NWRA Archives

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Posted on December 27, 2022December 28, 2022

2022 Board of Directors – Rachel Avilla, Devin Dombrowski, Marie Travers, Doris Duncan and not in photo, Sonia Lunacek

It is difficult to find the words to express the awe and love we have for our wonderful community. When Devin and I started this little project just over 10 years ago, we really had no idea where it would take us. The people we have met, the organizations we have visited and the partnerships we have created are precious to us. With over 1,200 accounts and 2,734,486 patients, we are truly blown away by how much this community has grown.

The Wild Neighbors Database Project has reached a critical turning point as a non-profit organization. We are growing fast to help support the needs of our users. In 2023 we will be hiring three new part-time people to help support The Wild Neighbors Database project and WRMD users; a software engineer, a development and communication coordinator and a customer support and data specialist. These additions will increase our overhead significantly which is why we are reaching out to our community for support.

That’s why we are going to extend our fundraising campaign and push for another $4000 this week!

We are eternally grateful to all of you who have already donated to this year’s campaign. Thank you, thank you, thank you and virtual hugs all around! While we understand that some do not have the resources to make a large donation we humbly remind you that every little bit counts: $5 or $10 is a wonderful contribution if that is what you can afford.

Your donation will help support several amazing projects we have lined up for 2023. We have been working hard on WRMD 4.0, which will incorporate many of the features that people have been wishing for over the past few years. We are updating OWRMD (O for Oiled) for The Oiled Wildlife Care Network at UC Davis, and we are releasing The Oil Spill Extension, which will be available to any account for a fee. We are also diving into the world of marine mammals and sea turtles so that WRMD includes the necessary fields and reports for NOAA species. We are continuing to develop and expand our WildAlert System (previously known as Wildlife Morbidity and Mortality Event Alert System) which uses aggregate data from participating WRMD accounts to identify potential wildlife health events in near real time. As you can see, we’re having a massive growth spurt!

On top of all of that, we will be speaking at the FWRA (Florida Wildlife Rehabilitators Associations) symposium and the NWRA (National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association) symposium and will have a booth at the NWRA symposium. Please come find us and say hi if you’re also there, we would love to meet you!

Again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your support over the last ten years, and for your continued support helping WRMD become even more awesome. We appreciate and love you all. We hope 2023 is a year of growth and positivity for all!

Donate Today!

Warmest Wishes in the New Year,

Rachel Avilla and the entire Wild Neighbors Team

Early 2020 Updates and Important Information

Posted on February 7, 2020February 7, 2020

Now That Most Of the Reporting Is Done..

December and January are two of the busiest months for WRMD. Reporting takes its toll on everybody. We work really hard to make sure that everybody’s reports are functioning correctly and that giant reports are not crashing our servers, which has happened a few times. Every year or two we have to upgrade our servers to handle all of the activity that happens this time of year, and we will be upgrading again soon. Thank you for your patience.

NWRA Symposium

WRMD will be attending the NWRA Symposium this year in South Padre Island, Texas – Feb 25-29. If you are also attending we would love to meet you! Bring any and all questions, concerns, comments and feedback to us, or just come by and say hi. We will also be presenting on Thursday morning from 8:30-9:30AM and hope to see you there!

We are especially looking for feedback for our proposed new Husbandry extension. If you have been waiting patiently for this extension please come and chat with us. We are looking for suggestions and advice on recording husbandry information.

Analytics

Devin, our developer, has been working extra hard to improve the Analytics section of WRMD. We want our users to be able to view their data in whatever way they need. All I can say is that what he is creating is absolutely beautiful! Seriously, the graphs are like artwork and the information they provide is invaluable. Devin is doing everything he can to get it done so he can unveil it during our presentation at the NWRA symposium (fingers crossed). Things to look forward to!

M-Opinion & the Migratory Bird Treaty Act

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is under attack and birds need you to speak for them. The language within this 100+ year old treaty has been scrutinized and recently a new proposed regulation change is underway. The M-Opinion proposes to redefine the meaning of the “incidental take”. The change effectively allows anybody who “accidentally” destroys, kills, or harms any MBTA protected bird, nest or egg to do so with no penalty. An example of this would be an oil spill where birds are not intentionally harmed. Currently, oil spillers have to pay a price for this. The M-Opinion would make it so they could get off scot-free. The same would be true of a tree-trimming company did not intend to wipe out an entire colony of herons and their nests. They may now experience no repercussions. On a smaller level, we may no longer be able to tell the public that removing a nest that has baby birds in it is illegal. We all know how devastating this could be to all MBTA protected birds. USFW has finally opened this up for public comment and we need to comment this until they have no more space on their server to hold all the comments. Spread this far and wide. We only have until March 19, 2020. Let’s do everything we can to stop this change. https://www.regulations.gov/document

A Great Question From a User

This is from a new user and it inspired me to write this blog:

“I have just one more question as well. I am using the program for our intakes only. We are a larger facility and still growing and the rehabilitation staff have a paperwork system that works really well for them as far as exams, feedings, vet visits etc. Does utilizing your system just for what we need hurt us in anyway? I was not sure if I just used it for intakes and out comes and used our paper system for the rehab side of things if that would be an issue in anyway.”

Here is our response:

We designed WRMD so that it could be used any way you want and need. Most wildlife rehabilitation organizations that have existed for 10 years or more started with paper records, which is completely fine. However, one of the big reasons we developed WRMD was to create a tool that can save institutional knowledge in a useful, easy-to-search format. When we ask, “What medication did we give that patient 5 years ago that worked, because we now have a similar situation?”, we can easily and quickly find the answer in WRMD. With paper you really can’t do that. So much information is lost on paperwork. On the flip side I do think that it can work great for many tasks such as husbandry charts or prescription forms that can be written on and checked off. WRMD provides many paper forms within our “Paper Form” extension that, when used, translate nicely into the digital format of WRMD.

We have found that the normal progression of our WRMD users is to start small. Many rehabilitators just add in their intakes and dispositions to get the reports and basic stats they need. Once they get used to using WRMD and can navigate more easily, they slowly start to incorporate its’ other features. Features like the Prescriptions extension can automatically calculate the dose your patient from the last recorded weight once you add information into your Prescription Formulary. In order to do that you need to use Locations and record in weights. If you use the Rechecks feature, a daily calendar is automatically generated for you on a daily basis, but you have to add in these rechecks. All these little features help save you time that could be used on animal care instead of paperwork and calendars.. How you use WRMD is up to you. We support you, whatever way you decide to use WRMD. Our first priority is to make things easy for our users, and everything else comes later.

– Rachel Avilla

New Extensions and Updates

Posted on March 2, 2018

During the NWRA 2018 Symposium, we are pleased to announce some fantastic new features. You may have already seen some of them but there are few that are just RIGHT NOW being released.

Three New Extensions

Daily Exams

With this extension you may now record as many “daily” exams as you want. The form is just like the Intake Exam form on Initial Care.

Expenses

This amazing extension helps you record daily expenses for each of your patients and helps you calculate the Cost-of-Care. Each expense transaction can be categorized so you may report on (for example) how much was spent on prescriptions. You can also print out an Expense Statement for an individual patient as well as an Expense by Category report for all of your patients.

Hotline

If you are a wildlife rehabilitator, you probably receive all sorts of calls from the public. We are very proud to announce our new Hotline extension. You can now log your communications with the public as well as track the progress of an incident’s continued communications. Not only will be able to search the callers to see if they are repeat offenders but also be able to identify calls that may be about the same incident.

We want to thank Belize Bird Rescue for sponsoring the development of the Expenses and Hotline extensions. Because of their support we were able to develop these way ahead of schedule. If you ever want to visit Belize please check out the Rock Farm Guest House at Belize Bird Rescue for a fabulous Belizean experience.

Admitting a Patient Into Any Year

When admitting a new patient, you may now specify the year that patient should be added to. Of course if you change the year dropdown list the “Next Case Number” will change to reflect the year you selected.

More Recheck List Filters

On the recheck list you can now filter it to only view pending patients. Also, if you are using prescriptions extensions, prescriptions can be filtered into each patient and will only show up if the prescription is actually due on the day request.

Searching Lab Values

Previously searching lab values was difficult to do and returned inconsistent results. We’ve mad that process much more simple (and it works)!

Two New Lists On the List Patients Screen

On the List Patients screen you can click the List All Patients heading to select a different list to look at. We recently added Forgotten Patients and Patients Without a Location.

Forgotten Patients – shows all patients that have not been updated in the past 7 days or does not have a pending recheck.
Patients Without a Location – Hopefully self explanatory. Shows all patients that do not have a location on their record.

Lots of Smaller Updates and Bug Fixes

Begun adding new analytics and ways of filtering the analytics.
Added a taxonomy tree map in analytics.
In the people section there is a tab for members.

Of course if you discover any bugs or have an idea that you think other WRMD users would benefit from then please reach out to us. We love to hear from you all and want to make WRMD as best as possible!

Hope to See you at the NWRA Symposium!

Posted on February 23, 2018

WRMD will again have a booth at the NWRA symposium. This year it is in Anaheim/Orange, CA, in our home state!!! Please come and visit us, we love to meet our users and put a name to the face. We may even ask to take a photo with your name tag so we can remember the face that belongs to the name.

We will also have a presentation on Friday, March 2 at 8AM. We will talk about some of the projects we have been working on and we are going to reveal some exciting new features and extension that have just been developed!

Come and find us! We look forward to seeing everybody!

Another Successful NWRA Symposium

Posted on March 17, 2016

Congratulations to NWRA on putting on a huge successful symposium. It never ceases to amaze me how much work, time and effort goes into these symposiums. So, thank you NWRA for a job well done!

At first when NWRA mentioned Norman, Oklahoma for the symposium I was like, really? Where on earth is that? To my surprise by the end of the week it seemed like a perfect place.

Thanks to my co-exhibitor Marie Travers who manned the both with me, I was allowed to escape for a few hours… Sooo, I visited Wildcare Foundation, who just happen to use WRMD, and I was in complete awe of their facility and their staff. Rondi Large, the founder reminded me so much of the few amazing pioneers out there that started something from scratch, in their home and have dedicated their entire life to the cause. It takes a strong person, supportive staff/volunteers and community to last over 30 years (with tornados!) with a large, full on center running out of their home. My deepest respect to that wonderful organization for the work they do and, if you were at the symposium the stunning singing and acting talent displayed by their staff!!! (You had to be there)

While at our exhibitor table we had the opportunity to talk to many rehabilitators. Several already used WRMD and I finally got to meet them face to face. A few that I have been communicating with regularly and I was so happy to finally put a face to the names. I also met several who had heard of WRMD and wanted to talk about switching over and were very happy to sit down and talk about it a little more. Last but not least are those who have never heard of us and when I give my little intro, they are like “You do what! and it’s free!” and then of course “Why do you do this, for free!?” with a hidden under the breath “what is wrong with them…” As I tell them in some explanation similar to the statement below.

“We are wildlife rehabilitators, too. We do this because we care, and this is how we contribute to the cause. What wildlife rehabilitators do is so important and our community does not get enough recognition for the sacrifices we all make. We are here as support for all wildlife rehabilitators, so that our collective knowledge is recorded and not lost on the dead trees we write it on. And yes, we are a little crazy as well…”

We are only here to help, we have no personal gains in what we do other then the knowledge that we can support one of the most compassionate, humble, dedicated group of people who can talk about intestinal parasites and poop at the dinner table without a seconds hesitation. We are all in this together and we all need to support one another for our mutual cause, no matter our histories. We do it for them, and should strive to do it the absolute best way we can by constantly learning and sharing new knowledge of better techniques, diets, husbandry, cage design, medical procedures, etc. We can not do it how we always have done it, because what if this new way is better from them. That is what symposiums do for us, they connect us so that we can share our knowledge and experiences. WRMD’s Mission “Sharing our experience to save more lives” It’s that simply put. It is for them, the helpless, speechless and vulnerable lives that share our world because, we all know there is no other reason we would do it…

-Rachel Avilla
Wildlife Rehabilitation MD Founder

March Update: Analytics and NWRA

Posted on March 7, 2016

Thank you again for your patience. I know that there are some features that are being highly anticipated and we are doing everything we can to
get them out.

After today, the Analytics section will be up and running again. We have put in a few graphs to start, basically the most asked for ones. So, go check them out.

Analytics

There are multiple tabs available to Browse as you can see in the Overview snapshot.
- Within the Overview section you can see the Total Patients per Day by Class
- Top 10 Species that came in
- Top 10 Cities patients come from

You will also notice near the top of the page the option to select the Date Admitted. Here you can choose your range, but you have to click Apply for it to be able to work. (IMPORTANT: Due to this addition of Apply, when you do searches there is now an Apply button as well.)

The next tab is the Species Overview
- Patients by Taxonomic Class
- Patients by Taxonomic Group, we cheated on this one a little and it is really by lay group, we call it…

The next tab is the Disposition Overview
- Disposition Percentages
- Survival Rates

This is just the beginning and if you have an ideas for more brilliant analytics please let us know. Please email me at [email protected].

We also, finally added back the graph weights which I apologize personally to all the squirrel parents out there for not getting that up sooner, but it is now operational and can be found at the top of the Treatment Log area.

NWRA:

I have a table at NWRA and if you are going to be there, please stop by and say Hi! Expect to get a picture taken with your name tag so that I can try to start identifying all the lovely users I spend so much time communicating with. Marie Travers who works with us and the AWESOME group Bird Ally X will be my backup when I am not at the table. We will have our WRMD shirts available when any donation over $30 is made to WRMD.

2015 NWRA Symposium

Posted on March 19, 2015

New Jersey is a long way from home for the WRMD team, but we felt right at home at the 2015 NWRA symposium. It is such a wonderful experience to meet the people that we have been communicating with for years. It never ceases to amaze us just what a wonderful group of people wildlife rehabilitators are, we are unique in our self-less profession of intense caring. Being surround by like minded people reminds us that we are not alone. There are thousands of other people out there just like you, trying to make a difference in the world.

Every year we try and have a vendor booth so that we can talk to people one on one about how they are recording their records now and what their plans are for the future. We want to be as available as possible to the rehab community. We want to help rehabilitators streamline their data collection so that it is not a burden, but a tremendous asset. If we can collect data and discover trends, our community can become a powerful voice for protection and conservation of the environment. After all, if we can’t protect animals outside of our facilities, why are we caring for them inside the facilities? It is a difficult question, but a necessary one.

In the nature of sharing and corroboration, it doesn’t matter which system people choose, as long as they are using one that works best for them . Together we can unite and see the bigger picture. In order to do this, we need everybody’s help. Transition is not easy, but wildlife rehabilitation has to evolve along with the world around us and our personal goal is to make that transition as painless as possible.

2014 NWRA Symposium

Posted on March 27, 2014

This March, Wildlife Rehabilitation MD had a booth at the NWRA (National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association) symposium in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The booth was sponsored by and shared with our wonderful friends at Bird Ally X (http://birdallyx.blogspot.com/). As soon as we set-up our new banners and spread out flyers and cards on the table, we were swamped. From the time the symposium began to the time we took everything down we were talking to someone.

We had a wonderful mixture of people who had never heard of WRMD and were excited to get started, to meeting users of WRMD that we have only communicated with via email. We finally got to meet with them face to face, which was wonderful. From 9-5 for the rest of the week we had the booth maned by someone. We spent hours talking to current users about their experience, ways to better the system and make improvements. The rest of the time talking people through how to get started and if the database would work for them.

Past conferences and symposiums we have attended we either had a presentation or either a presentation or booth. I think in the future we will try to have a booth and a presentation. The presentation is nice because we can show the system off and talk through ways to use it, but you can’t get that one on one time that the booth allows.

My favorite part of the whole symposium was meeting all of the users and getting to know them and their needs. There were a few special people that made sure all their friends came by to talk to us. I felt like we had our own set of groupies. Those individuals left the conference with a free WRMD tee shirt, for being awesome.

Come See Us at the NWRA Symposium in Tennessee

Posted on February 23, 2014

nwra_logo

Attached is the template for a letter regarding Wildlife Rehabilitation MD which you may be able to use to enlist outside support, to aid you in adoption of Wildlife Rehabilitation MD, staff training in its use, and maximizing the database’s potential to help expand your efforts. We are available to collaborate with you on seeking funding.

Download a Fundraising Template Letter for Your Organization to Use.

Also, at the upcoming March NWRA symposium in Tennessee, we will have a booth and we’re looking forward to meeting with as many of you as possible, either at our booth or at any time during the conference. Please come find us we would love to say hi and answer any questions you have!

Wildlife Rehabilitation MD’s 2013 Year In Review

Posted on January 21, 2014

2013 was an absolutely extraordinary year for Wildlife Rehabilitation MD! Although we have existed for 4 years, Wildlife Rehabilitation MD has only been available to use for 2 years. It was important for us to spend a significant amount of time researching what information the larger wildlife rehabilitation community collects and how that information is cataloged; and that investment has paid off! In the 2 years of its use in the rehab community, Wildlife Rehabilitation MD has grown from a simple database with good intentions into a fully fledged and versatile living resource. Our ability to adapt to nearly any organizations needs have allowed us to work with facilities all over the United States. The flexibility of the database has also allowed us to connect with organizations in Canada and Belize.

Wildlife Rehabilitation MD’s 2013 Numbers

In 2013 Wildlife Rehabilitation MD admitted just over 32,000 cases from 14 very active organizations. To put that in perspective, in 2012 we admitted 4969 from 2 organizations. In truth we admitted nearly 150,000 records if you include all the imported records from previous years. To date there are 65 organizations registered in Wildlife Rehabilitation MD, many of which signed up in the last 2 months of 2013. As for the actual usage of the wrmd.org web application, we served over 800,000 page views to 2,500 unique visitors! That is extraordinary. The wildlife rehabilitation community is a very niche community and to serve so many of us is an absolute honor.

Top Highlights From 2013

Established the parent organization, The Wild Neighbors Database Project, as a nonprofit organization tasked with managing Wildlife Rehabilitation MD.
Endorsed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Completed a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign that ultimately generated over $6000.
Upgraded to version 2.0, which included significant enhancements and 140% speed increase.
Moved to a much more powerful and secure server.
Presented Wildlife Rehabilitation MD at three symposiums: CCWR, IWRC and NWRA.
Wildlife Rehabilitation MD is now being used in three countries: United States, Canada and Belize.

Total Cases Admitted per Week in 2013

Sincere Thank You

This may be becoming old, but we could never stop saying it, Thank You! Our success and growth are because of the contributions of our users. We have been blessed with their great ideas for improvements as well as financial assistance. Nearly each day we receive a message from a user with a great suggestion or question. We are here to try and make hard working, underpaid wildlife rehabilitators lives just a little easier.