Our Community

Our tour of The Ralph continues, and today we are taking a closer look at our Emergency and Critical Care Service.

Our Emergency and Critical Care Service can be thought of as a mix between “Accident + Emergency (A & E)” and “Intensive Care (ICU)”. The service will see referral patients 24-7-365. Many of them will be critical; some will have life-threatening problems. These problems will include:

• Shock
• Difficulty breathing
• Kidney failure
• Heart failure
• Severe trauma
• Bleeding disorders
• Poisoning
• …and more.

We will care for these patients in our dedicated Dog and Cat Intensive Care Units. Here we will be able to provide advanced investigations (e.g. sophisticated blood tests, rapid ultrasound) and treatments (e.g. blood transfusions, oxygen cages, mechanical ventilation, assisted feeding). All our ICU patients will be closely monitored 24-hours a day.

The Ralph is a multidisciplinary hospital with a wide ranges of clinical services. The ECC service will seek input from all our specialist vets and our physiotherapist when needed. This will allow us to provide the best and most holistic care to our patients giving them the greatest chance of recovery.

Our ECC clinicians will also be available to provide advice and support to our primary care colleagues when they are faced with complex and challenging cases.

That is a whistle-stop tour of our ECC service. Now let’s meet the clinicians…

Making it all possible…

Kim Chong  

Kim graduated from the Royal Veterinary College. She spent a short period in general practice before discovering emergency medicine and worked ‘out-of-hours’ for a few years. After realising her love for critical care, Kim embarked on a rotating internship at the University of Bristol, followed by an ECC internship at the University of Minnesota before an ECC residency at the University of Pennsylvania. Kim is a Board-certified Diplomate in Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care. She will be leading the ECC team.

Kim likes to travel, cook and ski and has very impressively completed a half marathon in sub-2 hours! Once settled in at The Ralph Kim hopes to adopt and welcome some cats in to her home.

Hamsini Yagneswar

Hamsini graduated from Madras Veterinary College (Chenai, India) in 2011. Following an externship in the USA, she decided to specialise in ECC. After finishing her accreditation exams and a year of clinical rotations at Purdue University (Indiana, USA), Hamsini completed an internship at a private emergency practice in Arizona, USA in 2014. Hamsini then undertook specialist training in Emergency/Critical Care at the University of Minnesota, USA and successfully became a Board-certified Diplomate in Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care in 2018.

Hamsini has since been teaching vets in Mumbai, India at one of the first 24-hour emergency practices in the country.

Hamsini is extremely passionate about street animals in India. She has been involved with rescuing orphaned and injured animals, running adoption campaigns, and providing free medical care to those animals in need. Hamsini loves getting lost in nature, travelling to rural areas and experience local cuisines.

Shailen Jasani

Shailen is the Founder, CEO and Clinical Director of The Ralph. He has also been a Board-certified Diplomate in Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care for almost 10 years and will be working part-time in our ECC service.

Shailen graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1999. After three years in primary care general practice he began a career in ECC. Since then he has spent time working in both the referral and the primary care sectors including as a clinical trainer, supervisor and mentor for many colleagues. Shailen has considerable experience in providing Continued Professional Development. He has published in peer-reviewed literature, is the sole author of a book on Small Animal Emergency Medicine, and has released an Emergency Medicine App.

Since July 2014, Shailen has been working on plans for The Ralph.

Shailen has a wonderful feline companion called Lucky and likes to do Chinese kung fu when time allows.

Thanks for taking the time to read about our Emergency and Critical Care service, and for getting to know our ECC clinicians.Stay tuned for our next instalment as we continue our tour around the hospital.

Take care,

The Ralph Team