The patients are the reason veterinary social media works. A recovery update outperforms anything a practice could write, and it costs nothing to capture because the animal is already in the building.
It also involves consent from someone who is not the subject. The animal cannot agree, the owner can, and the owner is disclosing something about their own life at the same time. That combination makes veterinary consent a slightly different problem from the one other clinical professions solve.
Practices think carefully about the animal and often not at all about the owner. But a post identifies a household as much as a patient: a recognisable front door, a road name in the background, a collar tag with a phone number, or simply the fact that a named local person owns a dog with an expensive condition.
There is a financial dimension people forget. Content showing an animal receiving significant treatment tells the world that this household is paying for it, and some owners will feel that quite differently once they see it published.
A verbal yes at a stressful moment in a consulting room is thin. Written consent is better, and it should be specific enough that the owner knows what they agreed to months later, when a post surfaces again.
This is the part unique to this profession and the part practices handle worst. An owner who cheerfully agreed to a recovery post may feel completely differently about it six months later when the animal has died. The photograph they were proud of becomes the photograph they cannot bear to see on your page.
Decide the policy now rather than in that conversation. The humane default is that any owner may ask for a patient's content to be removed at any time, for any reason, without explanation, and that you act on it the same day. Say so when you take the consent, because it makes agreeing easier too.
Practices sometimes want to post a tribute to a long-standing patient who has died. It can be genuinely lovely and it can also land like a wound, and which one it is depends entirely on the family rather than on how well it is written.
Never publish it on the assumption that earlier consent covers it. Ask specifically, accept no as a complete answer, and let the family see the wording first if they want to. The same applies to using a case in educational content afterwards.
Plenty of strong material needs no consent at all. The practice's own animals, equipment and facilities, close crops that identify nothing, illustrative rather than actual cases, and the team themselves all carry the same warmth without the paperwork.
If the choice is between a compelling post you are slightly unsure about and a good one you are certain of, take the certain one. The compounding value of this content comes from posting reliably for years, and a single consent problem with a client costs more than any individual post earns.
Get written consent covering images, platforms and permanence, treat the owner's privacy as engaged alongside the animal's, and remove anything on request without asking why.
Noian writes, schedules and publishes this kind of content for veterinary practices, with every post held for your approval first.
See how it works for veterinarians