About Torrington Orthopaedics

Torrington Orthopaedics was established in 1999 by Andy and Helen Torrington. The referral service was hosted by West Mount Veterinary Group in Halifax, West Yorkshire until July 2004. Initially this worked well however as time passed the case load of Torrington Orthopaedics and the host practice began to create problems for both in terms of time and space.

We will always be grateful to West Mount Vets for giving us the opportunity to share their premises and their staff.

In the beginning it was basically just Andy Torrington and the staff of West Mount, however within a couple of years we were employing two full time Veterinary Nurses of our own. We offered an orthopaedic and spinal surgery referral service to practices extending from Hull in the East, Cheshire in the West, The Lake District in the North and Lincolnshire in the South.

The decision to move had been made in 2003, however finding suitable sites and locations proved more difficult than we had initially anticipated. The site at Mission Street in Brighouse was ideal in terms of proximity to the motorway and being centrally positioned, given the geography of our referring practices.

By the time we moved we had expanded to have a further surgeon, six qualified veterinary nurses and one kennel/instrument assistant. Since moving to Brighouse we have added a further seven veterinary nurses and our head nurse Lyn O'Byrne gained her Diploma in advanced veterinary nursing (medical nursing) and Head of theatre Lisa Thompson has gained her Diploma in advanced surgical nursing. We now have two new surgeons: Turlough O'Neill and Bob Pettit.

Having control over our own activities without having to consider the clinical work requirements of another practice has made a massive change to the service we can offer to referring practices, their clients and their patients. We now have more available consultation periods and longer periods for the investigation and management of our cases. This means that we can now see more cases more rapidly and manage their problems more efficiently. We have been able to extend our surgical repertoir to include Total Hip Replacement and Arthroscopy. We have more available large kennels to accomodate the many giant breeds that are referred to us with various orthopaedic and spinal problems.