PROMPT: What is the goal of your industry? Customer satisfaction? Expansion? Profit? Research? How do you know? Is it static, or does it change?
Since my industry is veterinary clinic, the obvious goal for this industry would be helping animals on the medical spectrum. There is a strong correlation between helping animals and customer satisfaction, but I would not say saving animals is the same as customer satisfaction. There are practices in the veterinary industry that does not benefit the pet at all. For example, declawing cats is an unethical practice from in my opinion, yet a lot of animal clinics offers this procedure. Declawing your cat does not benefit them at all, unless the claws are infected and declawing is the only option to save the cat from pain, but otherwise, it will only benefit the owner instead of the cat. After reflecting on this example, I think this industry is definitely gravitating towards the goal of reaching customer satisfaction. Even though taking your pet to the vet is very expensive, from personal experiences, I understand that profit is not a main goal for this industry. You may disagree, because I know the bills clients walk out with from the clinic. But speaking from experience, I have witnessed on some occasion that the doctors were willing to reduce the bill for our clients due to financial issues. Interning at my clinic, I see the passion everybody has for our patients, so I definitely feel strongly that the origin of the goal for this industry is to help animals, but at some point, the mission got lost in translation, and this industry became more about the customer satisfaction than animal patient satisfaction.
WEEKLY REFLECTION:
At the clinic we do offer nail trimming as a service. Normally nail trimming is not a hard task, so the technicians do it instead of the doctors. This week a young husky came into the clinic to get his nails trimmed. What was special about this husky is he refuse to get his nails trimmed, because his nails are so brittle and dry, it hurts to get it trimmed. It took two technicians and one doctor to trim this dog's nails. As the doctor cut his nails, the dog cried in pain and blood was spritzed onto the floor. Everyone's heart broke a little every time the husky cries out from pain. My heart broke a lot. Speaking of a broken heart, this week there were two stray cats that were caged up. Since they are strays, they need to be kept away from our cats that live in the clinic, so they stayed in a quiet area where the extra supplies were kept. Every time I go into the back to get more supplies, they meow at me because they just want love and attention, but everyone at the clinic gives them none. It hurts me to see them like that. This week we also had a cat patient that was FIV positive. FIV is the feline version of HIV. But that isn't the main point. The thing that stood out to me about this patient is he had the saddest eyes. When the technicians took him out of his cage to check his pulse, I also saw patches of fur missing, so I asked the technicians why is he patchy. They told me that it is most likely to be self-inflicted. After hearing that, my broken heart broke into smaller pieces. This week was definitely one of the most emotional weeks I've had at the clinic.