding animals and society by providing excellent care and services for animals, by alleviating animal suffering, and by promoting public health. I accept my obligations to practice my profession conscientiously and with sensitivity, adhering to the profession’s Code of Ethics, and furthering my knowledge and competence through a commitment to lifelong learning.”
The Veterinary Technician Oath
In the US, there are approximately 118,000 veterinary technicians, technologists, and nurses, and they fulfill countless essential functions. At Instinct, more than 16,000 of our users are veterinary technicians and nurses. In honor of extending the celebrations from National Veterinary Technician Week (celebrated October 15 - 21, 2023), we’re highlighting 9 essential features that can simplify patient care and save time for veterinary technicians.
We all know the variety of hats that veterinary technicians wear on a day-to-day basis. The daily to-dos are pretty extensive, and Instinct’s goal is to help veterinary technicians complete their work confidently—without getting in their way.
Built-In Patient Care and Safety Tools in Instinct Treatment Plan
Use these helpful features to streamline dose calculations, access essential drug information, and provide backup alerts to reduce medical errors.
1. Instinct’s Dose Calculator
Instinct’s dose calculator uses patient weights and medication concentrations (set up by the Instinct team or your administrators) right in the treatment sheet, so you never have to interrupt your process to chase down a calculator. Once the patient’s weight has been entered, any medication with a calculator will allow you to set a patient’s dose without ever leaving the treatment sheet.
2. Plumb’s Integration
Medications with calculators are linked directly to Plumb’s, eliminating the need for manual calculations. Navigate to the Plumb’s page for the medication you need and read up on the same indications, interactions, and dose recommendations you’d see on paper.
3. Safety Warnings
Because you can never be too safe when you’re working with medications, we also built a Patient Safety Warning system that leverages the calculator and proprietary or hospital-customized dose safety ranges.
This feature can help guide decision-making while you build treatment sheets, with a pop-up warning every time an entered dose exceeds or falls short of the recommended range, making dose calculations and medication ordering easier for you and safer for your patients.
Related Article: Top Instinct Features for Veterinarians
4. Status Board + Filters
The status board is the home base of Instinct, offering tools to help veterinary technicians focus on their patients and reduce distractions.
Pinning patients, filtering, and sorting allow you to keep exactly what you need in view.
My Board allows you to pin your patients to create a customized list, allowing you to concentrate on your patients while the rest of your team cares for theirs.
Filters and Sorting enable you to easily filter patients by ward, service, treatment status, and specific workflows. You can sort by patient name, check-in time, triage status, and more.
5. Predicted Billing
Predicted Billing draws information from existing invoices and estimated end totals based on scheduled treatments. This saves you guesswork and improves client conversations on a daily basis.
Enhanced workflows in Instinct EMR
6. Chart Templates
Our intuitive, comprehensive—and customizable—chart templates simplify the task of writing up medical charts. Custom text fields, lists, images, and tables create a script that makes patient history-gathering easier, improving focus on the information that really matters.
Administrators can customize these templates or adjust roles and permissions to empower lead veterinary technicians to create templates tailored to their specific needs. This consistency and ability to customize can also expedite new team member training.
7. Controlled Substance Report
Instinct's built-in Controlled Substance Report draws information directly from patient treatment sheets and invoices, meticulously tracking any medication that's been ordered and charged for. This real-time controlled drug tracking serves as a seamless point of comparison to handwritten logs, substantially reducing documentation errors and simplifying the reconciliation of inventory counts.
8. Laboratory and Imaging Integrations
Veterinary technicians handling laboratory work, diagnostic imaging, and inventory management can breathe a sigh of relief. (Finally.)
Without leaving Instinct, you can order and complete a treatment and send patient information directly to other platforms. Our list of integrations is growing all the time, but for now, you can take advantage of integrations with IDEXX in-house equipment and reference labs, Heska, Antech reference labs, Cubex inventory cabinets, and Asteris/Keystone imaging software.
9. Ax Mode
Our groundbreaking, expert-approved Anesthesia Monitoring replaces archaic paper sheets and difficult-to-use word processing software, with a clean and functional digital option that’s built right into Instinct.
This all-in-one solution offers a comprehensive setup form, one-click documentation of procedure status, its own built-in treatment sheet, and an array of vitals monitoring parameters that even chart themselves for you!
When you’re not fighting with handwritten notes or clunky homemade forms, you get more time to be hands-on with your patients instead of staring at computer screens.
Read more about how Instinct makes work easier for veterinary nursing teams.
Instinct's innovative features empower veterinary technicians to streamline patient care, save time, and enhance safety. Curious whether Instinct is right for your practice? Reach out for a demo.