Your Vet's Clinic: Exterior Doors

PushPurrCatPaws

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I was curious what kind of front door situation your vets have at their clinics or hospitals.

Does the main front door lead right into the waiting room from the street or from outside? Or does your vet have a sort of anteroom prior to entering the actual waiting room -- you know, basically, the front door, then a small room that is closed off before you must open the second door to go into the waiting room.

I wondered because a local vet clinic has their main front door open directly onto the street. There is also no closed door separating the bulk of vet rooms from the waiting room itself nor from the front door. Some months ago they had a dog unfortunately get spooked by a fire drill alarm while it was on its way to a vet-specific room. It broke free from the vet tech and dashed outside through the open front door as a customer and another pet were entering. A terrible fluke; missing dog posters put all over the neighborhood (and I don't know if the young dog was ever found again).

At the cat-only vet I've gone to in the past with my previous cat, they had a glass-walled anteroom between the main front door and the actual waiting room. They also had a closed door separating the waiting room from the maze of vet's rooms inside the clinic.

It's got me thinking about vet office designs... and what you guys have experienced with your own vets' offices.
 
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LTS3

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The main doors (automatic sliding ones) open into a large vestibule. Then there's another set of automatic sliding doors to enter the lobby. Here's a picture of the main entrance and the windows of the vestibule:





I guess a loose pet can still escape out both sets of doors :think:
 

Willowy

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The only vet office I've been to with an anteroom is the emergency vet. My regular vet just has a polebarn; nothing fancy, not even really a waiting room. I've been to most of the vets in the area and even those with proper waiting rooms don't have anterooms.

I never even thought about the escape factor---I thought the emergency vet only had an anteroom because it's in an industrial area and you have to be buzzed in after midnight :paperbag:.
 
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PushPurrCatPaws

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It is definitely something you don't think of worrying about if you are dropping your pet off at a vet clinic for a procedure or something: that there is a chance the animal could leap away or squirm out of people's hands while there and ESCAPE. yikes. What a terrible situation for the owner of that dog. I don't know what I'd do if it happened to Milly. Maybe get a lawyer, lol.
 

Willowy

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There was a cat posted on the missing pets Facebook page who got out of her carrier in the vet's parking lot, and I thought that was bad enough. I'm not sure if they ever found her. Dogs are usually found, though, but not always before something bad happens.

If it's the fault of someone at the vet's office, in most states you can only sue for the value of the animal, which might be something if you have a show animal, but most moggies and mutts aren't worth any money :/.
 
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PushPurrCatPaws

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Well, you'd think there would be some standardized way to build a good vet office, to rules out snafus like this. :dunno: Maybe not. Something to think about, anyway, when picking out a vet for your pets.
 

LTS3

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There's a vet hospital down the street with a similar set up but with doors that you have to pull open:



Inside the main door is a large vestibule. One door inside leads to the vet hospital and another door leads to the boarding / grooming place.



A loose pet would just be trapped in the vestibule until the staff or owner can get control of the leash or into a carrier.
 

1 bruce 1

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The bigger clinic (hospital) has a double door system, which is nice. Leads into a nice waiting room (they have a separate area for cats, which is a good idea) with exam rooms along the wall. If you walk through those exam rooms you reach the "honeycomb" of the practice, where vets do surgeries and ultrasounds and X-rays. It's a good set up.
The farm vet has a door that leads into a waiting room with the exam room nearby. They typically only see small animals certain days of the week, and only one at a time, so it's not packed full of people and nervous animals which is nice. Usually if I go there, I have to shout "hello" because it's also their house and the vet is the receptionist. If there's no one there, they aren't hanging around the front desk.
There's something charming about having a vet sitting there working on your animal when the door to their exam room cracks open a few inches (into their living room) and a little kid pops their head in and says "Mom wants to know if you want potatoes or peas with dinner" :lol:
 

Lari

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Excuse my rudimentary paint drawing. I'm right handed but use the mouse left handed so trying to draw anything on my computer is a joke. But it's something like this:

vet.png

So it's a small cat only clinic. The blue door is the street side and goes to the waiting area. All cats are in carriers in the waiting area. The brown squiggle is the check in desk, and the two squares are the rooms where cats are seen. So you go in with your cat in the door in the front, and the vet comes in from the door in the back where all the vet stuff like the scales and boarding and surgery and whatever else is back there. So when kitty's out of the carrier, there's always a closed door between them and the reception area and they could only dart into the back if they were a darter.

It feels secure enough to me.
 

MoochNNoodles

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My vet is in essentially a "strip-mall" but it's more offices than anything. There is a library, a restaurant, a salon, a physical therapist, a speech therapist, etc. They have 2 sets of doors. One opens to a small waiting area with prescription products and easy access to the back where the kennels and things are. The other doors open to a waiting area with 2 exam rooms right off it. In the middle is the front desk but you can walk in front of it to either side. I don't know if that makes any sense.

I guess an animal could get loose there; but hopefully that's never happened. They have these curly metal hook things on the front desk for dog owners to secure their dogs to while they are paying or talking to the front desk staff. The office is technically on a highway; but it's set back a good distance with some restaurants and things in front. It's never really busy there and I always get good parking.

Their other location (the main one; which is farther from my house) does have a small vestibule. It's harder to get in and out with 2 cat carriers though. At the location we go to they've seen me coming with 2 carriers, a toddler and an infant in a stroller and come out to help me. :crazy: After Noodles' had her heart issue they started offering home visits so that's what I've done the last several years. The vet doesn't want to add extra stress on Noodles.

One vet location we used when I first moved here had a cat side and a dog side but I don't remember any vestibule. They truly are on a busy stretch of highway too. I always used to loop our dogs leashes over my wrist and hold the strap itself. It was rare that I went with my mother and the dogs anyway.
 

jcat

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There are only small one-vet or two-vet practices in this area. All the ones I've been in have the front door leading into a reception area, with one or two waiting rooms off of that and exam rooms farther down a hallway or situated off the other side of the reception area. None of them have automatic front doors which would make it too easy for a loose pet to escape.
 
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PushPurrCatPaws

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... I'm right handed but use the mouse left handed so trying to draw anything on my computer is a joke. ...
Me too. You are braver than I, trying to draw something. :paperbag:


... So it's a small cat only clinic. The blue door is the street side and goes to the waiting area. All cats are in carriers in the waiting area. The brown squiggle is the check in desk, and the two squares are the rooms where cats are seen. So you go in with your cat in the door in the front, and the vet comes in from the door in the back where all the vet stuff like the scales and boarding and surgery and whatever else is back there. So when kitty's out of the carrier, there's always a closed door between them and the reception area and they could only dart into the back if they were a darter.

It feels secure enough to me.
Yeah, that doesn't look too bad!

It's easier with cats in the carrier in the waiting rooms. Where it might get dicey in some clinics is when the staff members are taking the pet back to the "lab" room to get tests and blood draws, etc. Depending on the way the site is designed, do they put the cat in the carrier to take to the back room? do they taco them in a towel, carry them and hope for the best? and so forth.


My vet is in essentially a "strip-mall" but it's more offices than anything. There is a library, a restaurant, a salon, a physical therapist, a speech therapist, etc. They have 2 sets of doors. One opens to a small waiting area with prescription products and easy access to the back where the kennels and things are. The other doors open to a waiting area with 2 exam rooms right off it. In the middle is the front desk but you can walk in front of it to either side. ...
Yes, I think a lot depends on whether they are a free-standing business or in a mixed-use building. The vet I was talking about above (the dog and cat vet) is in a mixed-use, residential & commercial building. Some things are less in the vets control in mixed-use buildings. Like, they didn't necessarily have control as to when the residential portion of the building would set off their fire alarm drill for the residents, involving the entire building.


... None of them have automatic front doors which would make it too easy for a loose pet to escape.
I was looking at LTS3's first photo, with the automatic doors... and I wonder of the weight sensors connected to the doors could be set to not open for weights less than, say, 50 lbs or whatever (even to include childrens' weights).
 

denice

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The vet that I go to is in a small strip mall type thing that is all offices. They aren't right on a busy street but very close. The doors do go right into either the waiting room or the checkout/retail area. The doors are not automatic. There is no door between the waiting room and the hallway where the exam rooms are. It is a cat's only clinic and they enforce cats are in carriers unless they are in an exam room. Both exam room doors, the one leading to the hallway and the one leading to the lab, surgical area are closed when the cat comes out of the carrier. The door to the hallway stays closed until the cat is back in the carrier.
 

jcat

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I was looking at LTS3's first photo, with the automatic doors... and I wonder of the weight sensors connected to the doors could be set to not open for weights less than, say, 50 lbs or whatever (even to include childrens' weights).
I imagine they could be, at least for some models.There should always be a vestibule, though. Automatic doors do make it easier if you have to carry a 60 - 100 lb. dog into the vet's office because it's terrified. Been there, done that.
 

DreamerRose

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My vet has the double pull-doors, but it has more to do with the weather here than losing a scared pet. It's so bitterly cold and windy in the winter that most buildings have an air-lock system so the cold wind won't freeze everyone in the waiting room.
 

MoochNNoodles

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Yes, I think a lot depends on whether they are a free-standing business or in a mixed-use building.
Good point. The free standing locations have been more customized. That wouldn't work at my current location because the space is more narrow than deep. I've never really looked around in the back though to see exactly how much space they have back there.
 

Lari

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Yeah, that doesn't look too bad!

It's easier with cats in the carrier in the waiting rooms. Where it might get dicey in some clinics is when the staff members are taking the pet back to the "lab" room to get tests and blood draws, etc. Depending on the way the site is designed, do they put the cat in the carrier to take to the back room? do they taco them in a towel, carry them and hope for the best? and so forth.
They just carry Lelia and hope for the best, but she tends to freeze anyway. Even if she got away, she couldn't get out of the building, just go around the back room(s).
 

Kflowers

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current vet is waiting room open to parking lot and exam rooms open to waiting room. Previously before they expanded there was a door between the doors to the exam room and the waiting room. That was also the set up at my other vet and most that I've seen before. Their current set up is unique in my experience and I'm not impressed. The other major vet in town has an open hall going from the waiting room with the exam rooms off it. There are other reasons I don't go there.


Note you can't sue for more than the value of your pet in economic terms, pretty much like hospitals don't pay much if they kill your grandmother cause she's not valuable. However, you can go sit in the vet's waiting room every day for as long as they are open. You don't have to say anything, just sit.
 
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PushPurrCatPaws

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You can sue to maybe raise awareness and to perhaps get vets to build a safer interior set-up... if not to "compensate" in any way if you've lost your own pet in such a manner but to try to prevent it from happening in the future to another pet and pet owner.
:dunno:
 

Kflowers

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That's something that puzzled me. The last vet we went to gave a discount for bringing more than one pet in at a time. Now, maybe I'm just small or paranoid, but in that situation I don't feel safe trying to handle two 50 lb dogs, so I always brought them separately. I also kept a hand on the leash through out the exam unless they were taken into the back.

Cats stayed in carriers until the exam room door was closed.

Because I didn't want mine to go out the door. There was nothing I could do when they stayed over night.

I did see two Irish setter puppies several months old hit the glass doors at the same time and out. The glass didn't break. All available staff was out running after them and caught them. The next time we went the door was much harder to open. I had to wait for someone inside to open the door.
 
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