Help Centre › Clinical care

Vaccinations

Keep each patient's vaccination history, with the batch that went in, when the next dose is due and a reminder to the owner, recorded automatically from the line you already bill.

A vaccination record answers the questions an invoice cannot: what is this patient protected against, when is the next dose due, which batch went in, and who gave it. You do not keep it by hand. Link a price list item to a vaccine type once, and every dose you bill on that item is recorded against the patient by itself.

Where	What it does
Settings, Vaccine Types	Sets up what your patients are tracked against, and the schedule each one follows.
The price list item	Links the thing you charge for to the thing it protects against. This is what turns it into a vaccine.
A consultation line	Takes the batch from the lot, and records the dose when you finish the invoice.
The patient's Vaccinations screen	The history, where it stands, and the printable record card.
Recorded elsewhere	A dose from another practice, typed off the owner's card.
Reminders	Tells the owner before the next dose falls due.
The consultation screen	Says what the patient in front of you is overdue for, above the invoice.

Note

Vaccination records are switched on per practice. Ask us to turn them on, or switch them on yourself under Practice Settings, Features. Until then nothing changes anywhere.

Set up your vaccine types#

Who can do this

Admin, under Settings.

Settings›Vaccine Types›Add a vaccine type

A vaccine type is what the patient is protected against, not the product you buy. Name them the way you already book them: Rabies, 5-in-1, Snuffle. A combination shot is one entry, not four.

Naming it this way is the whole point. If you switch from one brand to another next year, every patient keeps their history and their due dates, because the record follows the protection rather than the product.

You do not have to type them in. Your practice already has the usual ones, and while the list is short the screen offers you Start from the standard set: dog and cat, plus horses and herd lines when your patient book has that work in it. It fills in the published minimum ages, course lengths and booster intervals, and you can change any of them afterwards.

Note

The standard set never touches your price list. Which of your own items delivers which protection is your call, and only you can make it: see linking an item. Loading it twice adds nothing twice, and a line you have retired stays retired.

Field	What it means
Name	What you call it. This is what prints on the record card.
Species	Sorts the picker so the patient's own species comes first, and never hides anything from it: species is typed free-hand and spellings vary, and a vet must always be able to record the dose they just gave. It does decide which patients are shown as missing this protection on their clinical history, so a dog is not asked about the cat vaccines. Leave it blank for something you give to anything.
Core vaccine	Marks the ones you consider essential rather than optional.
This is rabies	Marks the one with legal standing, which is the one owners ask for a certificate for.
Doses in the initial course	How many doses a young animal needs before it is covered. Leave blank if there is no course.
Days between those doses	The gap within that course, usually 21 to 28 days.
Days to the booster	The follow-up after the course finishes. 182 days is 26 weeks, and that is the default.
Days between boosters after that	The steady interval once the patient is settled: 365 for a yearly vaccine, 1095 for a three-yearly one. Leave it blank for something you give only once.
Minimum age in weeks	FastVet warns you below this age. It never stops you.
Usual route and Usual site	Filled in on the line for you, so you confirm rather than type.

Tip

Days rather than months is deliberate. 182 days after 5 October is 5 April every year, where "six months" after 31 August has to decide what it means.

Note

Retiring a type never deletes it: patients keep the doses they have had. Any price list items linked to it are unlinked, so they stop recording new vaccinations.

Link the price list item#

Who can do this

Admin, on the price list.

Price List›the item›When this item is billed

Open the item you charge for, tick Record the vaccination under When this item is billed, and choose what it protects against. The list of protections appears as soon as you tick it.

It works whether the item is filed under Procedure, Treatment or Materials, so you do not have to move anything in your price list to use this.

Note

Untick it to stop an item recording vaccinations. Doses already recorded are not affected.

Careful

Tick it on the item, never on a protocol that contains it. A protocol is a package; the thing that goes into the animal is one of its parts, and that part is what carries the batch. The tick is not offered on a protocol for this reason.

Give a vaccination#

Who can do this

Doctors, on an open consultation.

Consultation›Add›the vaccine

The vaccinate panel on a vaccine line: what will be recorded, and the batch it will be recorded against.

Add the vaccine to the consultation exactly as you would any other item. A panel appears on the line saying what will be recorded and when the next dose falls due.

Pick the vaccine and set the quantity as usual.
Choose the lot it came out of. That is the batch: the lot number and its expiry are what go onto the record. Where there is only one batch on the shelf it is taken for you.
Finish the invoice as usual. The dose is recorded then.

There is nowhere to type a batch number on a consultation: the lot is the batch.

Careful

If no lot is chosen, the panel says so and still lets you carry on: a dose with no batch is a worse record than one with a batch, and far better than no dose. It is worth going back for, though. A recall works backwards from the batch number.

Note

Where there is no batch to choose from at all, the panel says so rather than asking you to pick one. Either the item is not linked to its stock, or the shelf has run out. Both are worth fixing in Stock, and neither stops you giving the injection.

Everything else is filled in for you from the vaccine type: the route, the site, which dose of the course this is, and the date the next one is due. Press Change only when you want something different.

Note

The dose is recorded when the invoice is finished, not when the line is added. A line added by mistake and removed beforehand leaves nothing on the patient's record.

Careful

A date you type into Next due yourself overrides the calculated one, and the patient's history records that it was changed and why. Fill in Why this date so whoever reads the record later knows it was a decision.

Note

If the patient is younger than the type's minimum age, the panel says so. It is a warning, not a refusal: the decision is yours.

A vaccine inside a protocol is recorded the same way, but nothing asks you for the lot while the protocol is being added. To get the batch onto the record, tap the vaccine line on the consultation afterwards and choose the lot there. The dose is recorded either way; without the lot, the card simply cannot say which batch it came from.

Note

One dose per protection per invoice. If the same protection is on the bill twice, through a package and its part for instance, it reaches the patient's record once.

The patient's record#

Who can do this

All staff.

Client›the patient›Vaccinations

A patient's vaccination record: where it stands, then every dose behind it.

The screen opens with where the patient stands, one line per protection: up to date, due now, or overdue. Underneath is every dose it has had, newest first, with the batch and who gave it.

It says	Which means
Up to date	The next dose is still in the future.
Due now	The due date has arrived, or passed within your grace period.
Overdue	Past the due date by more than your grace period.
No further dose	Nothing more is scheduled, because the vaccine type has no repeating interval.

Print the record card produces the PDF you hand an owner: the patient, its microchip number where you have one, and every dose with its batch and its next due date.

Note

The card is a record, not a certificate of health or of fitness to travel. It can be reprinted as often as you like and always shows the history as it stands.

Note

Withdraw removes a dose that should not have been recorded. It stays on the list marked as withdrawn rather than disappearing, so the history shows that a correction was made, and any reminder waiting to go out is cancelled.

Tip

Reversing the invoice does the same thing by itself. A dose that was never charged is withdrawn and its reminder cancelled, so nobody is chased for a booster against a visit you unwound.

A dose given somewhere else#

Who can do this

All staff, on the patient's Vaccinations screen.

Vaccinations›Record one given elsewhere

A patient that arrives with an owner's card from another practice is not due again today, and the record has to know that. Press Record one given elsewhere, choose the vaccine type and the date it was given, and add the batch number if the card shows one. This is the one place a batch is typed, because a dose somebody else gave never came off your shelf.

It counts towards the series exactly as a dose you gave would, so the next due date is worked out from it. Nothing is charged and no stock moves.

Tip

Use the Note field to say which practice it came from, or what the owner's card actually said. It is the only place that will be recorded.

Reminders#

When a dose is recorded, FastVet raises a reminder for the next one, dated before it falls due so the owner has time to book. It goes out with your other reminders, and it appears on the follow-up list on that day, marked with a syringe.

Nobody has to remember to go back for it. A notice nobody has dealt with stays on Outstanding, oldest first, until somebody marks it done.

Setting	What it does
Send vaccination reminders	Turn this off to keep the records and the due dates without chasing anybody.
Days before the due date	How far ahead the reminder is raised. Fourteen days is the default.
Days before a patient is overdue	The grace period between falling due and being called overdue. Fourteen days is the default, so the overdue list stays short enough to act on.

Note

One open notice per protection, however many doses are behind it. Recording the next dose closes the notice that asked for it, so a patient part-way through a puppy course is one row on the list rather than three, and nobody is rung about a booster it has already had.

Note

Nothing is e-mailed about a dose that is already past. Typing an old dose off an owner's card, or finishing a back-dated consultation, puts the notice on Outstanding for somebody to ring about and sends the owner nothing: a notice for a booster that was due last January is a phone call, not a mailing.