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A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious...
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In case you couldn’t tell from my recent posts and comments therein, I’ve been at a conference all weekend. It was a marathon for this busy girl, especially since my sister’s movie premiered in Miami on Friday night with a red carpet screening and the obligatory fancy party I couldn’t miss. By the time I got in my rental car on Saturday morning (at 6 AM) I was already exhausted.
After stopping at every Starbucks along the way I was suitably jacked up—just in time for a ten dollar virgin Margarita and twenty dollar fish tacos at the convention center’s hotel.
Meanwhile I had no place to stay, having messed up my reservations by submitting an expired credit card a couple of months ago and failing to read the email explaining said foul-up. Finding no lodging at the inn, I resolved to sleep in the back of the rental in the guarded hotel parking lot.
Then I got down to business: planning my strategy at the North American Veterinary Conference (the largest veterinary conference in the world, if they do say so themselves) for meeting and schmoozing and passing out business cards, media kits and sponsorship proposals detailing my exploits—all in search of a sponsor for this blog to help fund its [very expensive] upgrade.
In the process, I learned many things about conferences and sucking up in general. Here’s my top ten list for take-home points from this unique brand of continuing education (none of which will win me credit hours from the Board of Veterinary Medicine, I’m afraid):
1-The drive to Orlando sucks when you’re in a dinky rental car (I seized the opportunity to have a bumper replaced on my vehicle to spare its mileage expenses). It’s invariably less safe and inherently more stressful. No six-CD changer, no leather seats, no roomy interiors and no side-impact airbags ensures back pain upon arrival and several white knuckle encounters on the treacherous Florida roadways.
2-DO NOT stop and attempt to get out of your vehicle after witnessing a [possibly fatal] car crash on the Turnpike. The professional truck driver involved in an 85 MPH spinout collision with a Mustang and a Sentra informed me of this after I careened to the median and waited for the Highway Patrol to take my statement and ensure my rental car’s no-damage status while the rescue copter took the Mustang's driver away on a back-board.
3-Accept all manner of freebie invitations from drug reps. It wins you elevated social status along with firmed up connections and in this case, a free massage and steak dinner. Thank you Boehringer-Ingelheim (I apparently use enough Metacam on my patients to pay for such niceties several times over).
4-When a drug rep offers to put you up in her room, you accept graciously. The next time you do, however, you’ll warn her ahead of time that you snore so that you don’t have to spend $100 on a guilty thank you gift.
5-Writing has its perks. In a stroke of uncharacteristic genius and typical impatience, I bypassed the swarms at the registration desk and marched brazenly into the VIP area. Brandishing my media kit and The Miami Herald as weapons, I sliced through the red tape and saved $500. A fancy badge and free food sealed my victory.
6-With a couple of notable exceptions, pharmaceutical marketing muckety-mucks could really care less about you or your valuable projects. Note to self: Showing some cleavage, however ill it might serve you in other arenas, would’ve probably helped me out in this case. Silly me.
7- Don’t let the previous rejection cloud your approach to the next prospect. Easier said than done, no doubt.
8-The only people truly interested in your work have already been exposed to it through personal interest and attention to the field’s more subversive voices. While they make the whole event worth the pain, they also tend to be the least financially able to sponsor you. On that note: A big thank you to fellow Wharton alum Alex Krooglik from Embrace Pet Insurance for his generosity and patience. I’d like to see our field populated with more dedicated, righteous souls like his.
9-Be yourself. Also easier said than done, especially when you know they really don’t want all that personality in their face in the absence of the cleavage.
10-Wear comfortable shoes.
That’s my top-ten. What do you think? Can I get some CE credits for any of that?
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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
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- Mohandas Gandhi
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He posted (or someone from Embrace did) on Itchmo on a discussion over Banfied's contracts vs. real insurance (Banfield makes you keep paying after your pet dies). I have always been skeptical of insurance but I really respect Dr. Robb and he says it is something to look into, but you have to know the company. I can't remember which one he recommended. With as many pets as I have it MIGHT make sense for me. Or not. But, I would never enroll in anything that limited my choice of veterinarians.
Stefani
And while you are a vet, your medical training would leave you very open to a negligence charge in (again, at least in Finland).
Of course I've heard advice like that before in the States. But I cannot accept a willful ignorance of others plight.
What exactly was the reason the trucker gave you?
ROFL! The best I've gotten was a ski vacation and dinner. To all you youngins I'd suggest riding that donkey now while you can because after 40 no matter how fly you still look even getting out of a simple speeding ticket becomes an impossibility, grumble, grumble. :)
This talk about the accident reminded me of something a friend and first-aid instructor once told me: He had been adviced (by some American Red Cross employee I believe - an American anyway ;)) that if he happened upon an accident, while in The States, he should not give first aid, unless he had a very good legal insurance, since he could end up beeing charged with negligence, if the victim, despite his best efforts didn't make it, or ended up with permanent injury
I find it very hard to believe this, but since I'm going to Orlando in a months time, I suddenly started wondering about whether there was any truth to this? - I know that my conscience would never leave a person in need, but I cannot phantom ending up in legal trouble because I tried to help somebody in need. (in fact, I live in a country with the same rules as Ramin describes: NOT helping can get you into trouble).
/Mette
In this country it is considered a crime to leave or flee the site of an accident and you can be punished in criminal court for doing so, but civil court says you better just stand there at the scene with your thumb up your butt or someone may sue you if you try and help because it is their duty as a citizen of the Litigious States of America, err, United States of America...the terms have come to mean basically the same thing.
While I don't know specifics, I was under the impression that loophole had been closed.
I like to believe that the moral imperative is stronger, or at least more personally important, than the legal one. To live with myself, to be able to explain myself and my actions to my children, is far more important to me than the legal consequences. And if I were one with medical knowledge, I'm sure that I'd be helping in a flash. Legal knowledge in that moment, I'm afraid, is irrelevant.
But running around on a busy highway is a different story. People drive like idiots (I hail from South FL but now live in MA, so I know these things!), they don't pay attention, and they don't understand the concept of giving room to an accident. Either they are too absorbed in their own hurry or phone conversation, or they are too curious to pass by the opportunity to see someone else's misfortune. Use your good judgment, and know that you have to survive to be able to help.
As for the sponsorship, I say go for it! As long as you can live with the sponsor's name being associated with yours and they don't have any authority over content, then I see no harm in having subsidy to help you advance your interests and your message. Hill's Pet Nutrition, maybe? Seeking to lengthen the special relationship between people and their pets seems a compatible mission. And your recent comments on obesity would interest the company, too.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=4...
Basically, we decided that it's naive to think that you aren't influenced by giveaways (otherwise why would companies bother putting money into such a costly practice?), but it's also naive to say that you can't believe a thing that company reps tell you, since they really are the experts on their companies' products.
There was a mention about the costs of drugs, particularly new drugs. The costs of drugs are set by their potential sales (how many animals can be prescribed the drug) over time in relation to the millions of dollars in research, millions in FDA approval, and then raw materials, packaging and marketing (which is a much smaller portion that I had originally believed). The biggest cost is in the research and development and then the years of FDA processing and in legal consultation. Marketing dollars are what pay for the roundtable discussions, education on the new drugs, client brochures, product guarantees and the like (pens are huge in vet med - the staff go nuts for great pens, so marketing dollars are allotted for them).
There were also some comments on drug reps offering dinners, massages and the like. The only thing I can say is that the animal health pharmaceutical industry is not the human pharmaceutical industry. Veterinary drug reps pay for great dinners when they have their technical services veterinarian available to speak to vets about new products or if they are offering C.E. meetings. 'Extras' like massages or other 'perk' gifts are rarely given and when they are, it is typically to veterinarians who are already good customers. They are more like 'Thank You's to the veterinarian's loyalty to the product - even though the vets use the product for it's superiority in treating or preventing illness. I am guessing that the gift of a massage was given after learning of a night spent in a small rental car, just as she offered to share her room. These sorts of gifts came from the right place, they weren't given in an effort to gain business. "Courting" veterinarians in the manner that human pharmaceutical companies do is relatively new to animal health and I can only think of one company that currently does this on both the human and and animal health sides. I hope that we do not go in that direction because it reduces the integrity of the industry, the reps and the information.
This is all based on my experience and knowledge from working in animal health pharmaceuticals. The veterinarians on the blog can certainly back up or correct my accounts as they see fit.
If only people would learn to slow down a bit when they see an accident (says someone who has had to jump out of harms way at accident scenes a couple of times).
If only people would learn to slow down a bit when they see an accident (says someone who has had to jump out of harms way at accident scenes a couple of times).
If only people would learn to slow down a bit when they see an accident (says someone who has had to jump out of harms way at accident scenes a couple of times).