New Year’s Eve is usually spent enjoying some downtime with friends and family, but when an urgent call comes in, we always drop everything and try to help. So, when we received an outpatient booking form from Animal Trust in Bolton at 10:30am on New Years Eve 2014, we had no hesitation in putting aside the party hats, and getting straight on the phone to find out what we could do for them.
The call was an urgent one – their receptionists dog was in a bad way, so we headed straight over to collect it and bring it over to our facility for an MRI scan. We know how tough it is when the life of a beloved pet is in danger, so making them wait until after the New Year break was over three days later wasn’t an option. The patient was in the MRI scanner by 12 noon, just 1.5 hours after the request was submitted. We were supposed to be closing at 1pm to let the staff go and enjoy their New Year’s Eve but didn’t actually finish till 4pm. Not one objection was heard, as everyone here was totally focused on helping the animal. We dropped the patient back at Animal Trust with a copy of the MRI on a USB stick, went through the MRI with the vet and told her where our concerns were, before sending the images off to Vet CT Specialists (Dr Steve Joslyn RCVS, European Diplomate in Diagnostic Imaging) to confirm the diagnosis. That night, although we managed to celebrate the New Year with the family, we were definitely twitchy, checking emails regularly to see whether the report had come through – which it did at about 10:30pm.
This company is our passion, and no matter when we are asked to help, we are always delighted to agree. The scans we carry out, and the reports that we provide could (depending on the diagnosis) have a life changing effect on the owners, so we believe that it is vital to get this information to the vet and the client within 12 hours of an MRI. In human medicine, patients often have to wait weeks for results, but this is not how we do things at Northwest MRI. In the case of the New Years Eve patient, we emailed the report over at 10.45pm, taking pride in the knowledge that had this been a person, not a pet, they would never have received that level of care or information that quickly. Every client is dealt with as if it was our own pet, and we will do the impossible if we have to.
For further information
t: +44 (0)1942 242001
w: www.northwestmri.co.uk