Your white elephant cupboard

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

bob lehner — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:15:35 GMT

[quote user="Hannah Wynne Richards"]

Anthony My white elephant is definitely the endoscope-although it did get me Tier 2 status, and the case is great as a drip stand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wynne

Sorry to spoil things - but you don't need an endoscope for Tier 2 (now GP) - only for Tier 3 (Vet Hospital).

[/quote][quote user="Andrew Mellor"]

one of those things that are great to have and can be so useful but doubt you will ever get your mony back !

[/quote]

Yes - I have often wondered about the economics of fibre-optic endoscopes in s.a. practice. They are expensive to buy and service and need careful maintenance, cleaning and handling or can be easily broken (I well remember finding an idiot work experience kid trying to tie one into a figure of eight knot !).

Then you will need different diameters to fit different sized patients and they are not that easy to use beyond the very simplest applications without a lot of practice, which you probably won't get unless in a fairly large and busy practice.

Occasionally of course they are invaluable and save the day - but I suspect most are used fairly infrequently and never recoup their cost.

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Bob Russell — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:00:17 GMT

"We were one of the first practices to become computerised, when the very first veterinary software was launched. It was a total disaster and basically didn't work and couldn't even add up - all our farm and equine accounts were reduced to gibberish and our cash flow dwindled, whilst our overdraft soared. The computer company was absolutely clueless and it nearly brought the practice to its knees"

Our white elephant had to be Centurion which was a short lived computer system hyped as being wonderful. It was so complex to use that it stopped the practice in its tracks. It did bring us to our knees!!

It managed to reduce all our prices and looking at the income trends you could see the day it arrived (we were unable to take any money!) and turnover returned to expected the day it was replaced!

A very scary experience, without any chance of compensation without proving all the drop in turnover was solely due to the computer system!

It was pulled later in the year and not before time!

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Hannah Wynne Richards — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:54:15 GMT

Anthony My white elephant is definitely the endoscope-although it did get me Tier 2 status, and the case is great as a drip stand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wynne

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Andrew Mellor — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:01:20 GMT

one of those things that are great to have and can be so useful but doubt you will ever get your mony back !

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Anthony Todd — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:40:22 GMT

I'm under some pressure to buy a fibre-optic endoscope.

Reassure me please that they are difficult to use without practice, or a course, and hopelessly uneconomic in a first opinion practice....

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Tim Mainland — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:06:31 GMT

Not sure either of these fully qualify at 85% uselessness, but here goes......

1. Peugeot 205 purchased new for an Assistant who threatened to leave if he didn't get a new car. So he got the "Pug". Left not very long afterwards anyway, but not before his dog chewed off the gear lever! Not much of an offering for the following assistant!

2. Ultrasound machine - yet another purchase to keep an assistant happy. And she was very good with it too. But also left just a short time after the £8K purchase, and it was some years before we truly got the machine to start making some repayments.

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Andrew Kent — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 18:41:26 GMT

[quote user="bob lehner"]the QBC haematology machine -a hopeless bit of equipment.[/quote]

Ah, you must mean the QBC random number generator - rubbish for diagnostic purposes but great for picking lottery numbers!

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

bob lehner — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 11:23:05 GMT

Hmm, I've seen a few disastrous purchases over the years. Our esteemed senior partner was a technophile who seemed easily swayed by plausible sales people flogging the latest gizmo, without which the practice could not possibly survive.

We were one of the first practices to become computerised, when the very first veterinary software was launched. It was a total disaster and basically didn't work and couldn't even add up - all our farm and equine accounts were reduced to gibberish and our cash flow dwindled, whilst our overdraft soared. The computer company was absolutely clueless and it nearly brought the practice to its knees.

We bought one of the very first veterinary ultrasounds, which was pretty expensive at the time. It came with two probes - a linear one which was OK for looking at abdomens (although of course the image quality was poor compared to modern scanners). However the sector scanner for hearts was absolute rubbish - you just saw a lovely snow storm and if lucky a mitral valve flapping about - but absolutely of no diagnostic value.

We had an ex-hospital Coulter counter for haematology which never worked - I think it couldn't cope with blood cells from domestic animals. Also later one of my pet hates - the QBC haematology machine -a hopeless bit of equipment.

An early pulse oximeter also proved worthless - the nurses soon gave up with its incessant bleeping, warning of imminent death.

Moral - don't rush in and buy the latest whizzo bit of kit - let others suffer the inevitable teething troubles.

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Anthony Todd — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 10:15:19 GMT

[quote user="Mark Hedberg"]I really need to find a catalog and figure out what they go for new these days...[/quote]

PM me if you're interested [got 4 for one between 2 branches], demanded by the then vets as essential.......

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Mark Hedberg — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 21:58:23 GMT

[quote user="Anthony Todd"]

Mine are 4 Shiotz Tonometers, beautifully made, lovely to look at but used once, in total, in about 10 years.

Currently open to offers...

[/quote]

I really need to find a catalog and figure out what they go for new these days...

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Wren — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:34:06 GMT

[quote user="Laurence Webb"]

I've always fancied a Shiotz tonometer as they look lovely although I can't see any animal tolerating it.

[/quote]

I famously fainted the first time the consultant opthalmologist tried to use one on me so I'd be inclined to agree!

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Utlendigur — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:56:45 GMT

I was feeling good about this having taken one look at the Flecknell Laryngoscope and sent it back. Then I remembered the cortical taps I bought just before self tapping screws appeared and the crimping tool for lateral suture cruciate repairs (I found knots worked better). "Best" buy though would be the "Vetscope" - like a Kwik-Save version of an endoscope - my boss bought which has now sat gathering dust for about 10 years having been used (as in got out of box, fiddled with and thrown back in box in disgust) 4 times - once per vet.

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Rob Loxley — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:18:38 GMT

Ooh we have an Auriflush at the back of a cupboard too! And a Schiotz but it does get regular use (can't really justify the cost of a more whizzy tonometer) and is pretty well tolerated with some local in the eye.

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Laurence Webb — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:54:29 GMT

[quote user="Anthony Todd"]Mine are 4 Shiotz Tonometers[/quote]

4 of them! Was there a glaucoma epidemic that I missed?

We've got an ear flushing device that a drug company was touting a few years ago. You attach it to a mixer tap and it delivers water to the ear at the correct pressure to flush and it sucks the stuff out by venturi suction. Except it doesn't work. The suction blocks with debris immediately so water runs all over the floor and animals hate it, so it failed to be the holy grail of ear flushing in concious animals that we hoped.

Even in sedated animals it does little more than make the canal a bit soggy.

I've always fancied a Shiotz tonometer as they look lovely although I can't see any animal tolerating it. Fancy a swap?

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Anthony Todd — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:30:05 GMT

Mine are 4 Shiotz Tonometers, beautifully made, lovely to look at but used once, in total, in about 10 years.

Currently open to offers...

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Andrew Mellor — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:06:26 GMT

ours was a red eye drip monitor , miss sold as to my boss as the be all and end all equipment for fluid therapy, all it does is alarm because the infrared light cannot seem to pass through the fluid chamber to the detector, it has worked maybe once. typically it came from one of the fluid therapy companies who had obviously bought them and then once realised how useless they were thought " which suckers can we palm these off to? oh vets will buy them!"

Re: Your white elephant cupboard

Alan Tevendale — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:10:20 GMT

[quote user="Evelyn Barbour-Hill"]

Articles to be eligible must have originally cost a substantial sum in relation to what they were, must have originally been bought in expectation that they would be useful, and must be at least 85% useless. Value as a doorstop does not disqualify.

[/quote]

My girlfriend would probably count me in on this one so please ignore any posts from her about me