Wellington Health

Veterinarian Dr. Kathleen Spillane Treats Animals In Need Around The Clock

Story by Jason Stromberg

Photo by Abner Pedraza (?)

Dr. Kathleen Spillane isn’t always sure what issue your pet may have when it first arrives at the Palms West Veterinary Hospital, but after a quick diagnosis, she is ready to take care of it.

The veterinarian has treated a lot of pets needing emergency medical care, and there hasn’t yet been one that she’s shied away from.

“I’d say 98 percent of the pets that we treat here at the hospital are cats and dogs,” said Spillane, 30. “We’ve had a guinea pig with a runny nose and hamsters that need their toenails trimmed. Those are the pocket pets we’ve tended to, but the majority of the pets we treat are cats and dogs.”

Open 24/7/365, Palms West Veterinary Hospital is family-owned by Dr. Ira Grossman. Spillane is one of several veterinarians on board who can be at the hospital at the crack of dawn, or there late at night, even overnight.

“We arrive in the morning, and the doctor who was on overnight tells us about the cases that are in the hospital that morning,” Spillane said. “If there is any follow-up that needs to be done, we tend to that immediately. The more common emergency patients arrive at night.”

Spillane, who graduated from veterinary school at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, has been working at Palms West Veterinary Hospital for almost two years, and she loves what she does.

“I’m very thorough and understanding,” Spillane said. “This career gives me an opportunity to keep on learning for the rest of my life. I like the fact that when I’m helping these pets, I’m also helping their owners.”

Seeing animals that are in need of immediate medical attention can be overwhelming and emotional at times. The toughest part is the euthanasia process. “We get a lot of compliments here for getting people through that process,” Spillane said. “We make it as comfortable as we can for the animal, and that makes it comfortable for the owner.”

If a scheduled anesthetic procedure, a surgery or a teeth cleaning needs to be done, the pet gets dropped off at the hospital and is tended to immediately. Sometimes there are more dramatic situations where a dog arrives in a comatose state.

“You have to talk to the owner and ask, ‘Why has this happened?’” Spillane said. “The dog could be paralyzed, it could be having a seizure, or it could be severely dehydrated from a heat stroke, or a gastrointestinal upset. We make sure to get your sick dog some intravenous fluids and get it as hydrated as possible.”

There are also common cat emergencies, such as when a male cat cannot urinate. Toxins can build up in the cat, and it’s being poisoned from inside, Spillane explained.

“We feel the bladder, and if it’s hard, if the cat is awake, that can be painful. We have to give the cat a catheter through the urethra and into the bladder. They need IV fluids to flush out their system,” Spillane said.

It’s not an easy job, but it’s a rewarding one for Spillane when things are successfully taken care of. No matter what the problem is, each veterinarian does his or her best to stabilize each animal. At least one doctor and one technician are present from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m., the emergency hours. Normal hours are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, when two or three doctors are available.

Grossman, 63, oversees the entire practice. He runs the family-owned business with his son Glen, co-business manager with his fiancé Melissa, and Grossman’s wife, Marta, who works on Saturdays. Grossman’s two other children, Neil and Andi, are currently in veterinary school.

Grossman speaks highly of Spillane. “She’s my protégé,” he said. “She’s a great vet who performs internal medicine, surgery and critical care here. She does an excellent job and has great compassion for animals.”

For Spillane, there’s rarely a dull moment at the hospital. “I like the variety here,” she said. “You never know what’s going to walk through the door.”

Palms West Veterinary Hospital is located at 556 Folsom Road in Loxahatchee Groves. To learn more, call (561) 798-2780 or visit www.palmswestveterinary.com.

Wellington Health

Dr. Jonathan Chung Specializes In A Gentle Approach To Chiropractic

Story by Ron Bukley

Photo by Abner Pedraza

Dr. Jonathan Chung of Keystone Chiropractic was drawn to his specialty in college when his friend’s father treated him for sports injuries.

“I had plans on going into sports medicine, and one of my best friends at the time was going into chiropractic because his father was a chiropractor,” Chung said. “I had been an athlete all my life.”

A Florida native, Chung grew up in Davie playing baseball. He graduated from Nova High School.

“When I was in college, I started learning more about chiropractic,” he recalled. “Chiropractic is all about the body’s natural ability to heal itself. It’s more about eliminating obstructions to the body’s ability to heal, using natural methods to promote healing within the body. I started getting adjusted by my friend’s father, and some of these aches and pains from playing sports started to go away.”

People come to Chung for a variety of ailments, but he is known for difficult-to-treat illnesses such as vertigo, chronic migraines and jaw pain.

“We also take care of a lot of people after a concussion,” he said. “Quite a few people come in to me for that, especially Wellington equestrians who fall off a horse. We also take care of people with low back pain, neck pain and shoulder pain from sports.”

A central theme in his treatment is atlas displacement, the way the head is sits on top of the neck.

“If there’s an abnormal sitting of the head on the neck, it can create a lot of these other symptoms,” Chung said. “By correcting that bad positon, we can restore function to the nervous system, improve circulation to the head and neck, and improve the joints’ ability to move, which has beneficial effects on the brain and nervous system overall.”

Chung employs a gentle, noninvasive procedure developed by the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association (NUCCA) to treat patients.

“There’s no twisting or popping or cracking associated with it,” he said. “It’s a technique focused on the neck, and it’s how we form a structural correction of the upper neck.”

This provides the necessary correction without harsher movements often associated with chiropractic.

“What most people feel is a series of gentle pressures against the top of the neck,” Chung said. “Hours later or days later they’ll actually start to feel the effects of the adjustment.”

Chung is one of only 300 doctors in the country who utilize the NUCCA procedure. He received his degree from the Life University in Atlanta.

A core philosophy of chiropractic is that a healthy human body is always trying to be as healthy as possible, he said, explaining that a lot of people think of a fever as a sickness.

“The fever, when we look at the core of it, is actually a mechanism in the human body to help get rid of viruses, to stop infections or slow them down. That is actually part of the healing process. Even though it doesn’t feel good, it is a part of what helps us get better and fight off illness. In chiropractic, we recognize this ability as part of the healing process. We’re here to try and promote the body’s own natural healing ability.”

Chung’s office offers classes to teach people how to strengthen their spine using exercise and corrective movements. They treat all ages, including infants and seniors.

“We have a state-of-the-art X-ray that allows us to measure the head and neck positon down to fractions of a millimeter,” he said. “Everything we do is objective and based in science, so not only will someone feel the difference from the type of work that we do, but they’ll be able to see the difference from when we first take an X-ray.”

Chung truly enjoys what he does for patients.

“It’s not just making someone feel better,” he said. “It’s knowing that we’re leaving the person in a physically better state than they were when they came in.”

Keystone Chiropractic is located at 420 State Road 7, Suite 170, near the Toys ‘R’ Us store. To learn more, call (561) 331-3162 or visit www.chiropractorcarewellington.com.

Wellington Health

Walk-In Medical Care And More At Ideal Family Practice

By Ron Bukley

Ideal Family Practice & Walk-In Express Care, which opened last year at the recently constructed Medical Groves Plaza on Southern Blvd., offers a holistic, preventative approach to healthcare.

“We are nurse practitioners, so, generally, we care for anyone kindergarten age and up for primary care, and anybody a year and up for urgent care,” explained Tina Dochniak, DNP, ARNP, who has partnered with Stephanie Wise, ARNP, to operate a clinic that can offer most primary and urgent care services of a doctor’s office, but on a more personal level.

Urgent care services include immediate attention that is often not available at a doctor’s office.

“Say you wake up and you have a sore throat,” Dochniak said. “You don’t have an appointment, so you just walk in. That can be anywhere from wounds and not feeling well to abdominal pain and chest pain.”

Dochniak and Wise are looking to serve families who need primary care, as well as flexibility.

“Kids are sick, you can’t get in to see your primary doctor because they don’t have walk-ins, or there’s a limited amount of walk-in appointments,” Wise said. “We have walk-in from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” Wise said. “You can still come in and get your physicals. There’s continuity of care in the sense that when you’re sick, you’re not going to one of the other urgent care centers where they may not know your blood pressure medicine. We’re all on the same system.”

Both Wise and Dochniak grew up and attended local schools, including college.

“We know the area, we know the people, we had a patient base in this area already,” Wise said. “The opportunity arose. We didn’t actually pick this spot; it kind of arose out of a need for a walk-in facility and an overflow-type of thing for the [doctor’s] office next door. We looked at it as a wonderful opportunity, especially to be out here in the western communities.”

Wise, attended the King’s Academy and lived in the Loxahatchee area. Dochniak attended John I. Leonard High School. They both attended Palm Beach State College and Florida Atlantic University, where they received their ARNP degrees, and Dochniak also received her doctorate in nursing.

“Nurse practitioners are trained a little bit differently than physicians,” Dochniak said. “We are trained from an RN level to look at the patient as a holistic person, so we treat not only from a medical model, but also, the goal of nurse practitioning is to keep the patient healthy. It’s a lot of teaching about how to stay healthy.”

Wise said their office is a model of healthcare that Florida is catching up to.

Dochniak noted that nurse practitioners in Florida are more restricted in what they can do than most nurse practitioners nationwide.

“Nurse practitioners in many parts of the U.S. have been in practices on their own for years,” she said. “The movement is coming to Florida.”

In Florida, nurse practitioners work with a collaborative physician who signs a protocol with the state that takes responsibility but doesn’t have to be directly in the day-to-day care of patients.

“I think we have the opportunity to have more time with the patients and get to know them on a more personal basis,” Dochniak said. “The way that healthcare is moving, there’s not a lot of physicians who do primary or family practice anymore, so nurse practitioners are filling that gap.”

Dochniak and Wise have arranged their schedules so one of them is always available when the office is open. “We take care of each other,” Dochniak said. “When one of us is not here, the other one is here.”

Ideal Family Practice & Walk-In Express Care is located at 13475 Southern Blvd., Suite 100, in Loxahatchee Groves, just west of Palms West Hospital. Call (561) 231-5200 or visit www.idealfamilypractice.com for more information.