Chicago Woman’s Dog Spayed Accidentally
Introduction
A Chicago woman who dropped of her 10-year-old dog at Banfield Pet Hospital is in shock after discovering that her Cavapoo was spayed instead of having her teeth cleaned. The Pet Hospital issued a statement apologizing for the mixup and asserting that all other patients have received the care for which they were scheduled, but does this recent mistake underscore a larger issue in the veterinary care industry? Veterinarians have arguably less extensive training than human surgeons, often must utilize veterinary assistants with little or no knowledge of the procedures being performed, and must perform these procedures on dozens of different types of animals.
What the stats say
A study published in 2019 to the National Center for Biotechnology Information that studied the frequency and severity of veterinarian errors found that approximately 5 errors occurred per 1,000 patient visits and of those errors approximately 15% resulted in patient harm and 8% suffered from permanent morbidity or death. The study additionally found that the majority of errors were related to drugs being administered to patients. The limitations of this study were that the data used was self-reported by veterinary practices which means that there is likely an under reporting of the actual number of errors occurring in veterinarian practices.
Additional Observations
To add more complexity to the situation, the majority of the population has less of an understanding of pet related medical procedures than human medical procedures and therefore would not know if vets are being truthful in instances when there is an adverse outcome in a veterinary procedure. For example, one of my dogs died earlier this year from a spay procedure and the vet simply refused to provide an explanation of what happened. He spoke generally that she stopped breathing but that doesn’t provide any useful information and frankly I would have no idea if he’s lying or not.
The only instances in which veterinarians may be held to account are when there is a documented history of malpractice or significant and obvious evidence of malpractice. I have talked to multiple attorneys in the state of Arkansas and as dogs fall under the property category and therefore generally lawsuit damages are limited to the replacement cost of the dog which does not begin to take into account the full damage of losing your pet like that.
Conclusion
Luckily the dog in question was spayed instead of euthanized or accidentally killed but it definitely raises questions about what happens when the vet takes your dog to the back and performs whatever procedures they claim are necessary.
