I will be presenting an afternoon workshop at the Veterinary Summit on Sunday 27th August. I am honoured to be speaking alongside Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty, Dr Ilana Mendels, Professor Glen Coleman and Dr Guyan Weerasinghe.
I will be discussing enhancing veterinary wellbeing, managing stress and cultivating resilience.
I have noticed a concerning trend amongst veterinarians when dealing with difficult clients and negative outcomes with cases. There is a lot of self-recrimination, self-blame and self-judgement. This is affecting their confidence and destroying their passion for practice.
Veterinarians are blaming themselves for poor outcomes when we may not be 100% accountable for what happens. I believe in taking responsibility and learning from your results but there are times where we should not be holding ourselves accountable. Clients have to take responsibility for the choices they make regarding the care and treatment of their pets and administering medication.
I hear from many veterinarians, new graduates to highly experienced practice owners. The profession is suffering from an energy crisis. Veterinarians are exhausted. Long hours, high demand workloads, the pressure to perform, meeting KPI’s and not being able to wind down and relax at the end of the day. This is wearing veterinarians down and leading to a downward spiral in their health, mental, physical and emotional. They want to enjoy their career and want a life outside of practice to enjoy their hobbies and spend time with their friends, significant others and family.
It isn’t realistic or feasible to practice to the point of burnout anymore. It isn’t healthy for your whole life to be work and to have no time for anything else. This cumulates into a deep fatigue which leads to dissatisfaction with your career choice.
We need to create a new normal. We need to prioritise self-compassion and self-care. We need veterinarians who have still have a passion for practice and who are energetic and enthusiastic. To do that we need to focus on building sustainable careers and have veterinarians who are rested and recharged every day. Who have a life outside of practice which fulfils them. We need to shift our focus from giving everything to our clients to looking after the whole team. Then they will serve the clients to the best of their ability.
I strongly recommend attending my workshop. View the program and register here. It is very affordable!
Natasha
