About Us
“Devoted to compassionate and skilled palliative and end-of-life care for companion animals and support for their humans”
Dr Caroline Ficker – The Palliative Care Vet
Having lived with pets throughout her life, Caroline understands the love and special bond we humans share with our companion animals, and how that bond strengthens over the years and is most poignant in life’s last chapter.
Caroline recognises the struggles and heartache that pet owners go through when caring for animals with serious illness and when facing the upcoming loss of their beloved pet – not just via her professional training and her clients’ personal stories, but intimately through a deep first-hand understanding of this.
Caring for, and the loss of, her beloved Border collie dog Bodie was a profound and heart-breaking experience, and became the ensuing catalyst for Caroline’s devotion to improving pet comfort and quality of life, and supporting the pet caregiver, at this most difficult time.
Caroline’s mission is to provide skilled and compassionate supportive, palliative and end-of life care for companion animals, and to increase awareness of and develop and improve standards in this emerging field.
Backstory:
Caroline’s quest to help and heal animals has been a life-long passion since early childhood. She graduated from Melbourne University with her Veterinary Science degree in 1987.
After starting her career in Australia, she moved to London, where she held senior clinic positions and gained extensive experience and further qualifications. In 2005 Caroline established London’s first veterinary home-visiting service ‘Home Visit Vet’.
It soon became clear to her that palliative care was where her heart and calling was. A chance-meeting with a palliative medicine specialist in 2008 inspired her focus on veterinary palliative and end-of-life care, to which she has been devoted to ever since. From this, PalliVet was founded. Caroline lives in London and is privileged to be owned by a loving and mischievous Burmese cat, Leo.