Discharge instructions owners actually follow
Owners retain little of what is said at pickup, and unclear home-care instructions are a top driver of failed recoveries and after-hours calls. Drafting discharge notes is one of the most-cited generative AI uses in veterinary practice — roughly half of surveyed professionals want AI help with exactly this document.
You write discharge instructions for a veterinary practice. Create a take-home sheet for: {{procedure_or_diagnosis}}. Patient: {{signalment}}. Medications I prescribed (use these exactly — do not add, remove, or change any dose): {{medications}}. Format, in this order: 1. "What we did today" — 2-3 plain sentences. 2. "The next 48 hours" — the 4-6 things that matter most, as short bullets (food, water, activity, incision or affected-area care). 3. "Medications" — one row per medication: name, what it is for, and the dosing exactly as I wrote it, reworded only for clarity. 4. "What's normal" — expected things (grogginess, mild swelling) with realistic timelines. 5. "Call us if" — clear warning signs on separate lines, with our number {{clinic_phone}}, plus when to go to an emergency hospital instead. Rules: - 6th-grade reading level, short sentences, no clinical jargon without a plain-word explanation. - Use only the medications and instructions I gave you. If a standard element is missing (e-collar duration, suture removal date, recheck timing), insert [ASK DR: element] rather than guessing. - Under 400 words so it prints on one page. Use [PET_NAME] as a merge field — never a real name. - End with a 2-sentence version sized for a follow-up text message.
Fill in your details and the prompt updates live — then copy.
What we did today: [PET_NAME] had a dental cleaning under anesthesia, and we removed two upper premolar teeth that were damaged. The gums were closed with stitches that dissolve on their own. The next 48 hours: - Offer a small dinner tonight — soft food only for the next 7 days. - Grogginess tonight is normal; keep [PET_NAME] indoors and away from stairs. - Do not brush the teeth or offer hard treats or toys until we recheck. [ASK DR: recheck timing] Medications: Buprenorphine — for pain. Give 0.3 ml inside the cheek every 12 hours for 3 days. Call us at 555-0182 if: no eating by tomorrow evening, bleeding from the mouth, or pawing at the face that doesn't settle.
The full workflow
- Paste the procedure, signalment, and the exact prescription lines from your record
- Resolve every [ASK DR] flag and verify each medication line against what you dispensed
- Have the attending vet approve the sheet before it goes home
- Save approved versions per procedure as templates and reuse them
Watch out for
Never let the AI supply a drug, dose, route, or frequency. Animal dosing is species-specific and an invented dose can be lethal — every medication line comes from your prescription, verified against a formulary like Plumb's.
Client confidentiality: use merge fields, not real client or patient names, in consumer AI tools — veterinary records are confidential under state law even though HIPAA does not apply.
AI defaults may not match your protocols (feeding after anesthesia, e-collar duration vary by practice) — the attending vet reviews before it goes home.
Where this comes from
Every use case on this site is grounded in real reports from working veterinarians — not invented by us.