600. Microchip details must be given to the AVA as from Sep 1, 2011

I reminded Dr Vanessa and my assistant Min that microchip numbers must be recorded properly and submitted to the AVA. It is a legal requirement in the sense that the AVA is the authority licensing the vet surgery and compliance is paramount.

As a licensee, I need to be monitoring the legal aspects of vet practice. So, I had to be on my toes in ensuring that compliance is done by my two vets. The younger vets have their own personalities and culture but legal requirements of a practice, the standard of care, the duty of care must be professionally done to ensure that Toa Payoh Vets has a good reputation.

The heavy responsibility falls on the licensee who is me. Generation Y Singaporeans have grown up in an environment of abundance and behave differently from the earlier generation that grew up from the school of hard knocks.
The world has changed but that does not mean that legal compliance and professionalism should be ignored.

As for Dr Vanessa, I had explained to her a few times that the breeders are taking advantage of a breeders-win, vets-lose situation with her services. The breeder buys the microchip and she implants it for him free of charge at Toa Payoh Vets.

This is providing free services, in addition to below cost Caesarean section and vaccination. "A vet studies hard for 5 years and here, the breeder and pet shop operators get him or her to provide below cost services! There is something not right," I said to the breeder.

I will be monitoring breeders and pet shop operators that take advantage and get free services from my associate vets. It is just not sustainable in the long run as the practice has overheads. I had just rejected a dog breeder who brought in puppies with vomiting and diarrhoea dying from parvovirus and dictated to my vet that he should not do parvoviral test.