Want to keep your industry awareness up-to-date at your veterinary practice? Here’s how to stay in the know—without the hassle.
When you’re running a busy practice, it can be challenging to stay on top of everything that happens in the animal health industry—and your community—in addition to providing exceptional veterinary medicine.
Albeit time-consuming, it is essential to the success of your business and the growth of your team to follow industry updates including veterinary news, medical breakthroughs and new treatment options, to name a few.
To save you time, we’ve come up with some simple, yet efficient ways to keep your practice in the know—regardless of how hectic a week you have ahead!
Keep up with industry news
Staying current at your veterinary practice starts with keeping tabs on major industry news items, including everything from new medications and treatments to recent study findings and relevant conference proceedings—all of which help bolster your diagnostic decision making and long-term sustainability as a modern clinic.
So where can you find all of this information? Short of just Googling everything or sinking heaps of time rifling through stacks of veterinary textbooks and medical journals—there are a few more practical options.
Using a tool like LifeLearn’s Sofie can help. With a subscription to Sofie, your team will get unprecedented lightening-fast access to a searchable online database of over 40,000 pages from the most current and credible veterinary textbooks, medical journals, and conference proceedings—all at the touch of your fingertips. Visit our website to learn more, or click here to sign-up for a free 30-day trial to experience the benefits of Sofie firsthand.
Alternatively, you can also take advantage of RSS feeds online. RSS stands for “really simple syndication” or “rich site summary.” An RSS feed is essentially a streamlined, algorithm-free way to collect relevant content from across the internet on a variety of specific topics. You’ll want to download a free feed reader, like Feedly, to get started.
The idea is that you can automatically track particular content for reading during your downtime—so you’ll never have to comb through hundreds of websites to find the information you need to stay informed.
Stay active on social media
Although effective, RSS feeds tend to be a bit of an old-school method for keeping up with the news. If you are keen on finding a more modern approach, look no further than social media. Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become the more dominant source for staying current and connected.
You can follow major animal health organizations, news sites, and preventive brands—you can even follow us here at LifeLearn for frequent veterinary updates of all kinds on Facebook and Twitter! Social media is a great, free tool for staying connected with any news that’s relevant to you and your clients. Not sure who else to follow? You can also follow #hastags on your veterinary social, such as #veterinarynews, to stay informed whenever specific pet health topics crop up across the internet.
Don’t forget—the primary reason behind your veterinary social is to stay in touch with your current and prospective clients. Keeping tabs on their online engagement with your practice a crucial facet of staying informed and informing clients too.
Frequently update client education resources
Part of staying current at your practice also involves sharing the latest educational materials amongst your veterinary staff—and with clients. Since the field of animal medicine is continuously in flux, you need only the best, most current educational content to keep pet owners informed so they can better care for their furry friends.
If you’re like most practices, you probably don’t have time to write updated resource materials on the spot for every pet parent. Want to keep things simple? CliendEd is an excellent tool for high quality, veterinarian-approved articles written in language that pet owners will understand. All you have to do is search a given health topic, and you’ll find a host of reference materials to print, email or post online to educate pet owners locally—and beyond.
So here’s to staying up-to-date with the latest! We hope you’ll find these tips helpful for building a stronger, more strategic veterinary practice to better serve your clients—and most of all, their pets.
