Kelsey Beth Carpenter, RVT hosts a lively episode in which we find out what to do when we feel overwhelmed by the problems in our industry. On this episode of The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast, Kelsey Beth Carpenter Dr. Andy Roark to discuss optimism and cynicism in veterinary medicine. They dive into how choosing optimism can positively shape careers, the difference between optimism and toxic positivity, and strategies for navigating negativity in the profession. This episode offers actionable insights for veterinary professionals on maintaining hope, finding balance, and embracing opportunities amidst challenges. Whether you’re a vet, technician, practice manager, or part of a veterinary team, this conversation is a refreshing reminder of the good in veterinary medicine and the power of perspective.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Andy Roark is a practicing veterinarian, international speaker, author, and media personality. He is the founder of the Uncharted Veterinary Conference and DrAndyRoark.com. He has been an award-winning columnist for DVM360 and the magazine Today’s Veterinary Business. His social media, website, podcast and YouTube show reach millions of people every month.
Dr. Roark has received the NAVC Practice Management Speaker of the Year Award three times, the WVC Practice Management Educator of the Year Award, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Veterinarian of the Year Award from the South Carolina Association of Veterinarians. His greatest achievement however involves marrying a bad-ass scientist and raising 2 kind and wonderful daughters.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter is a Registered Veterinary Technician with over a decade of experience working in emergency hospitals across California. She currently works as the Social Media Manager for DrAndyRoark.com and a Content Specialist for the Uncharted Veterinary Conference. Some of Kelsey’s passions include the open hospital concept, the power of creativity and humor, the overlap of science and art, and sharing lessons learned from living life with chronic illness. Kelsey is probably most known for two of her favorite hobbies: writing and performing comedic songs about veterinary medicine and acting as a full time stage mom for her Chihuahua mix, Birdie.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host. I am not your host. I am your guest Dr. Andy Roark. The microphone has been taken away from me again, by the one and only Kelsey Carpenter, RVT. Kelsey has hosted a number of episodes. She is amazing. She’s a wonderful interviewer, and she helps me over at drandyroark.com and Uncharted. And she’s in charge of the newsletters that we send out on Friday. And when she sees things that she likes or she thinks is interesting, she has permission to ask me to do a podcast about it. And she does. And so that’s what happens today.
We’re talking about optimism and cynicism in vet medicine. Really this came about from some discussions we’ve been having as a team where I say, guys, I think vet medicine is a pretty good place to be. And there’s a lot of things I’m really excited about in vet medicine, and their perception has been that maybe the good stuff’s not getting enough attention.
And we want to make a podcast episode talking about what’s going on. What’s great about that medicine and why is everybody so cynical and so anyway, that’s what we get into. So anyway, I hope you guys will enjoy it. My goal with this is not to invalidate any hardships people have but instead just to point out that hey, this is not this is a bad place to be and there’s a lot to be excited about and optimistic about in vet medicine. So, let’s talk about it.
Anyway, that’s it. Let’s get into this episode
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Welcome everyone to the Cone of Shame podcast or today we’ll call it the Cone of Kelsey podcast because I’m confiscating role of of host of the podcast today and the reason being is we were having a bit of a discussion with our team recently about looking back on the past year, some great things that have happened, looking forward to the next year, things that we’re excited about.
And then really we started, you and I, having this conversation about what are we excited about right now in veterinary medicine. And you know I’ve often said to you that’s one of the things that I find most valuable about a lot of the things you put out on social media and in your newsletters is your perspective and I think a lot of people are attracted to the fact that you have this really positive perspective about things and we wanted to talk about that a little bit today.
Dr. Andy Roark: I am definitely an optimist. I am an optimist to my bones.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Until, except for recently we learned until it comes to ordering Starbucks.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, yeah, then I’m a pessimist.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: But, okay, my first question for you, this is something that I’m curious about personally, and I wonder if other people will be as well, but where do you think your optimism comes from?
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, it’s a choice! It’s a hundred percent a choice. I remember when I was in college, there was this guy named Chase and he was the most optimistic person I had known at that point in my life, right? Because not a lot of wild optimists in high school that I remember. And this guy was just wildly optimistic.
And I really liked him. And I got to hang out with him and our friend group. And he was there. And he was just we, we got this. We got this. And I appreciate the heck out of him. And I remember. When I was probably a senior and he was a junior and he broke down one night and I was like, man, what’s going on?
And it obviously is really upsetting to me because this is the positive guy. You know what I mean? This is the optimistic guy. And he was like, man, it is so hard. To get up every day and be the positive one. And that’s when I realized, I was like, Oh buddy, I thought you were just made that way. Like I thought, I thought that this was, I thought it was work for him to not be optimistic and positive. And I realized after that night talking to him, I was like, Oh man, it’s a choice to be that positive or to be optimistic. And it’s a burden. It’s not the default setting. But here was this person that I had known, I’d known him really well.
I’d known him for years. And I just didn’t realize that it was a choice he was making every day until the one time it was just a lot on his shoulders and oh he got through it and And was himself but in that one brief glimpse I feel like things need to happen for a reason sometimes and like I wonder if that was a thing for me to see you know, to see someone who to see someone stumble so that oh, you’re human too.
I didn’t realize that. And so anyway, for me, it’s been a choice. I just feel like things are better when I’m optimistic and my days are more enjoyable when I’m optimistic. And I do believe, and it’s almost like a spiritual thing at this point. I think the definition of faith for a lot of us is
the belief that if you’re a good person and you work hard, things will work out. And there’s no reason to believe that other than faith, but that is the faith that I have today is I believe that, if I am a good person and I work hard and I do what I’m supposed to do and I believe that things will be better, then they’ll be better.
And I will tell you, Kelsey, I found that to be true again and again for the last 40 years.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: What you said about Chase, which I love, by the way, because our family dog was named Chase, and he was quite the positive personality as well. Maybe it has something to do with the name.
Dr. Andy Roark: Everybody loves dogs. You know why? Because they’re optimists. Partly.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Unless you’re a chihuahua.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, then you’re very much a cynic. You’re like, I don’t like you.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I trust no one and nothing.
But you know what, I love what you said about that is, to me, I think that’s one of the differences between being an optimist and toxic positivity, is that I consider myself quite the optimist as well, and I absolutely have breakdowns. I have days where I say to myself, I just need to be a pessimist today, and it’s just going to be today, and tomorrow I’m going to be back to being an optimist, but I’m not going to negate any negative feelings that I’m having, but tomorrow I’m going to choose to get up and choose the positive view again.
I think that’s one of the, what would you say, like how would you, I mean we’re going to get into more specifics about that, but I’m curious how you would define, yeah, how, where, is the line between those two?
Dr. Andy Roark: For me, toxic positivity is being untruthful about reality. That’s the thing for me. And if we’re having a hard time and we’re getting our butt kicked and I say, I still really like this job. And I still feel like I’m doing good in the world. And I would much rather do this. Then I would just be making widgets or transferring numbers around a spreadsheet at a bank.
Like I just would. That’s not toxic positivity. I’m not taking away from the fact that this is hard and people are tired and frustrated. If I go, come on guys, this isn’t. This isn’t bad. This is great. To me, that’s toxic positivity. And so that, that’s the line for me is, just not being honest about the truth of the situation.
I think one of the things that, one of the things that’s been said to me again and again in my career is that there’s a lot of people who have seen value in things that I’ve made and lectures I give and stuff because I am honest about where we are, but I am also positive at the same time.
And I just think that’s a fine line to walk. I think the last thing about toxic positivity is there there is cudgel that people have all been beaten with, where don’t want to hear your complaints, and so I’m going to tell you that you need to be positive, and when you’re, we’ve all seen this, when you’re whining, sometimes it’s good for someone to say, look, suck it up, this is what it means to be an adult, but no one wants to go to their boss with a legitimate complaint and have them go, suck it up, that’s what it means to be an adult.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: You’re right.
Dr. Andy Roark: There’s definitely a spectrum there of appropriateness.
And so anyway, I do think that’s true. I was talking with one of my buddies, and we were having lunch a while ago, and I can’t remember how exactly we got to this, but basically the conversation was about cynicism versus optimism, and I was frustrated because I felt like the cynics almost always win.
And it was funny because he was like, you’re right, the cynics are never wrong. Sometimes they’re just early. If you really take the long view at some point, something bad is going to happen. So if you go, Oh, this is going to be bad. This is going to be a bad day. And it’s not a bad day, but then tomorrow’s bad.
You’re like, Oh, it’s just a day early. And like the optimist never get to gloat. At no point do you get to walk a point around to your team and be like look see?
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I said it would be okay.
Dr. Andy Roark: said it would be okay, and it was okay. Like you’re not allowed to do that, but you were a hundred percent able and encouraged to look around and go I told you, guys. I told you guys this new practice management system wouldn’t work or I told you that we shouldn’t have taken that last appointment or whatever. Like nobody acknowledges when things are fine.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I think it’s such an interesting point. I, my perspective is there’s, a lot more risk and fear involved in being the hopeful person than there is in being the cynic. You really don’t risk much when you’re the cynic
because your biggest risk is it turns out okay, and that’s not a risk, right? But if you choose to have faith, to be hopeful, that’s a really scary thing to do.
I noticed it in my own life recently. I was talking to my boyfriend and I was telling him, I realized that I have a chronic pain condition and that I will frequently tell him, oh, I’m really hurting today or I’m having a rough day. And I realized I never tell him I’m having a great day today.
I’m not hurting because it’s really scary to say that out loud because I have this fear I’m going to jinx it.
It’s going to be taken away from me, right? I also think there’s an element to cynicism of people want to be heard and they want you to know they’re suffering. I think there’s an element of that, but I think it’s possible to do both.
I think it’s possible to let people know that things aren’t perfect while also letting them know that you have hope as well, you know I think and I think you balance that well. One of my favorite stories I’ll just do a quick shameless plug here. One of my favorite things you do is you write for the newsletter every week that goes out on Friday’s shameless plug, drandyroark.com/newsletter. But one of my favorite ones that you’ve done is talking about your dog, Skipper, and you told the story of how your wife came home and you were so excited to tell her he had eaten a sock and you were like, isn’t that great, honey? He ate a sock! It turned out you thought he had eaten a bunch of underwear And when you found out he didn’t eat the underwear eating a sock didn’t seem so bad.
Dr. Andy Roark: He just ate a very small child sock and he just passed it like, like it was nothing. Yep. I was like, it’s just a sock. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny how his life is. A lot of things are how you look at them. It’s a glass half full choice. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s funny. I also say, In our world today, the cynical things, the hard things, the scary things, they get all the attention.
they get all the attention. And it’s just because we live in a very media loud society. And everything is about trying to get people to look and pay attention. And people don’t look when you say, Hey, just so you know, everything’s working out okay over here. Like no one clicks on that.
They don’t pop down to watch a 12 minute video. They won’t sit through two advertisements on YouTube to hear more about it. But they will sit down if you say your career is in jeopardy and here’s how vet medicine becomes a horror wasteland landscape like they will lean into that and again, it’s and you can tell yourself It’s it’s useful information.
You’re like, I have to know about the nightmare lurking around the corner that’s valuable and I’m sure that we’re wired that way. We know we have negativity bias where we put more interest and pay more attention to things that are bad than things that are not bad. And so I think this is a huge part of that.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I wonder if part of it is also, people also want to know they’re not alone. No, no one cares about being alone in success. You don’t need, you don’t need someone to hold your hand through doing great, but you when you’re not doing so hot is when you want to know you’re not alone. And so you know, I don’t necessarily want to hear you sit there and be like everything has worked out great for me And I’m sitting over here in the depths of it, but if you’re like, I’m having a rough time I’m like click because I’m having a rough time too. I think there’s maybe an aspect of that as well.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, sure. No, I agree with that. You said that it made me want to update my wedding vows. I’m like, yeah, sickness and health for sure. But mostly I would like to hold your hand through doing okay.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Through doing great.
Dr. Andy Roark: That’s what I really want. But yeah, it’s true. Yeah, I think people, everybody has hard days, and it’s nice to feel like you’re, that you’re, you’ve got other people around who, who share your angst, who share your fears, who share your struggles.
It’s a scary thing. I think, honestly, for all of us, I think our real fear is not just being left behind. I think it’s being left behind by ourselves. You know what I mean? meaning it’s one thing to be like, this is hard. And you look around and everyone around you is struggling with the task.
The worst part is everyone is running off happily, and you’re the only one who’s struggling. That’s the nightmare scenario, and so I think that people really, really don’t like that. So yeah.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Okay, we’ll get into more of the specifics of vet med. Tell me, we see a lot of cynicism right now. Things are difficult right now. There are plenty of challenges to talk about.
Tell me where some of your hope, some of your faith, some of your optimism is coming from in veterinary medicine right now?
Dr. Andy Roark: Just to frame this up, I don’t buy the narrative that we get all the time that things are good or they’re bad. There have been very few things in my life that have been 100 percent good or 100 percent bad. There’s just– everything has a trade off. Everything has sacrifices.
Everything makes ripple effects. So even if this thing was good, there’s other things that probably came from it or things I didn’t get to do or whatever that were that you could point to and be like, oh, that wasn’t good or that wasn’t the best. It’s just, I just don’t buy this strong dichotomy of vet medicine is the greatest profession in the world or vet medicine is going to hell in a handbasket like those are not the two options and I like those are the chances of ending up in either of those places are very small. The answer is in the middle and so I really do think that’s true.
And so whenever you look at people who are having concerns about medicine and they have some valid concerns I think it’s healthy at least every now and then to stop and go. Okay. Wait a second, what is the reality here? And let’s take a second and start talking about something that I’m not convinced it’s all bad like the ballot initiative in Colorado, and I know I’m gonna get a shout at for that, but like when the mid level practitioner, people have lost their minds over there and said, this is horrible. And I go, I don’t know if it is, and neither do you. No one knows what this is. And are there reasons to be concerned? Yes. There’s just as many reasons to be optimistic. What if this is great?
What if it works out? What if we have people who are technicians who are able to do some advanced training or whatever, and now they’re able to practice at a, a higher level. They are making a better income. Pet owners are able to spend less money to get good health care because they don’t have to have a veterinarian to do everything that they might want to do.
What if this doesn’t damage veterinarians? What if veterinarians are overwhelmed and have been working their butts off and it turns out that there’s still really great work for them to do in tandem with some sort of a mid level practitioner. What if vets end up doing a different kind of work? What if we’re now seeing only sick patients?
Or we’re only seeing we’re doing more advanced surgeries or things because we have the time to focus on that. What if we’re, what if we’re, doing a higher standard of care? Because we’re, that’s open to us now in a way that it wasn’t before. And I don’t know, and I’m sure it will vary with clinics and I, but I’m not going to come in here and say, oh, this is going to be.
A panacea, but I really look at that as an example and say, you can’t convince me that this is destined for failure or awfulness. I think there will be some things that’ll be really good about it for some people, and there’ll be some things that are not so good about it for some people, and they might be the same people, and they may not be.
But I have a feeling most of us will probably see some benefit and some drawback or some change that we have to make. And but that’s just, I really believe that life is that way. I think, if you decide you want to own your own practice, there should be some things that are good about it and some things you’re going to find really enjoying and there’s going to be some headaches and they’ll change from year to year.
But there are really wonderful reasons to own a vet practice and there are really wonderful reasons to not own a vet practice. And I’ll just, I’ll rule with that for a second. People are like, this corporatization of medicine is awful. And I go, I understand the loss of autonomy in some ways.
And and I know that, capitalism run wild is a concern that a lot of people have, but I would also say corporatization of vet medicine has really driven salaries up, like vet tech salaries are way up, not because the independent practices were able to start cutting bigger checks, but because the corporate groups came in and a lot of times they were able to
to drive wages up and that’s everybody had to adjust, but it’s been good as far as a living wage. Look at the salaries. I saw the new research out now says your average new graduate vets making 130, 000. I think it was like 80, 000 when I graduated. The salaries for new grad vets have gone up like 30 percent in the last five years.
There’s good in that, and again, not saying everything is good, it’s not a panacea, but we just don’t, we don’t stop and talk about those things. We get to work with a lot of groups through Uncharted, Kelsey and I do, and there are doctors in the corporate groups and they didn’t want to own their own practice.
But at some point they started to ask themselves if there was more that they could do, than just see appointments and in a corporate structure, they have the ability to do other things like their veterinarians that are in the learning and development departments of some of these big corporate groups.
And there are veterinarians that only mentor and develop new graduate veterinarians. I think that’s their job is in mentorship and development of other doctors. And like those jobs didn’t exist before we had corporate groups. They just weren’t there. So again, it’s not, everything is great. But I think that we don’t stop and look around enough and go, Hey, this isn’t all bad.
There really are some good things. And I look at that stuff and I think it’s, I think it’s great. I think it’s interesting. I always love the opportunity for vets to do new things.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I will say I think we have a bit of an unfair advantage at times when it comes to optimism because of our involvement with Uncharted. Because it really is just a group. Of all of the people of right in between you can be someone who says this sucks and it just sucks You can be someone who says it’s fine.
It’s all fine, or you can be someone who says this sucks. What can we do about it? And I feel like that’s the Uncharted group and we have that benefit But as you’re talking it really makes me think about I have this I only have one tattoo and it is an EKG and the reason I got it is because I was in a really difficult place in my life and I saw this quote with an EKG that said without the ups and downs, you wouldn’t be alive.
And I like the idea that you can’t really experience the ups without the downs, right? But even pushing it further than that, I also think that it’s often the downs that force you to the ups. And so when you think about it in terms of, for example, the pandemic. That was a rough time in veterinary medicine when that was first hitting and we were trying to see pets out of cars and it was chaos.
Everyone was struggling. But what did it push us towards? It pushed us towards video visits and more efficient protocols and all types of things that were all types of technology that we’re using now that we weren’t using before. Would we have done that without it? I don’t know and so sometimes like these difficult places we find ourselves in I think do lead us to the positive places.
And sometimes I wonder that with things like in Colorado, you were just, first of all, I can’t believe you’d bring up something so controversial on my podcast. I think about it in that way that it could be a success and we don’t know. It could also be a failure, but it pushes us towards something more successful.
And so there’s potential there. I like how you put that.
Dr. Andy Roark: I think that’s the healthy way to look at life, right? Mm I like to tell the story about this poor dog that got hit by a car. It was just a brand new adopted dog hit by a car. And it was awful, and it was an awful case for me to see. And the dog’s pelvis was broken in multiple places.
It had to go see an orthopedist, Ultimately, that dog ended up with the surgery done being loved by this owner and it was amazing and you know they are tight and it was not fun for me to have to tell her, look, this is what the radiographs show and this is where we are. But the joy of her taking her buddy home, and then the joy of them being together, especially after this terrible thing happened, and she was like, this was awful.
I’m confident that she has bonded more tightly to that dog because of what they’ve been through, and that dog probably bonded more tightly to her. because the nursing care that, that he got, And, it you, look at those things and it’s the same thing with the euthanasia that, that makes you form relationships with pet owners or, it’s super sad, but you can’t have all the good times and not have this sorrowful end, and they just, it’s all really tightly linked together.
I’ll go back to the pandemic because I think that you’re spot on Kelsey. I think the way the pandemic pushed people to evolve their practices. I think it’s really good. And I don’t think we think a lot about that. But how many of us introduced texting for the front desk because we were overwhelmed?
We had to communicate and this is a service that owners want. I think it helps us deliver better medicine. It makes communication easier and better. It has made life a lot better at the front desk in a lot of ways. It has opened up that and then zoom, right? Telecommunication. Nobody was really using zoom and now everybody just uses it as a tool.
And for that reason, there’s a lot of practices we work with at Uncharted, we have virtual employees. You can have, you can have front desk people all the time. You can 100 percent have people on screens checking clients out. They can pop up on the video screen in the exam room with a little credit card reader below the screen.
And you could just check people out. They can answer phones from afar. They can use their You know, their PIMS software that now lets you log in remotely. Cloud system, remote login, super easy. They can be working at home, making appointments for everybody, seeing what’s going on, putting medical notes in.
You can have technicians that take a day and work from home and just do medical callbacks, answer questions call new clients to welcome them. Managers, I’m a big fan of practice managers. Trying to figure out how to have them have a half day or a whole day where people aren’t walking into their office long and they can get head down time and they can still be available as you need, but dude, that stuff was just not heard of before, before the pandemic and everybody was able to go virtual.
And now these are just tools we have in our toolbox that make people’s lives and practices better. The idea of doing curbside, there’s not a lot of practices still doing it. Some are. But that was just, I think a lot of people needed to shake up the way that they were practicing and say, hey, there might be a better way to do this.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: You did a podcast, a Cone of Shame podcast episode recently with Dr. Jessica Vogelsang, and you guys conversation so inspired me because part of what you guys touched on was the fact that I think a lot of the cynicism in vet med right now comes from the fact that we don’t necessarily have the best relationships with pet owners in this moment.
That pet owners aren’t necessarily seeing us in the best light, and we’re feeling discouraged by that. But you guys touched on the fact that that negativity is going to push us in the right direction. It’s going to push us to have better relationships and to communicate better and to have better resources.
I even think about– we’re talking about video visits. What about all the people, having chronic illness? Myself, I think about all the people who have trouble traveling and now they can see their vet from home. Or even the vet techs who are starting to feel it on their body, who are like, I need a day off from the clinic once a week, like those kinds of things are incredibly valuable.
And again, it’s that sometimes things have to get difficult to push us to something better. It’s often I use the phrase, like it’s the best worst thing that ever happened to me.
Dr. Andy Roark: Think about the access to information that pet owners have.
It wasn’t that long ago where if you wanted to learn about your pet’s health, you had to go to the library. And get a book. And that was that. that was, I remember That, that wasn’t that long ago. And now, how many of our pet owners, we, always, we hear complaints about Dr.
Google. A lot of times Dr. Google is really good and they can get quick information and pet owners, they know to be more assertive with their health. how many people have brought their pet in because they quickly Googled and found out that what the pet ate was toxic and now they’re coming in. And, 20 years ago, that might not have happened, and so I, I think that’s, I think that’s a real resource just for pet health in general, and I think for doctors, the way that we’re able to get education is incredible.
I look around and there’s education companies out there that are doing CE, like RACE CE webinars every day of the week. I can learn about anything and get RACE CE credit for it. There’s massive online medical databases, like where I can go. I think Vetfolio is a great one, for example, but you can go there.
VetGirl does a great job, you can go there and you can just learn. And again, like it’s basically any surgery that I’m going to do, I can go and find YouTube videos of that surgery beforehand. Like that just, that wasn’t the case 15 years ago. It’s just that stuff wasn’t there and now it’s ubiquitous.
And so the ability to get insight, to connect, to talk to other doctors, but to watch videos, to learn the ability for pet owners to just pull their phone out and videotape the seizure event or the syncope event or the behavior that they’re trying to work on or whatever and be like, look, this is what she’s doing at home.
And we say, good news. That’s what we call a reverse sneeze. But like we can look at it, we can look at it and say confidently. Don’t worry. It’s good. Or we can say, Oh, I’m glad you’re sending me this. We’re going to need to have a deeper look. But again, those are all things that just, they didn’t exist.
They’re just, life is beautiful. Just better in a lot of ways than it was. I guess the last thing I would say around pet owners, just real quick, is just I don’t know that people have ever been as tightly bonded to their pets as they are now. And they, we know from pet spending, it goes up year over year. And of course that doesn’t change the fact that, we’re seeing a decline in visits at the vet clinic, but you can’t tell me it’s because people aren’t willing to spend money on their pets or that they’re not spending time with their pets or they don’t love their pets and just look at the rise of, luxury boarding.
Those places are everywhere and man, they’re not cheap, but people want that level of service for their pets and as people who just love pets, it’s, you gotta see it as a good thing.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know you’re talking about the access to information. I think we’re a little bit in that difficult spot right now where we’re still learning how to harness it for ourselves as veterinary professionals and when we get to that place it’s going to be incredibly powerful.
I think we’re still in that friction area of. Pet owners are looking for it and we haven’t figured out how to get it to them quite yet. And so there’s some frustration there, but I see that leading to something very good.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, I think we’re going somewhere. And again, it’s not going to be all good. It’s going to, it’s, there’s going to continue to be frustrating. So look at AI, there’s going to be some frustrations. If you think pet owners talk to Dr. Google, just wait until they talk to Dr. ChatGPT.
again, they’re already there. But honestly, they’re going to get a lot of information and some of it will be bad. A lot of it won’t be bad. And a lot of, people are going to talk to ChatGPT instead of calling the vet clinic at 2 o’clock in the morning or having a panic attack because they can’t get anyone with any knowledge at all to talk to them in the middle of the night.
And is it good? Is it bad? There’s going to be problems with it. You better believe. But there’ll also be a lot of times when it’s going to be beneficial. And then you look at AI for us and you go, that’s going to impact the way we do business. Yeah, probably it is. However, right now I’m already seeing AI taking work off of veterinarians specifically.
And it’s the work we don’t want to do. Like we have complained for decades, especially spending the amount of paperwork we have to do has increased and increased and now I’m seeing the scribe services I mean there’s a number of them, but like a Scribble Vet is one, Vet SOAP that’s so there’s just there’s a bunch of them out there.
There’s a bunch of them out there, but those things are powerful that are powerful tools and more and more vets are going into the rooms with a I tools or having them already in there and then conversations are being documented and processed and the amounts of medical records that people are having to write are just going down. And we have always said, boy, I’d really enjoy practice more if I didn’t have to do all the stupid paperwork. I think AI is If used well, hopefully it will continue to reduce the amount of paperwork we have to do and let us be present with the patients. And we’ll have to talk through what our thoughts are and what we’re trying to accomplish, but I think it’s an adjustment we can make.
And so I’m just optimistic that in those ways we can really focus more than ever before. Not ever before, we can focus more than. The last 50 years on being present in the room, giving the people our full attention, really putting hands on pets and things like that, because we’re going to get, we’re going to get some technology support to, to take to just to take the most mundane work off of our plates.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: And those are the things we’re passionate about. Those are the things we want to be doing. We want to be in the room and have the hands on the pets and stuff. I’ll start to wrap this up because I could talk to you about this for a long time, but one question I have for you that I think would help me, and I wonder if it would help other people as well, is what do you do when you feel overwhelmed by the amount of cynicism that you’re seeing out there?
Recently, for example, I cut back a lot on the things I was following on Instagram because I was just seeing too much cynicism in the world. And that did help me a bit. I also don’t want to block myself off from reality either, though. So what are some things that you find helpful for maintaining positivity, not getting overwhelmed by the cynicism, but without also totally negating the reality of it all.
Dr. Andy Roark: One of my deep core beliefs that I go to all the time. This is definitely a mantra. My kids and my wife are sick of hearing me say it, but it’s a dad thing. You get some, you get phrases as a dad and you just say them all the time. Life. Your life is what you focus on. That’s what it is.
Your life is what you focus on. And when I start feeling overwhelmed with cynicism, I do remind myself look, Andy, life is what you focus on. And I go, this is not helping me. This is not helping me. And so I need to go and focus on the things that I can control or the things that are going to be important in my life.
And that doesn’t mean that I ignore negative things. It means at some point I go, I don’t need to hear about this anymore. What I need to do is decide what am I going to do, what is in my power, and then I will go and I will do that. And if I’m not able to do that until next week, then I am going to put this down and focus on other things.
And then next week I will do this. But it’s just, that was, that’s been such a huge sort of driving things for me. Life is what you focus on. My brother has a coffee mug. It’s his favorite coffee mug. And it says, this is your life. Shape it or someone else will shape it for you. And when I’m surrounded by cynicism, I think about that sometimes too.
It’s Andy, this is your life. Shape it or someone else will shape it for you. Which means they can shape it with their perception, and they can shape it with the way that they view the world or the way they look at things. And I, when I’m just drowning and I go, Andy, this is your life. And this is how it’s being shaped.
If you don’t, if you want a different life, you need to intervene. And again what can I actually do and make a choice? And if you can’t do it today, write it on your calendar. So it’s not a hand waving thing, and then you need to be done with it, because there’s too many other things that you can focus on.
I think we’ve all got actual real to do lists that would make our lives better, that would make other people’s lives better, that would make the world a better place. Just get to work on that stuff. But again, it doesn’t mean you tune everything out. We just need to be intentional about what we focus on.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: I love that. I’m gonna have to get one of those coffee mugs, I think.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s a good mug.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Thank you very much, Dr. Andy Roark for being on my podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark: Thank you for having me on my podcast. Thank you. I appreciate this.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: Where can people find you?
Dr. Andy Roark: They can find me here on this podcast because that’s the one that I usually do, yes this at drandyroark.com and you mentioned it earlier. I’ll just say a super shameless plug. I write something every Friday for people and if you like my stuff and you don’t get my newsletter it could be worthwhile to head over to drandyroark.com/newsletter get it But I try to write something new and fresh every week.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: No, literally, I, think your perspective on things is one of the most valuable things you contribute to the veterinary medicine because a lot of it is like you were saying earlier, it’s not just focusing on what you can control, it’s also which aspect are you going to focus on as well. And I think all of us as veterinary professionals have so much to contribute. So much beauty to contribute to the world. Let’s not waste so much time on the cynicism part of it. What’s it contributing? But yeah, thank you so much, Dr. Andy Roark and we’ll see you guys next week.
Dr. Andy Roark: See ya guys!
And that’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Kelsey Carpenter, you’re amazing. Thank you for hosting this up and making this happen. Gang, as I said, head over to drandywork.com and check it out. If you want to get my newsletters, I work hard on them. I do. I am proud of them. So anyway, maybe that was of interest to you.
You can go check it out. All right, gang, take care of yourselves, everybody. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
