How this was made: drafted by Miriad with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed at the end. Communication guidance for practice owners; the clinical content of any handout is your vet's decision.
TL;DR: A post-surgery handout that owners understand answers the questions they would otherwise phone about the next day: is this wound normal, can the cone come off, when can they eat, walk, bath, and when should they call. Write it on one page, as a day-by-day table plus a short list of warning signs. Let the vet decide the content; AI can write it up.
The morning after a spay day, the front desk knows what is coming. One owner wants to know if a little redness is normal. Another asks whether the dog can sleep without the cone. A third has lost the paper and cannot remember when the recheck is. Each call takes a few minutes, needs a nurse or a vet to answer it, and often ends with "it's all on the sheet we gave you". This article shows how to make the sheet good enough that owners read it first. It is part of our guide to veterinary clinic marketing, because a client who feels well looked after after surgery is the one who comes back.
What questions do owners call back with after surgery?
Owners call about the same handful of things: whether the wound looks normal, how long the cone stays on, when and what the pet can eat, how much activity is allowed, medication timing, and when to come back. Almost every callback is a question the handout could have answered if it had been clear and to hand.
Before you write, collect your own list. For two weeks, ask whoever takes post-op calls to note the question in three or four words. You will probably find six to ten recurring questions, and they will be the headings of your handout.
The common ones:
- Wound: what normal looks like, what is not normal.
- Cone or body suit: when it can come off, even briefly.
- Food and water: when, how much, which food.
- Activity: lead walks only? Stairs? Jumping on the sofa?
- Toileting: what is normal in the first day or two.
- Medication: what, how much, when, with food or not.
- Recheck and suture removal: the date, and how to book.
- When to call: the signs that should not wait until morning.
What should a post-surgery handout include?
It should include the patient's name and procedure, a day-by-day table for the first days, the medication schedule, the recheck date, a short "call us if" box, and how to reach the clinic in and out of hours. Put the day-by-day table at the top, because owners look for "what do I do tonight" first.
The template, one page:
[Pet's name] — [procedure] — [date] Vet: [vet's name]
TONIGHT AND THE NEXT FEW DAYS
| When | Food | Activity | Wound and cone |
| Tonight | [...] | [...] | [...] |
| Day 1–3 | [...] | [...] | [...] |
| Day 4 to recheck | [...] | [...] | [...] |
MEDICATION
[name as on label] — [dose] — [times] — [with food / without]
If you miss a dose: [vet's instruction]
RECHECK: [date and time], or book on [phone / link]
CALL US STRAIGHT AWAY IF
- [warning sign 1]
- [warning sign 2]
- [...]
In hours: [phone]. Out of hours: [provider, phone, address].How do you write it so owners understand it?
Use short sentences, one instruction per line, and concrete times instead of words like "regularly" or "for a while". Write what the owner should do, not what the vet did. Add one photo or drawing of a normal healing wound, because "is this normal?" is the hardest question to answer in words.
A few rewrites show the difference:
| Hard to follow | Easy to follow |
|---|---|
| Restrict exercise during the recovery period. | Lead walks only, 10 minutes, three times a day, until the recheck. |
| Monitor the incision site for signs of complications. | Look at the wound every morning and evening. Call us if it is wet, swollen or open. |
| Administer analgesia as directed. | Give one tablet with breakfast and one with dinner. |
| Avoid interference with the wound. | Keep the cone on, including at night. |
The numbers in the right-hand column are placeholders for your own protocol, not clinical advice. The point is the form: a number, a time, an action.
Translate the sheet if many of your clients speak another language. A second language is where AI saves the most time, as long as a fluent speaker or the vet checks it.
How can AI help write the handout safely?
AI can turn the vet's own discharge instructions into plain language, lay them out in the template, and produce a second-language version. It cannot decide what the instructions are. The vet's words go in, a readable sheet comes out, and the vet reads the sheet before it is printed or sent.
The profession's own worries point to the same rule. In the 2026 Digitail and AAHA follow-up reported by dvm360, reliability and accuracy was the top concern about AI at 67.4%, ahead of data security and privacy at 59% and lack of training at 47.1% (dvm360, 2026). It was already the top concern in the 2024 baseline survey, at 70.3% (Digitail, 2024). A human check on every sheet answers that worry directly.
Example (illustrative, not a real case): A three-vet small-animal practice spays 6 to 8 dogs a week, and the next day the front desk answers the same phone questions again and again. One of the vets dictates the clinic's routine instructions for a dog spay into her phone in 4 minutes: wound check, cone, feeding, lead walks, when to call. The practice manager pastes the transcript and the template into an AI assistant and asks for a one-page plain-language sheet in Hungarian and English. The vet reads both versions, changes two lines and signs off. From then on, the nurse fills in the name, date, medication line and recheck time in the practice management software, prints the sheet at discharge and sends it by email.
What must stay out of the handout?
Keep out anything a vet has not decided, anything that identifies other clients, and any promotion of prescription-only medicines. Naming the medicine dispensed for this patient is clinical information and belongs on the sheet. Turning the handout into an advert for a product line is a different thing, and in the EU it runs into the medicines rules.
Under Regulation (EU) 2019/6, Article 120, advertising of prescription-only veterinary medicines is allowed only to vets and persons permitted to supply them (EUR-Lex, 2019). Our reading: a dispensing instruction for the patient in front of you is not advertising, but a "why we recommend [brand]" box on a general handout aimed at owners would be. Keep the sheet about this pet and this recovery.
Also leave out:
- Generic advice copied from another clinic's sheet that your vets do not follow.
- Prognosis or test results, which belong in the consult and the medical records.
- Anything you would not want read back to you on the phone.
If you are building written answers for other repeat calls too, cutting phone time spent explaining things to pet owners uses the same method for the front desk's daily questions. For the record-keeping side of AI, see using AI for veterinary medical record notes safely. The veterinary clinic marketing guide shows where the handout fits among the other tasks.
If you want handouts, reminders and other client texts drafted from your vets' own notes, in a consistent voice, the Copywriting Pack is built for that. Get notified when it launches.
FAQ
How long should a post-surgery handout be?
One page, printed on one side, is the target for a routine procedure such as a spay or neuter. Owners read it at home, often tired and worried, and a second page is rarely read. If a procedure needs more, keep the first page for the next 48 hours and put the longer-term care on the back.
Should the handout name the medication we dispensed?
Yes, if it is the medicine the vet prescribed for this patient: name, dose, timing and what to do if a dose is missed, exactly as on the label. That is clinical information for the owner. What you should avoid is using handouts or posts to promote prescription-only medicines to owners in general, which the EU rules restrict.
Can AI write post-operative instructions for pets?
AI can write up instructions the vet has already decided, in plain language and in a second language if needed. It should not decide anything clinical, such as when sutures come out, what activity is safe or which signs need a call. The vet who did the surgery, or who owns the protocol, checks every sheet before it is printed or sent.
Should we send the handout by email as well as on paper?
Yes, if the owner agrees. Paper gets lost or left in the car, and a second person at home often does the evening care without having been at the discharge. An email or text with the same sheet as a PDF means the answer is on the owner's phone at the moment the question comes up.
Sources
- Artificial intelligence use among veterinary professionals more than doubles in 2 years — dvm360, 2026-10-06.
- 39.2% of veterinary professionals use AI tools in their practice — Digitail with AAHA, 2024-02-14.
- Regulation (EU) 2019/6 on veterinary medicinal products — EUR-Lex, OJ L 4, 2019-01-07.