If there’s one thing that the novel coronavirus outbreak has taught us, it’s that keeping your environment clean and disinfected is the best way to avoid getting sick. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us all how important it was to take steps to that effect, considering that simple hand-washing helped save lives by slowing the spread of the outbreak, and that keeping the places we go clean and disinfected also helped keep everyone as healthy and safe as possible.
Today, we’ve taken these lessons to heart, and we all are much more aware of how important it is to keep places like supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, and doctor’s offices clean. But there’s one location we may not be thinking of. Ironically, it’s the one place you’d expect there to be a high level of sanitation to begin with: your local veterinary clinic. But how “clean” is your local vet clinic really? The truth is that there’s a big difference between looking clean and being that way.
Looks Can Be Deceiving
We’ve all learned that just because a place looks clean, or if a person looks healthy, doesn’t mean that they still can’t be harboring dangerous pathogens. Asymptomatic carriers of the novel coronavirus were instrumental in spreading COVID-19, and germs can live on the surfaces of high-traffic areas like doorknobs, and countertops, even though they might look clean. That’s because “clean” and “disinfected” are two very different things.
Just like anywhere else, a vet clinic can look and feel clean without actually being sanitized. An uncluttered, well-organized exam room, a kennel free of pet waste, or a front desk that has a shining counter could still harbor pathogens as much as a vet tech, receptionist, or veterinarian could still have a cold without showing any symptoms. This is why you can’t simply trust what you see; unless you have evidence of your vet clinic using actual cleaning and disinfectant supplies, you simply don’t know if it’s been sanitized properly.
When Sanitized Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Safe
Veterinary disinfectant products need to be both simple and effective when it comes to being ideal for keeping pet facilities clean and free of any germs and bacteria. It also goes without saying that veterinary disinfectant also needs to be safe for pets. There are plenty of cleaning products out there that can both clean and disinfect sufficiently to kill viruses and bacteria, but if the end result is that they leave behind potentially toxic residues that could harm or sicken a vet clinic’s patients, then it doesn’t matter how well they clean — they are simply not appropriate for use around pets.
This is why vet clinics need to source their cleaning and sanitation supplies carefully. Providing proper animal care extends further than just giving pets their regular rabies shots and occasionally helping a dog deal with a face full of porcupine quills — it’s also about ensuring that a patient won’t get sick from staying in a kennel overnight that hasn’t been disinfected properly, or one that was disinfected with something that’s toxic for that species. That makes it crucial for vet clinics to exercise care in choosing their disinfectant products.
Making Your Vet Clinic the Safest Place For Your Pets
Working at a veterinary clinic is a labor of love. You get the opportunity to love, heal, and care for all sorts of animals every day, but you also have to maintain strict cleanliness and sanitization protocols to ensure those animals in your care are kept as healthy as possible. No one wants to think they’re responsible for inadvertently getting a beloved family pet sick or injured, especially because you exposed them to an environment they’re supposed to be safe in, only to have it turn out to be the farthest thing from it!
In situations like this, making your vet clinic as safe as possible might feel like an impossible task, especially if you don’t know where to start. You don’t have to feel like you’re in this alone, though. If you’re looking to receive guidance on how to make a vet clinic as clean and safe for you, your pets, and anyone else who walks in through those doors, don’t just guess or gamble. Instead, enlist the help of people who specialize in keeping animal care facilities clean and disinfected, as the best place to turn is always to the professionals. This sanitation assessment tool, created by the experts at Alpha Tech Pet, is the perfect place to start on your journey towards a safer and cleaner vet clinic!