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Andy Roark DVM MS

Veterinary Associates: Lose the Guilt

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Veterinary Associates: Lose the Guilt

Originally Published: DVM Newsmagazine, September 1, 2010

 

 

Most of us embrace guilt like it’s in the Veterinarian’s Oath. If we didn’t pursue an internship, we feel guilty. If we pursued advanced education that took us away from spouses and children, we feel guilty. We feel guilty if we work part-time, because we’re not developing as quickly as we should. We feel guilty if we work full-time because our kids are “only young once.” We beat ourselves up relentlessly about angry clients, disappointed clients and clients who look pregnant but aren’t (I still feel bad about that one).

The guilt associated with lost patients is difficult to escape, and maybe it’s good in that it drives us to be better doctors. The rest of the “veterinary guilt” is overly abundant, unnecessary and obstructive to our pursuit of happiness. This guilt is an enormous hurdle to appreciating balance in life.

Here are a few strategies to keep in mind to counter veterinary guilt.

Remember your priorities

Priorities are deeply personal, and you are the only one who can fully assess what is important in your own life. Be strong in your convictions and remember what is meaningful to you in both the short and long term. Don’t be afraid to prioritize family, finances, hobbies and health in addition to your career.

Expect conflict

Conflict doesn’t mean you’re getting it wrong. Sometimes the priorities of others — clients, other doctors, staff members or practice owners — will appear to be in direct conflict with your own.

Sure, life balance would be easy if everyone just accepted your priorities as their own, but that’s not realistic. Neither is the idea that you should accept the priorities of others as indisputable commands. Often, the best we can do is to understand others’ priorities so we can establish mutually beneficial solutions. It’s important to be creative and sincere in working with others while we pursue what is most important to ourselves. If we’ve done that, we shouldn’t feel guilty about the paths we choose, even if others disagree with it.

Carpe diem (seriously!)

I know “seize the day” sounds cliché, but it’s the key to escaping guilt. When you see cases at work, engage them with your complete attention. When you go home, be fully at home in body, mind and spirit. I struggle to live this philosophy as much as anyone, but on my best days, when I get it right, I feel neither guilt nor regret.

We must learn to forgive ourselves for following our own priorities. If we want “life balance,” we have to not only make the hard choices but also embrace the experiences we create, guilt-free.

The Veterinarian’s Prayer

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The Veterinarian’s Prayer

Originally Published: DVM NewsMagazine, April 1, 2012

Click here or above to read the complete Veterinarian’s Prayer article.

 

 

The Veterinarian’s Prayer

As the holiday season approaches, let all of us veterinarians bow our heads together to ask for guidance in the coming year.

 

Dear Lord,

Guide Me in Medicine

Please let me find the tiny, dehydrated vein of the ancient kitty when I am asked to perform euthanasia under the emotional eye of her owner. I ask for this first, Lord, because it is my single most common reason for prayer, so let’s start there.

 

Lord, help me be a good doctor. Not even a great doctor like House, MD, but at least a doctor who will not space out and miss the glaringly obvious stuff that every veterinarian should know. Lord, let no other doctor look at one of my medical records, shake her head, and think, “what an idiot.”

 

If I do make a mistake, please let the lesson find its way firmly into my memory and not onto Google reviews or Angie’s List.

 

Grant Me Patience and Understanding

Lord, grant me a future that includes someday not having to work on weekends. And until that day, I beg you for a few Saturday shifts that are not completely insane.

 

When the anal glands express erratically, may their contents find my coat and not my face or hair.

 

It is not lost on me, O Lord, that the truly wonderful pets seem to have a significantly greater chance of getting an incurable illness at a young age. If these pets have memorable names (i.e., Professor Snacks, Captain America, Chipper Donut, Jabba Bear, etc.), live with children, and have delightful owners, their long-term survival rates are even worse. While I do not seek to understand your reasoning for this, and I am grateful for those pets that seem to be too bad to die, I would really appreciate it if more of the great ones could live nice, long lives.

 

Give me self-control

Bestow upon me the strength to eat heartily from the holiday veggie trays that clients send, and to merely sample the brownies. And when my strength fails (as it will), please guide me to be more reasonable in my goals and aim at least not to eat the entire batch before the technicians know the baked goods have arrived.

 

Make Smooth My Dealings with Staff

Lord, make me the kind of vet other people enjoy working with. Please let the technicians and receptionists like me for the right reasons, and if one or two of them decide not to like me, let that be for the right reasons too.

 

Also: Might I request to be scheduled to work when the staff training meetings involve free lunch, and off when they do not? Speaking of schedules, please smite the technician who calls me at home early Saturday morning when it is not really, absolutely, without a doubt, critically necessary. Smite him good.

 

Give Me Wisdom in Handling Clients

I thank you, Lord, for all the wonderful clients you send into my life each day. When it comes to those few who are less wonderful: help me to recognize the cases that I should refer away immediately. In extreme cases, feel free to strike me with an illness so I am not in the building when the true nightmare cases come in.  Lord, if I were able to choose between getting pneumonia or getting sued, I’d take the former.

 

When I call the mean owners to check in on their pets, let my call go to voicemail. Likewise, please do not let the mentally unbalanced breeders find out where I live. I don’t want to have to choose between moving and changing professions.

 

Finally, Lord, give me the wisdom not to ask any pet owner when she is due unless I am absolutely, 100% certain that she is pregnant.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

Manage Your Social Media in 1 Hour a Week

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Manage Your Social Media in 1 Hour a Week

Originally Published: DVM NewsMagazine, March 1, 2012

 

My wife was out of town recently and left me with our 4-year-old daughter. Friends of mine, both veterinarians, decided to spare my child another hot dog dinner and invited us over for the evening. As soon as my daughter was engrossed in her meal, talk turned to Mike’s fledgling mobile practice.

“How are you using social media in your marketing?” I asked.

“As little as possible,” he replied. .

I put down my fork. As a business consultant and lover of all things social, I was at a complete loss. He might as well have told me he had started examining pets in the nude.

“That stuff is a major time suck,” he explained. “With everything I have to do at work, I don’t have the extra time. Besides, if I come home late and then get right on Facebook, my wife will kill me.”

There is no doubt that people today are looking online for their veterinarians and other service and care providers. (If the Yellow Pages aren’t completely dead, they’re on their last legs.) Your clients are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. If you want them to see you, you need to have a presence in these social networks.

That being said, my friend has a point about the need to expend marketing time and resources wisely. (I agreed that being killed by his wife was not the desired outcome.) With that in mind, here is a six-step plan for maintaining a useful social media presence by devoting just one hour per week. This is in no way a full social media marketing strategy, but it will help your practice get out there and connect with clients in a meaningful and manageable way. Let’s get started.

1. Set reasonable goals and expectations

Just like with a workout routine, you can’t expect to put in minimal time and get herculean results. However, focusing your efforts in an efficient, meaningful way can give you something to be proud of over the long term. You shouldn’t expect to get thousands of fans using this approach, but rather to communicate with—and stay in the minds of—people who may actually bring their pets to you for care. You’re going for quality in your connections, not quantity.

2. Remember your brand

Yes, the photo of the cat smoking a cigarette you saw on the Internet may have been hilarious, but is that the picture you want associated with your clinic? Every post or tweet you put out should fit the brand image you want to build in people’s minds. If in doubt, err on the side of caution and come across as caring and professional.

3. Pick a platform

All the large social networks out there do things slightly differently and have some advantages and drawbacks. Your goal is not to become omnipresent by using them all, but to find a service that you’re comfortable with and that your clients use. It’s better to have a single, well-run presence than a half-dozen neglected and disorganized efforts that all make you look bad.

For most practices, I recommend a Facebook business page. The other social media sites are great, but Facebook is easy to learn. It’s also the largest network by far, and the number of posts you need to stay visible is manageable. Facebook’s recommendation system also helps put your page in front of people who live in your geographic area, and that’s a big plus.

4. Find your content

No one wants to subscribe to see you pitching your sales and services 24/7. They want to subscribe to you because you share information that’s interesting, educational, helpful, funny and engaging. You should give them what they want (with a moderate dose of information about your practice, of course).

One easy way to do this is to let other people create the content and deliver it to you so that you can share the best of it with your own clients. Email newsletters are a wonderful way to get articles, blog posts and videos delivered right to your inbox. Some of the best media outlets you can subscribe to are from the AVMA, http://dvm360.com and ASPCA Poison Control. You can collect these newsletters in a folder in your email program. When you need content for your social media outlet, voila!

Additionally, developing a list of websites with great information for clients—such as http://dvm360.com and http://veterinarypartner.com—allow you to find links quickly to specific information you want your clients to have.

5. Use a social media calendar and a scheduler

Now that you have clear goals, your brand on your mind (and your mind on your brand), and helpful, funny, interesting, educational and engaging content that you’re ready to share, it’s time to take action.

First, schedule one hour per week as social media time. Then create a plan for what content you want to put out over the next seven days. Use a web-based program to schedule posts automatically at designated times.

The social media management company Virtue released a study of Facebook usage between 2007 and the end of 2010 that indicated the greatest activity on the site was on weekdays at 3 p.m. EST, followed by 11 a.m. EST, and 8 p.m. EST. Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST was consistently the busiest time in the week, while Sunday was the slowest day. Keep these times in mind when deciding how best to schedule your posts.

My favorite scheduler is Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com). Users can write their posts, attach files or links, and then set the date and time for the information to appear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s free to use, and once you decide how often you want to put out information, you can set your entire week in a single sitting.

6. Monitor what’s happening.

Once your social media initiative is up and rolling, you can’t take your hands totally off the wheel. You must be responsive when clients communicate through your social media channel. Have notifications about client comments sent to your clinic via a regularly checked email address. Figure out who will address these comments.

When clients reach out in this way, don’t panic. You don’t have to respond immediately like you would if they showed up in person. Twenty-four hours (48 on a weekend) is a good response time and won’t leave clients feeling ignored.

Like global warming and Justin Bieber, social media is an unstoppable force. It’s undeniably changing and improving the way we communicate with pet owners. Even if you have the most cutting-edge medical practice, you run the risk of seeming outdated without a presence in social media. So carve out an hour a week to log in and have fun with it. Then get back to the work of being a vet.

 

 

Dr. Andy Roark practices in ljamsville, Md. He is the founder/managing director of a veterinary consulting firm Tall Oaks Enterprises, LLC. Follow him on Facebook or @DrAndyRoark
on Twitter.

5 Tips for New Year’s Resolutions That Work

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5 Tips for New Year’s Resolutions That Work

Originally Published: DVM NewsMagazine, January 1, 2012

 

Anyone who goes to the gym regularly has seen the power of the average New Year’s resolution. Starting Jan. 1, the number of people using the equipment triples and the number of people posing in front of the mirrors quintuples. Suddenly, the American indolent are determined to become American Gladiators. But by the first week of March, the treadmills are still once again. Thus is the power of most resolutions. They drive large numbers to commit, flail wildly in their chosen areas of interest, then slink away in disgrace as their resolve fades before the winter does. Sound familiar?

As veterinarians, technicians, practice managers and receptionists, we are not a population of slackers. If anything, we’re known for going above and beyond, often giving more of ourselves to others than we have time for. If our resolutions aren’t taking hold, it’s not due to laziness. It’s probably because we’re so busy doing the hard work of, well, work, that it’s going to take more than a set of vague resolutions to break through the demands of everyday practice and help us forge new habits.

Let’s not let our good intentions slip away this year. Here, I’ve taken five common goals and turned them into resolutions that are less likely to be abandoned and more likely to bring you real success. Happy New Year!

1 Resolution: I will improve my ultrasound skills.

Better resolution: I will take a two-day ultrasound course this year and begin regularly charging clients for diagnostics I do using the machine.

Lesson: Don’t fall into the trap of setting lowball goals. That first resolution might as well read, “I will embrace my ability to use the ultrasound to consistently find the bladder. I will learn to take and print pictures of bladders and then discuss bladder health at length with clients.” Goals like this are similar to skiing exclusively on the kiddie slopes. Sure, you won’t fall down, but you also won’t get any better. Get specific. Set goals that push you to grow and give you a distinct sense of accomplishment when complete.

2 Resolution: I will get more clients.

Better resolution: I will contact every middle school, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troop and church in town to ask if I can visit and talk about pet health. I will also put one of the technicians in a giant dog costume beside the road every Saturday until they rebel.

Lesson: Remember to include the “how” when setting a lofty goal like “get more clients.” Otherwise, you’re destined to expend a lot of unfocused energy.

3 Resolution: I will do a better job talking to clients about dental health.

Better resolution: I will give out at least 10 client handouts on dental health per week, and keep track of how many I have given. I will also increase the number of dental cleanings I do per month by 10 percent.

Lesson: As the old saying goes, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The same is true for resolutions. If a resolution is a good one, it should come with metrics that let you quantify your progress at any given moment and assess exactly where you are in relation to the resolution. Setting a measurable goal can also demystify the goal itself—it may not seem so lofty and unattainable when boiled down to a simple number of steps.

4 Resolution: I will spend more time talking to the technicians about medical issues of their choice.

Better resolution: I will e-mail the practice manager, the head technician, and the practice owner today to tell them that I plan to spend 30 minutes per week talking to the technicians about medical issues of their choice.

Lesson: Resolutions you keep to yourself are easier to abandon. A friend of mine took pictures of herself in a bathing suit and posted them on Facebook the day that she started the P90X workout routine. I remember seeing them and thinking, “Wow, she’s serious about this.” I expect that once she posted those photos, she was going to go the full 90 days or die trying. Sure enough, 90 days later she posted new photos, and she looked amazing. That’s the power of public commitment.

5 Resolution: I will shadow local veterinary specialists to improve my skills.

Better resolution: To improve my skills, I will shadow a local veterinary specialist before Feb. 15, a second one before May 1, a third one before Sept. 1, and a fourth one before the end of 2012.

Lesson: I have been telling my wife that I will clean my side of the bedroom since we got married in 2003. And I will … eventually. Deadlines—even if they’re self imposed—force action and keep us on track. Put them on your calendar.

Finally, write down your list of resolutions and post them somewhere visible. (Do you know what resolutions are if they’re not written down? Daydreams.) Celebrate your goals and look forward to achieving them incrementally each week and month. If looking at your list leaves you feeling overwhelmed or defeated on Day one, consider trimming to a set of goals you can make happen. I find five resolutions to be very manageable. Your five may be different from my five. You may have four or six. The point is, if you’ve made resolutions that are specific, attainable, measurable, and to which you can be held accountable, you’ll be well on your way as soon as you post that list.

This is your opportunity to make 2012 your best year ever. Good luck!

6 Ways to Fight the Veterinary Competition — Without Fighting

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6 Ways to Fight the Veterinary Competition — Without Fighting

Originally Published: Veterinary Economics, November 1, 2011

They did what?” I sputtered. The practice owner I was talking with on the phone was a longtime friend. He lowered his voice and explained, “They bought reviews on Google.”

We were discussing the megapractice down the road. This practice had been amassing negative online client reviews for months—at the same time that my friend’s clients were posting glowing reviews of his small startup clinic.

But suddenly, the megapractice had garnered 30 five-star reviews in a matter of weeks, all from “clients” who had all—coincidentally?—given five-star reviews to a slew of other unrelated businesses across the United States. Either these reviewers were traveling cross-country together, reviewing the same random businesses, or the competition was buying their praise. Unbelievable.

Now, a little friendly competition can be healthy. It can motivate you to improve both your medicine and your business practices. Plus, the presence of others in your business space pushes you to create better value for clients and patients and keeps you from resting on your laurels.

However, the fear of competition stealing clients can also make for a stressful situation—especially when your rivals play dirty. In my years as a veterinarian—working at a fledgling startup practice, a megapractice, and now at a three-doctor clinic in an area where new practices are constantly opening—I’ve dealt with many different competitors. I’ve led strategic planning sessions for veterinary organizations, clinics, and corporations, and dealing with veterinary competition is one of the most frequently discussed topics.

In facilitating these discussions, as well as leading veterinary teams on the ground, I’ve discovered some excellent tactics for addressing rivals. It’s time for the gloves to come off so you can focus your energy on tackling what’s most important: your practice. Here are six tips for handling interclinic aggression without stooping to your competitor’s level.

1. Don’t take the offensive. Most of us learned this lesson on the playground: Punching back can get you into worse trouble—and sometimes leave you with a broken hand. Even if you’re bigger, stronger, and absolutely in the right, the odds of being damaged by your own aggression are high. Don’t risk your reputation or your business by lobbing aggressive initiatives at competitors. They’ll usually backfire. Strategies to avoid include: direct price and service comparisons; disparaging comments about your competitor’s medicine, morals, location, or business practices; and observations about your competitor’s bad personal hygiene or holiday decorations. (Yes, I’ve heard these before.)

None of these things will make your practice look good. In fact, they’ll do the opposite—and make your clients start to question your integrity.

2. Focus on personal performance.

Stop aiming at your competitors and point your focus inward. Win the battle on your home turf by shoring up your strengths and ensuring that your veterinary team is performing at its best. Pull together your personal advisors, discuss what the competition is doing, and build a strategic plan for what you’ll do to rise above the pressure. Polish your fundamental service model to make sure you’re providing a solid client experience and avoiding common practice mistakes such as missing charges, neglecting your reminder system, and failing to schedule recheck appointments or follow up with clients.

Are you taking your clients for granted? Discounting your services into oblivion? Dropping the ball on preventive care? If the answer is yes (or even maybe), then conquer those issues first. Those are all things you can change at your practice.

3. Start innovating. There’s nothing wrong with adapting ideas and techniques that are succeeding in other clinics and businesses. Once you’ve worked internally to raise your own standards, look externally and consider what other businesses do to better serve clients and distinguish their brand. Read widely, talk to everyone you can, and expand your thinking to find and modify ideas that will help you grow and evolve. Innovation, when applied to a fundamentally sound business, can radically change the competitive landscape.

I have seen clinics pursue successful innovations such as wellness plans, social media initiatives, community outreach events, and niche marketing plans. I was recently involved with a small business that gained a foothold in its community through regular talks at the local gay pride center. The business is currently growing by replicating these talks for local church groups. This is an innovative marketing approach that is working well because competitors aren’t doing it, thus the opportunities are plentiful. The take-home message here is that great ideas and opportunities are everywhere. Don’t be afraid to harvest them.

Once you have a plan for innovation, don’t go all in just yet. Present the idea to some of your best clients and people you respect both inside and outside the veterinary industry. Incorporate their feedback into your master plan and begin the program one step at a time. That way you can gauge success—and prevent unmanageable losses if the idea doesn’t work out. Set up and monitor performance metrics carefully. Remember: Not every initiative will work out, so don’t get too emotionally attached to any one idea, and don’t be afraid to abandon plans that aren’t delivering results.

4. Honor your values. As my father and mentor used to say, “In the end, all you’ve got is your reputation.” It’s easy to let fear, frustration, and uncertainty push you to make decisions you otherwise wouldn’t make. But what does your long-term picture look like if you become known for tactics such as buying positive reviews, slandering other clinics while hiding behind online anonymity, upselling beyond what patients need, or never referring cases to specialists regardless of the situation? Think about your actions and image from the perspective of your clients, most of whom know nothing about your competitors or perceived business battles.

If you take a hard look and find you don’t like your practice’s image, then regroup and start fresh. You want to succeed, but you also want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning with a clean conscience.

5. Improve your closing techniques. While client education is of great importance, your ability to get your veterinary clients to commit to and pay for services is what will ultimately dictate success. When clients check out, ask them if they would like to book their next appointment. (Yes, even if it’s a year in advance. Remember, your dentist does it.) Ask price shoppers if they would like to schedule the service they’re calling about. And encourage doctors to make firm recommendations.

Note: These are not recommendations that start with the words, “You might” or “You could.” Firm recommendations start with phrases like, “I recommend” and “I suggest.” Finally, empower technicians to follow up with clients after the exam to determine which products they want to take home. Brushing up on your closing techniques will help increase your practice’s bottom line.

6. Don’t take client behavior personally. Clients will leave your practice. This is a business reality. Don’t let it damage your confidence or, worse, push you into a panic. It may feel like two clients leaving in a week is a mass exodus—especially if they’re going to the same competitor. It’s not. It’s a sign that your competition is doing something that works, and you need to know what that something is. It’s a time for strategy, not emotion. Your veterinary clients will usually act in their own perceived best interest. Understand that inclination and strive to make your clinic the obvious choice for self-interested clients in the future.

Six weeks have passed since I talked to my friend about the megapractice’s dirty tricks, and 18 more five-star reviews have been posted. I asked whether his business had shown signs of suffering as a result. “No,” he said. “The last two months have been the best we’ve had so far.”

What was going on? Well, for one, my friend had hired a technician away from the competing practice. But even more important, he stopped looking at the online reviews. “They’re just a distraction,” he said. “We’re doing great things, so getting upset about the competition just doesn’t make sense.”

You can’t control your competitors. What you can control is your own practice: its strategy, its relationships, its culture. Letting go of the urge to engage in direct conflict frees up your energy so you can direct your best efforts toward your own veterinary practice. It’s like Sun Tzu says in The Art of War: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

 

Technicians, Take Action!

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Technicians, Take Action!

Originally Published: Exceptional Veterinary Team, October 31, 2011

One of the most common pitfalls for good technicians on their way to greatness is waiting to be told what steps to take. Want to boost your team to the next level? Use what you know to be proactive.

I’ll never forget a case from a few years ago: a client burst through the front door, carrying his dog in his arms, his shirt covered in blood. The dog had been hit by a car about 15 minutes earlier and was well on his way into shock. I called for catheters, fluid bags, pain medicines, and diagnostics, and the technicians on my team scrambled to every order. Thankfully, they had seen plenty of blood before. They worked hard and moved fast. When I said jump, they did it. In the end, the patient received very good care.

At the end of that long day, I kicked back with a fellow doctor who’d been in the clinic and witnessed the whole thing. I asked him how he thought my team and I had performed. (I have to confess, I asked because I thought for sure I’d get a high-five. I thought we’d done great. I was also going through a phase where, if I had a beer in my hand, I had an uncontrollable desire to high-five people). Alas, there would be no celebrating. My friend gently pointed out that although my team and I had worked well together, we could have done a lot better… and gone a lot faster. In fact, he said, “you guys might have a leadership problem.”

From Good to Exceptional
I was floored. A leadership problem?! I thought we were rock stars. I tried to look unaffected, but probably failed. “What makes you say that?” I asked. He said, “Your techs knew what to do. Why did they wait for you to tell them?”

I thought long and hard about what had happened and what he said. The next day, I gathered my technicians for a conversation. These technicians (like many I have worked with since) were bright, hard working, and excellent communicators. They had all of the tools to be game-changers for critical and routine cases alike. In many ways, they were ideal teammates. But the other doctor was right. We weren’t working together as well as we could.

I asked the group: “How do you think that hit-by-car emergency went?” We discussed all the things that we did well. They admired my composure under pressure. I applauded their medical knowledge, tireless energy, and compassion. Then we talked about what we could have done better. Were our emergency training sessions comparable to the real thing? Did they need me to list the equipment that was required, or could they have gathered it without my instruction? Did I ever make them feel like my input was needed before they should take action? Together, we stood on the edge of exceptional teamwork, but we weren’t quite there.

Frankly, we’d fallen into a rhythm that wasn’t the most productive. These technicians had the knowledge and experience to understand what was happening and to recognize what our immediate goals were. They didn’t need to wait for me to tell them that I’d need catheters, fluids, ECG leads, blood pressure cuffs, etc. They knew what was required, and I knew they knew. Their belief that they had to wait for me, and my reinforcement of this belief, were holding us back. I apologized for my role in developing those habits. I knew what these techs were capable of, and I’d let them fall into a routine of supporting me as no more than well-educated gophers.

To go from a good team to an exceptional team, we needed to function as partners. While I was the leader of the team, everyone had the opportunity to demonstrate leadership within his or her role.

The Value of Independence
The ability to work independently and to anticipate what steps are required to provide optimal care brings not only critical value in emergency situations, but an enormous benefit every day. By the time I approach a patient in a wellness visit, the technicians who have mastered this skill are well ahead of me in our protocols. They have the necessary vaccines out and ready to go. If they are unsure about certain vaccines, then they still have everything together, so they can move quickly once we have conferred and reached a decision. Blood is drawn for heartworm tests, and fecal cups are filled and labeled. If a patient is to be hospitalized, the truly exceptional technicians have started filling out the treatment order sheets, and they have gathered the clippers, tape, catheters, and whatever else we may need to start ongoing care.

I once discussed this issue with a technician who questioned my logic. It didn’t take long to gather up whatever we needed, she argued, and she could never be 100% certain of what I’d need or want her to do. First, I asked whether there was anything wrong with grabbing supplies we might not ultimately use. (We decided there was not). Then I asked how much time she thought it would save us if she had everything together and ready to go for our first appointment. I also asked how many cases she thought we saw in a month. We did some quick math and multiplied a minute or two per appointment by roughly 250 appointments per month. The value of working proactively quickly added up.

Outstanding Teams
Again and again I see hard-working technicians with the hunger to gain a stronger medical education. That work ethic and desire are both important. But it’s the ability to combine them and to take the lead on the technical side of the medical process that makes technicians and assistants truly stand out. Want to be a stellar technician or an irreplaceable veterinary assistant? Whether you have 10 days or 10 years of experience, try taking a step forward with proactive leadership. Anticipate what your patient will require and do your best to have it ready to go. As you gain knowledge and practice, your ability to anticipate will grow—as will your value to your team, your practice, and your patient.