Censure by Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine
It is May 31, 2004.
Snookums the cat, a 10 year old tabby and beloved family pet, is injured by her owner's Ford truck, an unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected accident in the life of an outdoor cat. (Please, loves, at least make sure your feline is chipped if he's going to be an outdoor tabby).
By stroke of happenstance, the beloved feline is taken to a local veterinarian for treatment - one Dr. Lock Boyce of the Boyce-Holland veterinary service, a clinic with questionable reputation per reviews on the internet.
Boyce assesses the cat as unharmed, assuring the owner that she had simply "used one of her nine lives". Perhaps not the most comforting thing to say to someone whose cat has just been run over by a car, but we don't subtract points for a callous bedside manner if the job is at least done properly.
Two days later, Snookums is dead.
After investigation, the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine decided to stay Locke's suspension of license (as, assuredly, more animals would die without even a semi-competent vet's care), placing him on probation, and fining him $5,000.
Wow!
Did you know?
There is a public database to check the record of your personal medical professional. After all, it would definitely be of concern to a patient - or a parent - to know if they or their child was being treated by an individual who has been censured by a medical ethics board.
To those who love cats as much as I do, I prefer to take my cat - and my child - to a medical professional with a clean record. Informing consumers of this fact - owners, lovers - is, I believe, a public duty.
After all, if I'm hiring bank guards, and the background check for one of my applicants showed up as "robbed a bank", I might think twice about hiring that individual. It would generally be regarded as a bad decision to trust my money to such a person, so why would an individual trust a life to someone who has alleged misconduct on their record?
Snookums the cat, a 10 year old tabby and beloved family pet, is injured by her owner's Ford truck, an unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected accident in the life of an outdoor cat. (Please, loves, at least make sure your feline is chipped if he's going to be an outdoor tabby).
By stroke of happenstance, the beloved feline is taken to a local veterinarian for treatment - one Dr. Lock Boyce of the Boyce-Holland veterinary service, a clinic with questionable reputation per reviews on the internet.
Boyce assesses the cat as unharmed, assuring the owner that she had simply "used one of her nine lives". Perhaps not the most comforting thing to say to someone whose cat has just been run over by a car, but we don't subtract points for a callous bedside manner if the job is at least done properly.
Two days later, Snookums is dead.
After investigation, the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine decided to stay Locke's suspension of license (as, assuredly, more animals would die without even a semi-competent vet's care), placing him on probation, and fining him $5,000.
Wow!
Did you know?
There is a public database to check the record of your personal medical professional. After all, it would definitely be of concern to a patient - or a parent - to know if they or their child was being treated by an individual who has been censured by a medical ethics board.
To those who love cats as much as I do, I prefer to take my cat - and my child - to a medical professional with a clean record. Informing consumers of this fact - owners, lovers - is, I believe, a public duty.
After all, if I'm hiring bank guards, and the background check for one of my applicants showed up as "robbed a bank", I might think twice about hiring that individual. It would generally be regarded as a bad decision to trust my money to such a person, so why would an individual trust a life to someone who has alleged misconduct on their record?
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