The smooth consultation (Part 2)

This section provides some specific examples of different types of questions (open-ended, closed) to ask owners during consultations, as well as additional advice and practical examples to help you improve your listening skills.

Questions & answers

Certainly, there are many questions a veterinarian can and will need to ask the client to collect a case history, but given the limited time available to each client, these questions should be well-considered – the quality of the question determines the quality of the answer. That means: think first about what do I want to know and why? Then formulate the appropriate question!

With the right types of questions you can:

• gain valuable information about the pet’s illness;
• reveal the client’s needs;
• find out the client’s opinions and attitude;
• gently lead clients to a decision.

We must not forget that the client is, on the one hand, a layman, but, on the other hand, he can find a lot of information on all sorts of subjects on the Internet – including the subject of animal health.

This means that clients are often “pre-informed” and come with a self-diagnosis or they present their “internet findings” and would like to discuss them with us. Nevertheless, the client needs our guidance and clear recommendations in order to work with us as a partner to design the best care for their animal.

Basically, there are several types of questions that are well suited for the consultation and can be used for a variety of purposes (Table 1). [...]