When veterinary teams prioritize client education, they show clients two important things: their deep commitment to their pet’s health and their desire to work together as true partners in their pet’s wellbeing.
This commitment to education goes beyond helping pets – it creates a more fulfilling work environment, builds lasting client trust, and leads to better compliance and practice growth.
What Veterinary Teams Can Do to Provide Effective Client Education
Involve the Entire Team:
Every team member, from receptionists to technicians to veterinarians, plays a crucial role in client education.
Create opportunities for staff to share successful communication strategies during team meetings.
Establish clear protocols for who delivers specific educational messages at each touchpoint of the client journey.
Train team members to provide consistent messaging while allowing them to adapt their communication style to individual client needs.
Contribute to and utilize your library of educational resources (see more on this in the Educational Resource Library section below).
Harness Your Team’s Personal Experiences:
Encourage team members to share their authentic pet care journeys, as these personal experiences often resonate more deeply with clients.
For example, a team member who's gone through cancer treatment with their own pet can provide emotional support and practical advice that goes beyond medical protocols – like tips for giving pills to a nauseous pet or managing the emotional toll of diagnosis.
The technician who managed her senior dog's arthritis can offer practical tips about administering medications and making home modifications. The receptionist who helped their anxious rescue cat adjust to a new home brings invaluable firsthand advice about patience and behavior modification. The veterinary assistant who's raised three brachycephalic dogs understands the daily challenges of managing breathing issues and overheating.
These genuine, lived experiences help transform clinical recommendations into relatable, actionable guidance for clients. Your practice’s clients’ stories can be used as well; anonymously of course.
Develop a system for documenting which team members have specific personal experiences, so they can be called upon as empathetic resources when similar cases arise. This not only provides better support for clients but also helps team members find meaning in their own challenging pet care experiences by using them to help others.
Re-Evaluate Your Preventive Health Care (PHC) Educational Practices:
Analyze current methods and their impact: Review existing client education approaches and track their effectiveness with compliance rates and client engagement (i.e., email or text open rates).
TIP: Educational materials should be written at or below an 8th-grade reading level to ensure accessibility for all pet owners. This recommendation aligns with guidelines from leading health organizations including the American Medical Association, National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Assess materials: Review all educational content for clarity, accessibility, and alignment with current veterinary best practices.
TIP: Proactive care encompasses the pet's complete physical, mental, and behavioral wellbeing throughout all life stages. As in the recent study published in JAVMA (see the study in the Resources section below), the definition of preventive health care goes well beyond parasiticide, dental cleanings, and vaccine topics. It includes pre-disposition of diseases, senior care, at-home dental care, mental enrichment, and more.
Gather client feedback: Survey clients on their preferred ways of receiving information and what they find most helpful.
Create an Educational Resource Library:
Develop a centralized, easily accessible repository of educational materials that all staff members can utilize. This should include digital and print resources covering common conditions, preventive care, post-procedure care instructions, behavior challenges, and species-specific information.
Assign someone within the practice to be your education ambassador. This could be a CSR.
Organize materials by topic and complexity level and regularly update them to reflect current medical recommendations.
Include multilingual resources when appropriate for your client base.
Implement a system that allows for flexibility in educational delivery while ensuring all essential information is conveyed and client questions are answered. Clients have varying needs and preferences for receiving information. Some may prefer detailed written materials, while others learn better through demonstrations or visual aids.
Resources do not need to be produced by your practice alone. There are several trusted client education companies supporting the veterinary profession with handouts, books, videos, and responsible websites that can be used in discharge notes, emails, and social media. Clients want information from their veterinarian, as well as their guidance on what resources to trust.
“I go home and I Google right away”. Pet owners in all focus groups mentioned searching the internet in some capacity, whether they checked “Google”, “Wikipedia”, “Blogs” or “ChatRooms”, yet many acknowledged that these sources are not as reputable as sources of information provided by their veterinarian. Pet owners discussed searching the internet due to a desire for more pet health information, however, they also expressed wanting their veterinarian to provide reputable sources of information.” — Source: Pet owners’ and veterinarians’ perceptions of information exchange and decision-making (See the Resources section below for the complete study.)
Deploy a Balanced Approach for Trust and Impact:
Build lasting client relationships by balancing essential medical recommendations with valuable care advice that doesn't lead to immediate transactions. This transforms the client relationship from transactional to collaborative, ultimately leading to better compliance with preventive care and treatment plans.
Create a practice culture where every team member feels confident mixing essential medical education with practical pet care advice.
While vaccines, dentals, diagnostics, and preventive medications are crucial, focusing exclusively on these services can make clients feel every conversation leads to a bill and makes team members feel like salespeople rather than educators.
Empower your entire team – from technicians to receptionists – to share knowledge that helps clients care for their pets without associated costs. This might include tips for nail trimming, reducing anxiety during storms, or creating enrichment activities. When practices freely share expertise that doesn't generate revenue, it demonstrates genuine commitment to pet welfare and builds the trust needed for clients to follow through on important medical recommendations.
Review and adjust your educational strategy regularly based on client engagement and team feedback.
