From Road Accident to Recovery

Teamwork Saves the Day 

Published on: Oct 2, 2023

Practice life is always different, we never know what is going to come in through the door, but we must be prepared for any eventuality as any phone call could be an emergency with a pet in a life-threatening condition. Every member of the team has their role to play in dealing with emergency situations and could just save a life. 

This was just the case when JoJo’s owner called us late one afternoon. She had been hit by not just one, but two cars on a busy main road. She was in a bad way and needed to be seen straight away. 

The first port of call was that phone call, answered by Sue on the reception team, able to assess the severity of the situation and to get JoJo into the practice as soon as possible. The team were made aware and could then swing into action. 

Care assistant Eloise was able to get equipment prepared for JoJo’s arrival at the practice, including setting up the anaesthetic machine to provide oxygen therapy. 

Nurses Daisy and Nat prepared the emergency trolley with everything we might need for JoJo’s initial treatment including fluids and pain relief and ensured that imaging facilities were ready to go. 

On JoJo’s arrival, vet Jen performed the initial examination. JoJo was collapsed and in shock, she had several visible skin wounds but no apparent broken bones, she was also having difficulty breathing. While Jen was discussing the plan with JoJo’s owners, she was immediately placed onto oxygen therapy, given analgesia and started on intravenous fluid therapy by Vet Rachel and Nurse Daisy. 

Once she was a little more stable, she was moved to imaging. She had some x-rays taken which showed JoJo had a pneumothorax. This is where air escapes/leaks into the chest cavity, meaning that the lungs cannot expand as well as usual causing difficulty breathing. 

Vets Jen and Sarah performed immediate drainage of the air from the chest cavity and removed close to a litre of air, which is a lot for a little dog. She was being constantly monitored by nurse Daisy during this procedure and it was noted that this drainage made it much easier for JoJo to breath. We could not see any other apparent injuries on the X-rays. 

JoJo was responding well to the treatment; her breathing had improved, and she was becoming brighter in herself after the administration of fluids and pain relief. She was not out of the woods yet. At Shepton Vets we can hospitalise our patients overnight on site for continued treatment and JoJo was closely monitored by night nurse Pamela and duty vet Rachel to ensure that she did not deteriorate. Her skin wounds were also then treated once we were happy that she could undergo treatment for this. 

After 24 hours of intensive care JoJo was able to go home with continued pain relief. She came back to see vets Rachel and Jen the next day and she was doing fantastically well, a few days later she was even brighter as you can see from her picture her wounds were healing and she was getting back to normal. A total of 8 staff at Shepton Vets were involved in JoJo’s care from start to finish, all working together as a team to get JoJo back to a normal life at home, she has been one lucky pup!