I consolidated our pre-incision timeout, instrument counts (initial/final), wound class, and closure notes into a one-page OR sheet, plus species-specific discharge templates for TPLO, cystotomy, and enterotomy — happy to share the PDFs if useful. If you’ve refined recheck cadence or pain-call workflows (day 3 call, day 14 suture removal, week 6 ortho films), I’d like to compare and tighten our post-op follow-through.
We turned the ‘day 3 call’ into an automated text with a 3-question pain check and a prompt to reply with a photo of the incision — , phone tag was killing us — and it’s bumped response rates and documented concerns in the chart. Small caveat: for TPLOs we’ve shifted ‘week 6 ortho films’ to week 8 unless there’s a reason to hurry, which cut down on anxious ‘not quite healed yet’ conversations.
On TPLOs, we push the “week 6 films” to week 8 unless there’s regression, and we pre-book day-14 suture removal before discharge. Our discharge template has a QR to a 3-question pain check that uploads an incision photo with a coin for scale — piggybacks @jameson_456’s text idea and cut nurse callbacks in half. Only caveat: older clients won’t scan/text, so we flag them for a live call.