The first patient I ever saw as a veterinarian was a dog that had been drinking and urinating a lot. Fortunately, I had one tool I felt reasonably confident using: the ultrasound. I thought, “Let’s get a urine sample to check for a UTI.” I brought the dog into the ultrasound room, placed the probe on the dog’s belly, found the bladder… and then found another one. I remember staring at the screen thinking, Dogs only have one bladder… so what exactly am I looking at? For a brief moment, I genuinely wondered if I had somehow discovered a dog with two bladders. Needless to say, that wasn’t the diagnosis.
I stepped out of the room, found my mentor, and regretfully said, “I think this dog has two bladders.” She smiled, walked back into the room with me, pointed at the screen, and within seconds explained what I was actually seeing. It wasn’t a second bladder. It was a stump pyometra. Today, I would recognize that ultrasound almost instantly. But on my very first day as a veterinarian, I had never seen one before. There was no lecture, textbook, or clinical skills lab that could replace the experience of seeing that case with a mentor standing beside me. That ten-minute conversation changed far more than the outcome of that appointment. It shaped how I think about developing veterinarians. If someone had evaluated me based on that first appointment alone, I wouldn’t have looked very impressive. I took too long. I needed help. I missed a diagnosis that an experienced veterinarian identified almost immediately. But I walked out of that room knowing something I hadn’t known ten minutes earlier.
And that’s exactly why I believe we’re measuring new graduate veterinarians the wrong way.
Walk into almost any veterinary practice, and you’ll find that success is measured with numbers: production, average invoice, number of appointments seen, revenue generated, and medical record completion. These metrics are easy to track, easy to compare, and easy to put into a spreadsheet. They’re also incomplete. After spending time as a new graduate, working in a busy emergency hospital, and now serving as a medical director mentoring young veterinarians, I’ve come to appreciate that the first few years of practice aren’t about proving what you know. They’re about building the veterinarian you’ll become. Yet many of the metrics we use were never designed to measure growth.
The Wrong Scorecard
Imagine two veterinarians who graduate on the same day. Dr. A quickly develops impressive production numbers. Their appointments are fast, their invoices are high, and they rarely ask questions. Dr. B schedules longer appointments. They consult mentors frequently, spend extra time educating clients, and ask dozens of questions every week. After six months, Dr. A probably looks better on paper. A few years later? I’m not so sure.
The best veterinarians I’ve worked with aren’t the ones who never asked questions. They’re the ones who never stopped asking them. Curiosity is one of the strongest predictors of growth, yet it’s almost impossible to capture on a production report.
New Graduates Aren’t Finished Products
One of the biggest mindset shifts I had to make after graduation was realizing that veterinary school didn’t make me a finished veterinarian. It taught me how to think. The first few years in practice taught me how to practice.
We don’t expect first-year teachers to manage a classroom like someone with twenty years of experience. We don’t expect a yoga instructor’s first class to be flawless. We don’t expect rookie quarterbacks to throw for 5,000 yards and win the MVP. Yet in veterinary medicine, it’s surprisingly common for new graduates to compare themselves—or be compared—to associates who have spent decades building their confidence and clinical intuition. That’s an impossible standard. The goal of the first year shouldn’t be perfection. It should be progress.
Growth Is More Important Than Output
As a medical director, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that where someone starts matters far less than the direction they’re heading. I’d rather mentor a doctor who asks thoughtful questions, seeks feedback, and improves every month than one who appears confident but never grows. The trajectory matters more than the snapshot. Some of the strongest veterinarians I’ve worked with weren’t the highest producers during their first year. They were the ones who embraced mentorship, learned from mistakes, communicated well with clients, and gradually became more efficient without sacrificing quality. The production followed naturally.
The Metrics We Choose Shape Behavior
Every metric sends a message. If we celebrate only production and speed, new graduates quickly learn that moving faster is more valuable than learning. They become hesitant to ask questions because questions slow them down. They avoid difficult conversations because they take extra time. They begin comparing themselves to doctors who have been practicing for decades and wonder why they can’t keep up. Over time, those comparisons become self-doubt. Self-doubt becomes stress. And stress, left unchecked, becomes burnout. However, practices that celebrate growth, mentorship, teamwork, and communication send a very different message. They create an environment where asking for help isn’t viewed as weakness—it’s viewed as exactly what a developing veterinarian should be doing.
A Better Scorecard
Revenue matters. Efficiency matters. Healthy practices need healthy businesses. But for new graduates, those should be viewed as lagging indicators—not the primary definition of success.
Instead, imagine evaluating questions like these:
- Is this veterinarian’s clinical reasoning improving?
- Are they communicating more confidently and compassionately with clients?
- Are they becoming more efficient than they were three months ago?
- Do technicians enjoy working alongside them?
- Do they know when to ask for help?
- Do they learn from mistakes instead of hiding them?
Those are the qualities that build exceptional veterinarians. The production will come.
Looking Back
I’m grateful no one judged my potential by my very first appointment. If they had, they would have seen a nervous new graduate staring at an ultrasound screen, convinced a dog somehow had two bladders. Instead, my mentors judged something much more important. Was I curious? Was I willing to ask for help? Did I learn? Today, when I work with new graduates, those are the same questions I ask. Because production can be improved. Efficiency comes with repetition. Confidence grows with experience. But curiosity, humility, and a willingness to keep learning are the qualities that turn a nervous new graduate into the veterinarian who one day walks into an exam room, looks at an ultrasound, and says, “That’s a stump pyometra.”
I hope, as a profession, we start measuring those qualities just as carefully as we measure production. Because those are the qualities that don’t just create better veterinarians. They create veterinarians who still love what they do years down the road.
