A sneak peek into How To Examine a Wolverine, which will be published by ECW Press on September 28, 2021. No, this peek does not involve wolverines. You'll have to buy the book for that.
Colonscopy and Liver Treats
I'm sure you're wondering how colonoscopy and liver treats relate to each other, and if you've formulated a guess, I can almost guarantee you that it's wrong.
Let's start with the liver treats. I've written before about how the rapid advancements in medical science and in the role of veterinary technologists have dramatically changed veterinary practice, but I'm here to tell you that nothing has had a greater impact on my day to day life as a small animal veterinarian than the advent of the freeze-dried liver treat.
There are all sorts of good reasons for wanting my patients to like me. It makes my job more fun, it makes my job safer and it makes my patients dread seeing me less, which in turn means that my clients are more likely to bring them in when they should. And the best way to get them to like me is with food. This is trickier with cats, where less than half accept treats, regardless of the quality, but with dogs, if you have the right treat, 90% will take it and ask for more. We used to have terrible treats. They were the veterinary equivalent of the pediatrician handing out sticks of broccoli as a reward to the children coming to her office. Some dogs didn't care, but enough did that we decided to try and find something else. Something else that was at least respectably healthy. Fresh bacon would have been popular too, but there would have been... issues with that. Enter the freeze-dried liver treat. They are literally little chunks of dry liver. If you look carefully you can see the veins and stuff. I don't recommend you do. Dogs act as if they've just seen the face of God the first time they are given one of these. Dogs don't just like me now, they love me. I hand them out when I come in the room, I hand them out as I do things such as give needles and, most importantly, I hand them out at the end of the visit.
Why "most importantly"? This is where colonoscopy comes in. Bear with me. In 1996 the Nobel prize-winning behavioural psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, and his colleague Ziv Carmon demonstrated what is called the "peak-end rule" using colonoscopy as an example. This rule states that people (and presumably animals) judge the quality of a remembered experience primarily by its peak, or most intense moment, and by how it ends, rather than by an aggregate or average of the entire experience. To demonstrate this they divided a group of human colonoscopy patients into two groups. The first group was subjected to the standard colonoscopy experience. The second group was given the identical colonoscopy with one key difference - at the end of the procedure the tip of the colonoscope was allowed to linger for three minutes longer and then slowly withdrawn. The second group subjectively evaluated their experience as significantly less unpleasant, even though it lasted longer. More colonoscopy was actually preferred! Why? It was less unpleasant because although the peak of the experience was the same, the end was better. Apparently, leaving the scope sit for a few minutes felt better than having it jostling around right up to the end. This has practical implications because the patients in the second group were more likely to agree to subsequent colonoscopies when recommended. (Incidentally, this experiment also begs important questions about sedation protocols wherever this was done, but never mind.)
So, gentle readers, this is why the little mints and chocolates at the end of a restaurant meal are so important. Tips apparently increase on average by 14% when these are given. You may not even be conscious of it, but your feelings about the meal are most heavily influenced by the peak of it (most memorable moment) and by the last part. Just like colonoscopy. And I'm betting Rover feels the same way about his visit to my clinic. And even if he doesn't remember for next time, at least he's happier for that moment. That's worth something too.
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