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5 Little Phrases for a Happier Workplace

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This week on the cone…
Dr. Andy Roark sits down with Dr. Cherie Buisson to talk about one of her articles on DrAndyRoark.com: 5 Little Phrases For A Happier Workplace. You can read it here: drandyroark.com/five-little-words…appier-workplace/

We are supported by PSI Vet!
The PSIvet Healthcare Initiative hopes to introduce new ways to ensure all Veterinary Professionals get the healthcare coverage they need. Learn more at www.psihealthcareinitiative.com/

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Dr. Cherie Buisson is one of the first Certified Hospice and Palliative Care Veterinarians in the world. She is an international speaker and author. She spends her time in feline-only practice, hospice practice and teaching other veterinary professionals about hospice, euthanasia and compassion fatigue. Dr. Buisson is the owner of Helping Hands Pet Hospice in Seminole, FL as well as the founder of A Happy Vet.

Learn From the Customer Service Story of My Family Legends

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When I went away to college at Mississippi State University, I was a wreck. I’d never been away from home. Though I fell in love with the campus the second I set foot on it, being left alone there was another story. College was something I had worked my whole life for, but I was absolutely terrified.

I put aside my anxiety and bravely attended my first day of classes, only to find that my name wasn’t on the roll in any of them. For an introverted 18-year-old kid, this was the stuff of nightmares.  When I called to find out what happened, I discovered my entire schedule (that I had woken up at 5am to secure) was gone because a small fee had not been paid.

At orientation, Dr. Ruby had given all the parents his home number with instructions to call if they ran into trouble. When I called my Dad and told him my schedule had vanished, he was going to calmly try to talk me through how to fix it myself.

When he heard me holding back tears and panic because I’d already tried, he decided to avail himself of Dr. Ruby’s number.  I think it’s telling that he had the number ON HIM at work.

While I sat in my dorm room trying not to cry, this is what was happening at my Dad’s office:

His boss, seeing his red face (and likely the steam coming out of his ears), put him in a private room to make the call. Dr. Ruby answered.

“Dr. Ruby, I’m going to try really hard not to yell at you right now. My baby is up at MSU away from home for the first time. She has two thousand dollars on account, and some idiot in the registrar’s office just canceled her entire schedule over a $25 fee. We were assured everything was paid when we left.”

Now I have to tell you, my Dad has a VERY scary voice. I mean pee-your-pants scary if you get on the wrong side of him. They called him “the Voice” at the office and sent unruly customers to him. Those customers almost always settled down after a few words. While this may not look scary in type, trust me, there was murder in his tone and you could hear his teeth gnashing.

In deep voice with a thick southern drawl, Dr. Ruby said pleasantly, “Mr. Buisson, let me assure you. I will handle this evil which has befallen you”.

BOOM.

He left my Dad nearly speechless. “Okay” was all he could manage before hanging up. I called him 15 minutes later.

“What did you DO? All my classes are back!”

This story has been told umpteen times every year for the last 23 years. It’s one of our favorites. Seriously, if you ever meet my Dad, have him do his impression of Dr. Ruby.

Mulling it over, I realized what a brilliant customer service move Dr. Ruby made. Here’s why:

  1. He listened. He didn’t interrupt, or tell my Dad to lower his voice. He just listened.
  2. He responded in a way that indicated he heard the words, the tone, and the feelings
  3. He acknowledged the gravity of the situation – he held in his hands my Dad’s eldest child and only daughter as well as a big financial investment
  4. He kept his promises
  5. He disarmed my Dad with humor (for those of you who need to be told, this isn’t always appropriate)

In two sentences, he calmed a freaked out parent and made sure his worry was addressed. This is what we do every day in veterinary medicine. We handle freaked out parents who have trusted us with their beloved pets. Our clients often feel out of control and helpless. They may not be 700 miles away, but they feel as though they are. If we take the time to hear them, let them know their concerns are valid and important, and promise only what we can deliver, then we may gain their trust and loyalty.

It isn’t always that easy. Dr. Ruby got lucky in that my Dad was trying to be reasonable and has a wicked sense of humor. I wonder, though, how many of us spring to defensiveness first and then sort out the carnage later. Had he chosen that route, this story wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.

Next time you have to deal with a person in distress, pause a beat. Take a breath. LISTEN. If you look at good customer service as a challenge instead of a chore, you might start to enjoy the nuances. You may even become the stuff of legends.

Thank you, Dr. Ruby.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

Why I Support Pet Owners Who Drop Their Pets Off for Euthanasia

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned being in hospice practice it’s that every grief journey is different. That’s why it pains me when I hear people pass judgment on a person who can’t or won’t stay with their pet during euthanasia.

Of course, we’d love all pets to pass in the arms of the one they love best, but sometimes that’s just not possible. Before we cast stones from our glasshouses, let’s consider WHY someone might not stay with their pet.

Years ago, I had a lovely family present me with a tiny Calico cat named Little Jeannie. She was 5 years old and six pounds of feisty adorableness. Jeannie hadn’t been feeling well, so she wasn’t her usual self.  We ran labs, all of which were normal. Because she was vomiting and not eating, I hospitalized her.

Nothing I did helped. I watched helplessly as this young, sweet cat deteriorated before my eyes. In a matter of 36 hours, she went from very sick to dying despite treatment.

I talked seriously with the owners about taking her to a specialist all the while knowing that it was very unlikely they could help. I was pretty sure she had Feline Infectious Peritonitis, one of the worst diseases in veterinary medicine. It’s a virus with no cure. The owners and their children were devastated. They elected to euthanize her.

I asked if they wanted to be present and was surprised when they said no. They had done absolutely everything I asked, spent large amounts of money and still I couldn’t save their beloved girl.

They kissed her goodbye (she barely noticed), and left crying their hearts out. I had no doubt of the love these people had for their cat – NONE. They just couldn’t bear to see her leave them. I euthanized her and then broke down, something that rarely happens to me. It was agonizing for me. I can’t even imagine that family’s pain.

We never know what’s going on in a client’s heart, head, or home. That person we judge could have just lost a family member. They could be suffering from depression or feeling suicidal. Maybe they have PTSD. Maybe they are afraid that their anxiety will betray them and they’ll have a panic attack in front of us.

Whatever their reason, it isn’t our place to push, or lay a guilt trip, or sneer. Rather, we can give them the gift of empathy and say, “You don’t have to be here. We will hold her and tell her goodbye for you. We will see her safely to the other side”. Those words could ease their pain. They could save a life. And isn’t that exactly what we are here to do?

A Veterinarian’s Promise

You left your baby with me

I knew you couldn’t stay

I told you I’d be by his side

I promised you I’d say

That mom and dad both loved him

And though they missed goodbye

They held his memory in their hearts

Their love would never die.

Just because you weren’t here

Doesn’t change the fact

That you gave him a gift today,

A final selfless act.

Though my hands held him gently

As he ceased to breathe

Know that YOUR hands gave him to me

For a peaceful way to leave.

-Dr. Cherie Buisson

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

What Asparagus Pee Taught Me About Life

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Over a decade ago, I visited friends up in Georgia, and they served sautéed asparagus with dinner. I made a joke about asparagus pee, and my friend said, “Oh, I don’t get that. People talk about it, but I’ve never had it”.

We spent the next few minutes in a cheerful (and dinner inappropriate) conversation about the likelihood that someone didn’t produce the odor and how Mother Nature really seemed to have a lot of time on her hands to create peculiarities such as this one.  Years later, I read an article hypothesizing that everyone produces the odor, but some people simply can’t smell it.  This would explain everything, but as usual, there is controversy over the real answer.

Fast-forward to a local veterinary dinner where asparagus was on the menu. Once I got home, inspiration hit me in the bathroom. I remembered that I had been having a conversation with a colleague about how it is that some people (employees, spouses, kids) ignore messes and problems and others are constantly cleaning them up.

In talking to veterinary professionals, it’s a theme I hear over and over again. It’s a source of frustration and resentment to many. So I began to wonder: is this a production problem or a detection problem? Do some people just not “see” the things that need to be done or are they inherently lazy? I’m sure there’s no simple answer, but I have devised a test that can diagnose the problem AND help solve it.

Veterinary professionals tend to be natural caretakers. We don’t have to be asked to take care of people or pets, we just do it. Most of us are organized and efficient at getting things done. Some of us even take it a step too far and insist upon micromanaging those around us. We frequently declare that it’s easier to do it ourselves than explain it. In short, we end up burning ourselves out trying to manage everything on our own.

Asking for help doesn’t come naturally to us. Some of us even refuse to let our credentialed nurses do their job, so on top of everything we should be doing, we’re placing catheters, pulling blood, and in general annoying our coworkers.

At home, it’s a little different. Being taken care of is a luxury, so it’s easy for our families to allow us to do so, especially when we’re hell-bent on doing it anyway. After a while, cooking, cleaning, and managing everyone’s schedules while trying to work a stressful job becomes too much for us.

We can’t understand why people who are supposed to love and care for us use us this badly.  We say things like, “I don’t understand how it never occurred to you to start dinner” or “I have to do everything around here”. We end up resentful, frustrated, and hurt. We think maybe being a spouse or a parent isn’t for us. We fantasize about running away and living alone. In the rare event that someone offers to help us, we will (for no good reason) turn them down.

Here’s the deal: if you ask for help, odds are you will get it. There you go, that’s the fancy test. If you expect that because you’re not home, someone will realize that they should start dinner, you will be disappointed and angry.

If you take 2 seconds to text “hey, I’m going to be late tonight can you start dinner?”, you might just walk in the house to amazing smells and a hot dinner on your plate. It would seem that the choice would be obvious, right? So why do we resist?

I know you want someone to take care of you the way you take care of EVERYONE else. I promise you, letting go of that fantasy will make you happier in the long run. Don’t expect anyone to read your mind. Ask for what you want. People who truly love and care for you will help you out if it’s feasible. If your spouse gets home and puts their feet up and refuses to start dinner even after you ask – perhaps some reevaluation of that relationship and a long talk are in order.

While you’re changing your behavior to make yourself happier, remember to pick your battles. If the towels the kids folded don’t meet at the corners, try closing the closet door and being grateful that you didn’t have to fold them. If you threw them in a wrinkly pile in the corner, they’d still absorb the same amount of water from your body. Let it go.

Your homework for today is to start asking for help and stop turning down offers of help. Put your feet up occasionally and let capable people fend for themselves. Start with small things and work your way up to the big ones. Assume the best about those around you until they prove you wrong. Then consider if maybe they need to be unhelpful somewhere else.

Consider this – why are you so worried about making the people around you angry when you are angry at them all the time??  Put your foot down and set some boundaries.  We are our own worst enemies, and that has to stop if we want to be happy.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

Humans of the Clinic: Dr. Deborah Edwards

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Welcome back to Humans of the Clinic, our newest column at DrAndyRoark.com. Our goal is to feature a person you know through your work who inspires you in any way great or small; it can be anyone- a co-worker, a client, a teacher, a mentor, an employee, some guy you see out in the parking lot. Today, one of our featured writers, Dr. Cherie Buisson, shares the story of the type of vet we all hope and pray to work with someday.

This month, my hero and mentor is retiring. I grew up a few blocks from her home and climbed her trees as a kid. I had no idea how much influence she would have over my veterinary career. Deborah Edwards opened the first feline-only practice in the southeast.

People said she was crazy. “Something like that will never work,” they said (incidentally, don’t ever say this to Deb – you’ll end up looking really stupid). This year she sold her very successful feline practice and gracefully weaned herself off of work.  Though we haven’t worked a shift together in many years, I still feel as though we are saying goodbye. Luckily, we are friends outside the office and will spend lots of time eating lunch and quilting together in the future.

Deb taught me how to be the feline veterinarian I am today. There was no question too stupid or ill-timed for her to answer patiently. To this day, I ask her about radiographs or blood results that confound me. Sometimes her only answer is “Well, that’s bizarre”, which is a comfort.

One day early in my career, I ran back to her office during a dental procedure. I was panicked and almost in tears. “I put ear flush in Oliver’s eyes instead of eye flush,” I gasped. Deb turned to me (with perfect calm) and said, “Ooooh, I hate it when that happens.” Then we talked about what I should do to fix it (I had already done it), and she assured me it would be fine (it was).

When a notoriously difficult client blew up at me while she was out of town, she was horrified. When she got home, she put an arm around me and said “I put a loaded gun in your hands. I’m so sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  When a board complaint followed soon after, she walked me through it safely to the other side.

She is everything a mentor should be. Her compassion, humor and humility make her an amazing teacher. There is no fear in learning from her because you are never punished for not knowing. Even better, you are never allowed to take yourself too seriously. She will honestly tell you her mistakes and problems and commiserate with you over your own.

I’m glad she’s getting some time to just enjoy her life and family, but I can’t help feeling that veterinary medicine is losing a treasure. Luckily, those of us who benefitted from her teaching get to mentor the next generation. We will do our best to pass along her wisdom and wit while she sits back and watches, hopefully with a glass of wine in her hand.

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Help us get the word out about all the amazing people in our world! Do you have a person you want to recognize for having an impact? Send us a photo and their story at editor@drandyroark.com with “HOTC Submission” in the subject line.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

Coping With Vet Shaming

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One of the hardest things about being a doctor is constantly being told you are wrong. Our clients tell us that Dr. Google, the breeder or their mother says so. Our colleagues debate online as to whether allowing clients to decline presurgical bloodwork makes you a bad doctor. If you do shelter or spay/neuter clinic work, you are constantly shamed for all the horrors you must be committing. I am envious of my veterinary brethren who can let this go. I am not one of those people. I try not to take things personally, but sometimes the negativity is overwhelming.

Here’s the thing: none of those people have to sleep on your pillow at night. None of them have a care in the world about the protection of your license. None of them is technically able to “cast the first stone”. There will always be someone practicing better medicine than you. Someone, some where will also be practicing far worse medicine than you.

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I’ve had clients try to shame me for refusing them a prescription without an examination or for refusing to prescribe inappropriate treatment. I explained that I don’t do those things for my mother, so I’m certainly not going to do them for someone I barely know.  Some vets would do both of those things with no problem. If you are one of them, you won’t find any shaming here. I don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

Ultimately, peer pressure isn’t going to be an acceptable excuse if my license comes under scrutiny. I told the University of Florida Vet School class of 2015, “If the explanation for what you are about to do starts with ‘Against my better judgment, I………’ – DON’T DO IT”.

As veterinarians, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to please people and trying to keep people from taking things away from us. I was always taught to act from a position of power. Neither of these stances are powerful. Instead, spend your time trying to be happy and achieve your goals – it’s a whole lot healthier.

My mentor has never once complained to me about shelters offering vaccines, low-cost practices, online pharmacies or new clinics opening down the street. Do you know why? Because she only worries about her practice and how to make it better. She participates in clinical trials (you wouldn’t believe what a benefit these are to vets and clients alike), practices higher and higher standards of care and is always looking for ways to make her clinic stand out as excellent. She doesn’t waste her time trying to figure out how to make other veterinarians look bad. Tearing others down doesn’t make you look better. Standing confidently no matter what everyone else is doing DOES.

We should all strive to be better doctors, but remember that there is no one out there practicing perfect medicine. There are a whole lot of things that get in the way of practicing “ideal medicine”. Vet school is like a self defense class – you can learn how to do it perfectly in theory, but when it happens in real life, things get ugly. I think that being a really terrific doctor hinges not on how you execute the perfect workup of a case but on how you handle the cases where you must act without all the information.  If I could always run every test I wanted, medicine would be easier. If all my patients and clients did what I told them, medicine would be easier. If medicine were easier, everyone would do it.

If you are watching everything your nearby clinics are doing – stop. If you are struggling constantly to satisfy difficult clients – stop. If you are staying up at night worrying how you are going to keep the specialty practice, corporate practice or clinic down the street from stealing your clients – STOP. Instead, try one or more of these:

1. Fire clients that make everyone’s life miserable. Ask your staff – are there clients that make you not want to come to work? Here’s a hint – if their name on the caller ID causes a clinic-wide groan and coin-flipping for who answers the phone, that’s your target. Decide who gives you the biggest headaches, and let them go. Focus on spoiling your good clients rotten. Your staff can’t concentrate on retaining clients with excellent customer service if they are required to be abused.

2. If you aren’t recommending lab work with every annual examination – start. Many clients are happy to do what’s best for their pet, but you have to let them know what’s best. This improves your medicine, increases revenue and protects pets by catching problems early.

3. Recommend that pets with chronic disease (kidney failure, thyroid problems, diabetes, etc) come in a minimum of every three months for a recheck and labs. Call to remind their owners – your software can probably link a reminder to the “Kidney Recheck” exam so you don’t have to remember. Even if they decline the kidney recheck, blood pressure and urine sample and only come in for the labs (they should be weighed as well) – that’s more information than you would have had on that patient otherwise.

4. Get involved with clinical trials. This is time consuming and best for a detail-oriented team. It’s a way to draw patients to your practice and to help people with financial issues get free services without giving them away yourself. In addition, you can be part of getting new medications approved and know what’s ahead for the veterinary profession!

5.  Weigh all of your patients at every visit. If the elderly cat is losing weight at her nail trim, that should trigger your staff to ask if the owner is trying to get the cat to lose weight. If not, they should recommend a workup.

6. You look over records from other veterinarians all the time. As you’re reading – see if there’s anything they have been doing that would be a good idea for your practice. If you hire a relief vet – look over the record of every patient they saw – any habits there that you could adopt? Search for ways to make yourself more successful as a doctor and a business person, and the clinic down the street just won’t matter.

The rule for athletes applies to us as well: You have no competition. Don’t compare yourself to others or try to be better than anyone except the doctor you were yesterday.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.