“It’s Like Having a Map”: An Exploration of Participating Pet Owners’ Expectations of Using Telemedicine to Access Emergency Veterinary Care
Simple Summary
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Design
2.2. Questionnaire
2.3. Interview Guide
2.4. Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Participants
3.2. Thematic Analysis
3.2.1. Anxiety Is a Common Emotion Before Accessing Emergency Care via Telemedicine
“Like… like, there’s nothing worse than being a pet owner and having an animal that is sick and not knowing what to do to help them and not being able to contact somebody. Like, that’s… that’s a horrible feeling.” (P213w)
“Yeah, I mean like as millennials with like no kids… like our pets are our kids.” (P222x)
“She was able to really parse and understand and say, ‘let me understand the sequence’ and got me to kind of slow down a little bit. And very early on, she said, I don’t think we’re dealing with anything terribly serious here, which helped me like, OK, all right, good, take a breath now.” (P220x)
“I mean, there just happened to be somebody on the phone, who bothered listening… that meant the whole world to me.” (P216w)
“How serious is this? I needed an answer to that question. How serious is this? Because I was on the end of ‘oh my God, he’s bleeding internally’, just like my last dog who ended up dying. So, it was very, you know this… to me, it was an emergency until somebody could say it was not an emergency. And I got that answer.” (P220x)
3.2.2. Uncertainty Drives Expectations of Telemedicine
“But just having that extra bit of clarity and quite frankly, just having someone else there to be like ‘this isn’t as bad as you think’, or ‘hey man, you know, this is pretty bad, but like, this is how we’re going to deal with it’, right? Because we [pet owners] got no clue.” (P212w)
“You know, I was desperate. So, I called back our regular clinic and I asked what I could do and they, they gave me the phone number for the telemedicine […] this was the first time that I’ve ever experienced such panic really.” (P219w)
“Um, I really didn’t have any expectations because I didn’t—I hadn’t even heard of this service, and I didn’t know what to expect. So, I was a little bit hesitant, hesitant at first because I thought it wasn’t going to be much help, but it, it, it turned out to be a wonderful positive experience and I will certainly use the service again.” (P213w)
“Now it might have said that on the screen somewhere else, but I was in such a state of high anxiety […] It was one of those weird, technical… you know, the instructions need to be absolutely clear for people who are panicking.” (P220x)
3.2.3. Guidance Is Expected
“Um, I just- I… yeah, I guess guidance is what I wanted. I wanted to know how much of an emergency he was in […] I didn’t know if I was right with my intuition, and I just wanted to know if I should be driving. Like if there was a place for me to go with my puppy over, over a weekend or if there’s anything I could do to try to help him out.” (P219w)
“So, the metaphor that comes to mind to me is I’m on a journey with my dog and my destination is his wellness … him getting better. And I’m heading out into the wilderness. I know it’s out there someplace. Right now, it’s at the emergency clinic because that’s where I’m trying to get to. And on the way I find a vet who acts as a signpost. It’s like having a map.” (P220x)
“I did. This is an issue that my cat has had in the past and previous medication she had worked for it as well. I saw in the instructions prior to booking the appointment that if medication was to be prescribed an extra fee would be charged. So, I yeah, I knew it was possible.” (P204v)
3.2.4. Telemedicine Is a Collaborative Process
“Like you’re going to be their hands and they’re going to be the brain and they’re going to say do this, do that. Working to fix the problem.” (P207v)
“We did like—as much of the physical check-up as possible. So, I was able to get her eyes checked out […], we checked her breathing. We checked like her mouth and her nose and everything.” (P204v)
“You know, I handle my dog all the time. I clean up his poo. Handling him and… and helping assess him was very meaningful and powerful for me.” (P220x)
“Like [with] an in-person consultation, it’s more of like the doctor, the vet is taking care of your dog. They know what to look out for, um… [in person] is less of a learning experience for us.” (P222x)
“And then like palpate his belly: does it feel hard? And then she was… she was making a commentary, like: OK, it doesn’t look like it bothered him.” (P200v)
“Being able to coach me over video chat, to understand whether this was life threatening or not… that really helped lower my anxiety. Now I’m back in control. I know what I’m doing, etc.” (P220x)
“I just didn’t know completely what to look for. But she did guide me through a lot of it. So, it was OK. It was fine. It’s better than nothing.” (P215w)
“Um, but I think … it is a bit of a distributed responsibility at that point, because in case you don’t look [at your pet] very well, or you don’t… or you’re not sure, then basically the doctor is making their assessment based on your information.” (P218w)
3.2.5. Face-to-Face Is Still Preferred, Yet Telemedicine Can Be an Option
“There will be a time and a place when [telemedicine] is the first choice for me, and then there’ll be a time and a place when it’s the second choice, because I can’t get my first choice, which is to go to see my vet, you know? But if something comes up like I might, I might literally use [telemedicine] as my first choice. When again, I want that advice, I want that education, um I want a certain kind of opinion.” (P220x)
4. Discussion
5. Limitations
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Discussion Guide
Primary Questions |
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Issues Preventing Participants from Accessing In-Person Care (Some Pet Owners Simultaneously Experienced Multiple Access Issues) and Presenting Concern(s) | Exemplar Participant Quote |
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After hours/all clinics closed
| “There are no vet clinics that do after-hours care in [town] or in [neighboring town] for that matter, which is half an hour drive. So basically, you have to travel over an hour to find after-hours emergency care. If you can get in. Because, because they’re so busy.” (P211w) |
Overloaded clinics
| “We were- basically it was like 10:30 at night. Uh, we were trying to call every emergency vet practically in the [region]. Every single one was literally, had a, a backlog of six hours. Um…some of them were like, don’t even bother coming, umm a, either because they were just so backlogged, or they didn’t have a neurologist on staff.” (P216w) |
“Care deserts”
| “So, I tried calling in the neighboring towns because we only have the one in town and he only comes here once a week because he services…he services a town about an hour away and he comes here on Thursdays.” Participant called several places within a few hours’ radius and “nobody was willing to accept an emergency case of a uh, patient pet that was not already one of their patients, I guess.” (P219w) |
Travel advisory
| “So, but this incident, so I’d say it was 9:20 on a Saturday night and it was snowing like crazy out. And they told people, do not, you know, one of those lovely snowstorms when you have to go out and they’re telling people: don’t travel if you don’t have to, because it’s dangerous.” (P210w) |
No means of transportation
| “So, I live. I live on [street name]. So, it’s a very busy street, there’s lots of construction and the buses don’t really—What am I trying to say? The public transit is difficult. So, getting there, I usually have to walk honestly, and it’s very difficult [with a sick cat].” (P204v) |
Just moved
| “So, I just, uh, immigrated here. I moved to Canada 3 months ago. Um, so I don’t even have a doctor for myself. So, I don’t even have a doctor. I don’t even have a vet for, for my cat.” (P218w) |
Pet with anxiety related to travel/going to vet
| “He’s a COVID pet, so I adopted him during the pandemic. So, for him, seeing the vet is extremely stressful.” (P218w) |
Dog whelping
| “So, it was sort of about 10 at night and I had a dog whelping, and she wasn’t able to whelp the last puppy.” Telemedicine allowed the owner in this case to “continue working with my dog without disrupting the process. We didn’t have to put her in a car. And [otherwise] we would have to take in all the puppies with us.” (P207v) |
Pet with mobility issue
| “She does have problems getting around. So, I have, I have trouble getting her to the vet. Like, I have problems getting her in the car because I actually have to lift her up and she’s, I mean, she’s on the small side for Rottweiler, but she’s still like 70 lbs, right?” (P217w) |
Pet with transmissible disease/parasite
| “As soon as they found out she had worms—which she did—[…] we couldn’t get an appointment right away. Most people weren’t willing to even see it because of what she had.” (P212w) |
Pet with behavioral issues
| “Well, my cat, the rescue cat that I adopted, is a real introvert and I can’t… I’ve been only able to pick her up twice in three months. She’s been abused, scared, [unintelligible] scared so for me to go to the vet is impossible right now until she gets better.” (P205v) |
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Fortin-Choquette, R.; Coe, J.B.; Bauman, C.A.; Teller, L.M. “It’s Like Having a Map”: An Exploration of Participating Pet Owners’ Expectations of Using Telemedicine to Access Emergency Veterinary Care. Vet. Sci. 2025, 12, 460. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12050460
Fortin-Choquette R, Coe JB, Bauman CA, Teller LM. “It’s Like Having a Map”: An Exploration of Participating Pet Owners’ Expectations of Using Telemedicine to Access Emergency Veterinary Care. Veterinary Sciences. 2025; 12(5):460. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12050460
Chicago/Turabian StyleFortin-Choquette, Rosalie, Jason B. Coe, Cathy A. Bauman, and Lori M. Teller. 2025. "“It’s Like Having a Map”: An Exploration of Participating Pet Owners’ Expectations of Using Telemedicine to Access Emergency Veterinary Care" Veterinary Sciences 12, no. 5: 460. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12050460
APA StyleFortin-Choquette, R., Coe, J. B., Bauman, C. A., & Teller, L. M. (2025). “It’s Like Having a Map”: An Exploration of Participating Pet Owners’ Expectations of Using Telemedicine to Access Emergency Veterinary Care. Veterinary Sciences, 12(5), 460. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12050460