Jessica Vogelsang DVM

Today I woke up and I felt like a stranger. I was utterly exhausted. When the alarm went off I pulled the covers over my head trying to drown out the sound of my alarm. I wanted the conviction of being able to hit snooze, but I knew it was only prolonging the inevitable.  Nothing in my life had changed.  I got up like I do every day with the intentions of giving the best possible care to my patients. I drank my coffee, painted my face, threw on some scrubs and began my trek into work. I grumbled my “good mornings” to my coworkers and began my day.

It was a day that  began fully booked. As I set down my purse, I saw all phone lines lit up blinking an angry, impatient red. Nothing went right and no case was straightforward. My doctors were tapping their feet waiting for lab results on patients whose owners anxiously waited in the lobby.   None of my patients wanted me to help them today. I had dogs who wanted to rip my face off and cats who were more than willing to scratch me to shreds. I  felt like I was constantly problem solving and trying to ensure that things ran smoothly in the clinic, but despite my best efforts, they didn’t.

In fact as the day went on, every problem magnified the problem before it.  I couldn’t hit a vein to save my life. All of my surgery patients were roller coasters under anesthesia.  I internalized every case that took longer that it should have and beat myself up for every miscommunication. I became frustrated and overwhelmed at inefficiencies and became my own worst enemy. Mentally shut down, I quietly went about my business, internally tearing myself apart for perceived failings and allowing my inner dialogue to consume me to the point I couldn’t pull myself out of my funk.

I went home and replayed how I could’ve made today better or flow more smoothly. I sat on my back porch with a cold beer and the beautiful sound of silence. But as I stared off into my backyard, my wheels were still churning.  At what point did I lose control of the situation and how my day went?  Where did I go wrong and why were my thoughts still at the clinic I had left an hour before? I realized in some way or another work never left me.  

Today was the catalyst of the weeks before it. I had been overextending myself for weeks and I continued to put more on my plate personally and professionally. This had been building to a head for quite some time and I only chose to acknowledge my lack of boundaries when I was at my weakest and most vulnerable.  I had spiraled out.

In our field we so often set extreme standards for ourselves. We take our work home with us. We allow our own feelings and emotions to be put on the back burner. I had completely forgotten about self care and in turn had pushed myself to the breaking point. We all know that self care is crucial to surviving the field. If we don’t take time for ourselves or allow ourselves some room to breathe, this is the end result and quite often it can be much worse. So many times we feel that we can handle it. We are rock stars and won’t allow ourselves to fall victim to burn out. Well, until the beast rears its ugly head and we are just to tired to fight.

Don’t be a hero. Yes, we are all bad ass contributors to this great profession. But when we feel ourselves starting to slip, don’t ignore it. Minimizing it only works for some time. There are so many little things we can do to promote our own self care. We know we don’t always have a lot of time and I really believe that taking small moments when you can will slow down the beast of burn out. Read a book on your lunch break or sing loudly to the radio when you get off. Sit down and talk to your family or friends for a little bit after work. Indulge yourself. Get a coffee, go see a movie, dig around in your garden, go for a walk. Stop pushing yourself for 10 minutes and breathe. Watch the sunset. Look at the stars.

I can’t guarantee that I will learn to know when I am rapidly approaching burnout. But I have learned that ignoring the symptoms of burnout  isn’t going to make them go away. So when I get frazzled, I’m going to take a step back. When I am tired, I am going to go to bed early and not push myself to continue to read veterinary journals until the wee hours of the morning. I’m not going to come home after a busy day and retreat to the back porch to beat myself up. I’m going to come home and sit down with my family. I’m going to ask them how their day was. I’m going to try to not grab fast food and inhale it because I missed my lunch again. I’m going to take baby steps toward self care.

There are going to be insane, chaotic, emotional days in vet med. There will be days that you succeed and look like you know what you are doing. There will be days that everything you touch turns to shit. But here’s the good news. Those days will draw to a close. They will end and tomorrow will be a new chance to succeed. Tomorrow will also be a new opportunity to put yourself first, if only for a few moments. We cannot continue to lose ourselves to this profession.  We cannot let the tension build until we run screaming from the clinic like a crazy person.  We cannot forget that we are people outside of our chosen job. It is just a job folks, and at the end of the day we cannot let a job consume us, regardless of how passionate we are.

These times will pass. As long as we remember to fight the good fight but occasionally fight for ourselves we can beat this. So often we think that our lives equate to doing our best and taking a roll of the dice, purely banking on luck that the odds will be in our favor. Luck can only last so long and eventually we have to take action to secure our success. We have to look at the big picture of self care and not just the immediate in front of us. The immediate is not sustainable.  There will be nights we are tired. But we will wake up and continue to give it everything we have got. We can slay this beast with compassion. Compassion for ourselves.

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.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jade is a licensed technician of 9 years who lives in Port Orchard, Washington. She enjoys emergency and critical cases, dentistry and creating a bond with her clients and team. During her off time she is busy keeping up with her two crazy Basenjis!

When someone discovers that I am a veterinarian, typically the next question they ask is, “What kind of veterinarian are you?” I will admit that I tend to have some fun with answering this question. I tell them, “I’m a veterinarian who works over at the human hospital.”  Usually following a brief moment of pause, they ask my next favorite question: “What does a veterinarian do at a human hospital?”

Before I answer that question, I want to introduce a story of how a change in perspective during veterinary school helped me to become a veterinarian working with physicians at a human hospital. The memory I want to share centers around a particular experience where I began asking a new question that helped me arrive at a much more authentic answer to guide my path as an aspiring veterinarian. It was not until that experience that I had a clear, impressionable preview of a veterinarian’s potential to act beyond the health and well-being of animals.

My story begins on a Saturday afternoon when several of my veterinary classmates and I decided to volunteer at a foster home for children. We brought a few of our pet dogs along to be able to share our passion for animals with each of these children, who ranged in age from four years old to a senior in high school. These children came from homes of abuse and abandonment. My friends and I were bound to bring the power of the human-animal bond into their home in hopes of providing them a reprieve from a hardship in their life we could never fully relate to.

The afternoon was unforgettable. The children were laughing and playing with these dogs they had met just hours before. They were smiling from ear to ear as I let them use my stethoscope. One young girl, who was about ten years old, called me over to signal that she was having trouble hearing the heart beat on our furry friend, Cooper. I knelt down beside her, gently rearranged her ear-pieces that were facing the wrong direction, and then I said calmly, “Alright doctor, let’s test it out to make sure I have a heart beating inside me.” She giggled and lightly pressed it against my chest and one of her lips started to curve up into a shy smile.

Then I said, “I bet you have quite a heart beating inside you, too! Am I right?” I noticed her other lip start to move toward a grin as she pressed the stethoscope to her Mizzou Tiger shirt. Then I said, smiling at her and positioning the chest piece of the stethoscope under the dog’s elbow, “Alrighty, now let’s find Cooper’s heartbeat under all of that fur!” Her face lit up into a beautiful smile when she heard his heartbeat.

I think there is tremendous beauty hidden within experiences when you expect to be changing someone else’s life, when in fact, they are being the agent of change in your life.

I approached that afternoon with the joy of being able to bring these animals to these children so they could celebrate in the unconditional love that animals provide to me each day. What I was not prepared for was how much of a positive impact these children’s interactions with our animals were going to have on me and my aspiration of enhancing the quality of lives of pets and people all over the world.  After this experience, I wanted to be a veterinarian who was not afraid to champion the human-animal bond into areas where its warmth and power had yet to be fully realized.

So, the answer to my favorite question of what a veterinanrian does at a human hospital is, “I see the really bad Charley Horses.” Just kidding. Had to throw a pun in there.

The truth is I am working together with physicians and engineers to develop new medical devices to help solve health problems facing both people and animals. It is an adventure I would never considered if not for a little girl who helped me realize my commitment as a veterinarian is a commitment to people as much as it is our animals. I genuinely hope my story helps move you to know the joy of establishing the human-animal bond into an area or even a person’s heart, where it has never been before.

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.

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About the Author

Bio: Dr. Brandon Thornberry is a recently graduated veterinarian who lives in Columbia, MO. He is completing a fellowship in Biodesign and Innovation through the University of Missouri and practices part-time as an emergency veterinarian in St. Louis, MO. He is an aspiring One-Health innovator and enjoys inspiring others to use their veterinary degree creatively. To connect with Brandon, please visit www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-thornberry-dvm

Sometimes, since I started running, people say to me, “I don’t like to run outside because I think people are watching me and thinking how slow I am, or how I don’t look like a runner.”

This is, of course, ridiculous. Non-runners have no business deciding who looks like a runner and really have no idea how fast you are going. Runners are usually just jealous that you are running and they aren’t. Our ideas can have immense power over us even when they are totally inaccurate.

Veterinarians frequently suffer from something called Impostor Syndrome. This is a phenomenon that generally affects high-achieving individuals who are doing important, quality work, but are fearful of being discovered as a fraud. As a result we have trouble taking credit for our accomplishments or feeling like we deserve to be congratulated on them. We routinely perform invasive and technical surgical procedures, dispense advice that could save a life or end it, and prescribe drugs that could poison as easily as they could cure.

These are decisions we make dozens of times every day and the responsibility we assume when we make them is enormous. We feel that enormity when they go awry and are quick to blame ourselves, but when everything runs smoothly we can’t take any credit. We finish another hectic day of solving problems large and small and then it’s directly on to charts and calls. A nearly bloodless spay ends routinely with a neat row of invisible sutures and we’re off extracting a tooth on another pet without a moment’s thought. Someone sends a thank you note with a plate of cookies after we euthanize a pet and we feel a little guilty reading the note and eating the cookies – after all, we were just doing our job.

Since May 2015 I have been absorbed into the world of People Who Love To Run. I never understood why people ran for fun, until one day I went out and did it, and then kept doing it. Today I cannot imagine a life without the feeling of reaching out and pulling the road underneath me, one meter at a time. I rarely run with headphones now, preferring to fall into the rhythm of breathe in-step-step-breathe out and the soft sound of one small person moving through the atmosphere with no intention other than to disturb it as little as possible on the way from here to there. Running has become my church, my therapist, and my proof that even when the forced achievements of childhood are long behind you, it is OK to set new, seemingly impossible goals and just start aiming straight for them, head up, wings out, no limits.

And yet, even with all of that being absolutely true, it’s so easy to compare myself with other runners and feel like a fraud. My achievements are commonplace. My shortcomings are many. One distance – the first 5K, the first trail race, the first half marathon – is run and the next looms, casting a shadow that swallows the hard-won incredulous victory of a self-described non-athlete slowly realizing what her body has to offer.

The same type-A, driven personality that lies barely concealed beneath so many white coats is also a common trait among runners. We push ourselves so hard, only to feel we’ll never be good enough. What should be our greatest asset – the constant desire to improve, to learn, to show what we can do and strive to be the best we possibly can be – can also be a terrible handicap if we allow it to drift over the line into crippling self-doubt.

The delicate balance lies in the knowledge that we are doing something quite momentous as part of our daily routine. We know in our hearts that surgery is actually quite a big deal. We know we could easily make mistakes in any aspect of our jobs that could compromise the health of our patients in a disastrous way. We know our clients place enormous trust in our abilities, even if they don’t realize how many small miracles we perform – and rely on – every single day. But to sit down every morning and think hard about these things would be a fast track to depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. We need to treat our jobs as if they are No Big Deal or we would find ourselves paralyzed at the start of every day. But this attitude also gives us permission to trivialize what we do, to avoid taking credit for a job well done, and to worry that we aren’t doing enough.

Marathon training is a serious thing. I know this from my first 36 years on the planet when I could not imagine running more than a mile at a time for any reason, and from the exclamations when I say I’m running late because of the 16 miler I had to get in before work. I’m surrounded by experienced runners, many-time marathoners who can trot along much more quickly than I can for much longer, for whom marathons are just a part of life as they know it. But even the most seasoned among them know that one of the most important rules of the marathon is this: whether it’s your first race or your hundredth, you must respect the distance.

Ultimately the marathon can and will derail your best-laid plans. With a sudden heat wave, a missed water station, or a cramp at mile 19, it can take your careful training and turn it on its head. So if you make it to the end, if you cross that finish line on two feet with your arms up and a smile on your face, you’d better take that moment and enjoy the heck out of it. It’s a really big deal. But to get there you have to get up every day and put your shoes on and hit the pavement, one foot in front of the other, even when it hurts, even when it rains, even when it’s so hot you can’t imagine how you will get through to the end. To focus too hard on the Bigness of the task ahead of you would be to fail yourself before you even got out of bed. But the promise of that finish line, glimmering at the end of many weeks of tired feet, quietly pulls you along until you’re moving of your own volition, remembering how much you can do, and how much you love to do it.

We vets need to remember the finish line moment too. How many times have you tackled a disaster case, or a difficult surgery, or a skeptical client, and emerged victorious – only to move on to the next challenge without a moment’s pause to appreciate your own work and absorb it? Next time take a minute after your fat dog spay and hold that virtual medal up. Get a selfie with the parvo puppy you pulled back from the brink – you earned it. You did that. Maybe you pulled three horrible teeth in a cat with resorptive lesions, and got all the roots out and sutured those flaps like a boss. Good on you! Remind yourself later that you rock. The beautiful young dog who grew all his hair back because you diagnosed his allergies would love to be a photo in your “I don’t suck” file.

Celebrate those victories because they may be just a blip on your daily radar, but to those animals you just crossed the only finish line that matters. Don’t let your self-protective instinct, the one that says, “This is just my job – thousands of people do it every day,” trick you into believing you’re not great at what you do. Respect the distance. Know things can go wrong. But celebrate the crap out of it when they don’t.

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.

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About the Author

Dr. Katie Berlin is a small animal general practitioner in Mechanicsburg, PA. She is also a reader, a rider, a runner, a lifter, a teacher, and an art lover. She graduated from Williams College in 2000 with a degree in Art History and worked in art museums before going back to school and earning her DVM from Cornell in 2009. She is an avid supporter of Fear Free practice and the battle against compassion fatigue in the veterinary profession.

Today is the day! You have an interview with the hospital you’ve always wanted to work at. You’ve picked the perfect outfit and you are having a great hair day. An in person interview is your first and only impression to sell yourself to a potential employer.

Here are five ways to screw that up:

1. Being late to the interview 
I do not care what your excuse is, being late to an interview is a bad idea. Have you heard of Google Maps? Everyone knows traffic sucks, so why did you not make a dry run the day before to get a sense of how long it would take you? (I once had an applicant tell me that she refuses to use GPS because it messes with her senses. Huh?) Time is valuable and the other candidate that arrived on time got the job. Be prepared and ALWAYS arrive 10-15 minutes early next time.

2. Smoking or Drinking before the interview 
Do I really need to address this topic? (Apparently I do because I have lost count of the times I have almost fallen over from the smell of stale cigarettes and booze! Especially in an enclosed space such as an exam room.) I do not care how nervous you are but do not, I repeat, do not smoke a cigarette or drink a shot of whiskey right before you walk in to an interview. If I wanted to smell the stench of cigarettes or babysit a drunk, I would have invited you to an  interview at a Vegas casino. I hope that I do not have to explain why you did not receive an invitation for a working interview after this fiasco.

3. Having your cell phone on during the interview 
There is nothing worse while conducting an interview than to have Ginuwine’s Pony start playing during an important discussion about why you would make a great addition to the team. Wait a minute! There is something worse. Answering it!!! What the?!? (I seriously had an applicant answer her phone in the middle of an interview to fight with her boyfriend over how much longer the interview was going to be. Yea, I left the room) Please be an adult and turn your phone on silent. Better yet, put it away. I am sure you can go one hour without being near your phone. I dare you!

4. Cursing during the interview 
You can be a drunken sailor all you want the other 23 hours of the day, but the one hour interview is not the place to enlighten me with your vast vocabulary of curse words. Trust me, the F bomb leaves my mouth on a daily basis, but I know when it is appropriate. The in person interview is not appropriate in case you thought otherwise.

5. Bringing pets or children to the interview 
I can promise you that this happens more than you think. There was not one person in the universe that could care for your child for one hour? Did you really think that the doctor would check out Fluffy’s woo hah while you were interviewing? For the love of professionalism people. Get it together! I understand that things happen at the last minute but please let your potential employer know beforehand that you have to bring your child or reschedule. We are human too and will understand.. As far as Fluffy goes, please leave her woo hah at home.

A job interview is the one chance you will have to make a lasting impression with the hospital of your dreams. Don’t blow it by not using the common sense that I know is in you. Be professional, respectful, and prepared. One mistake is all it takes to find you in a bar smoking, drinking and cursing wondering where it all went wrong.

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.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tosha is a CVT since 2002 and has worked in emergency, internal medicine and neurology. She has a passion for mentoring technicians to create a more positive work environment. When Tosha is not interviewing veterinary hospital staff across the country, you may find her dancing at a country music concert or relaxing at home in her hammock with Prissy, Jagger and Dirty.

 

 

 

 

             

Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and convince you to vote for a particular candidate. From what I can tell, all of our Facebook friends are doing a bangup job of that all on their own. In fact, that’s kind of what I want to talk to you about today, since I decided to skip out on the many debate drinking games going on last night and managed to remain dead sober through the whole hot mess and I need something to do with all this angsty energy.

Besides, you’ve made up your mind already, right? Most of us have. If the debate last night changed your mind, let me know, because you’re a unicorn and reporters would like to speak with you. It’s the way of the world that people have very strong opinions, and they look for facts to support those opinions (both Clinton and Trump have fact checkers running live on their sites, and I guarantee neither candidate is doing anything to fact check where they are wrong.) It’s called confirmation bias, and it defines how we consume media these days.

Facts are less important than trust.

I’ll repeat that: people pay more attention to whether or not they trust you than whether or not you have facts on your side. Facts, these days, are negotiable. It bears repeating because way too many veterinary professionals forget that when we’re talking to clients, and it hurts us in the long run.

I remember the first time I read The Food Babe’s site- I think it had something to do with the ‘yoga mat chemicals in Subway bread’ thing. She is photogenic and charismatic and very, very passionate about her work, which for her millions of fans overcomes the fact that when it comes to science, she is very, very wrong. Because people trust her as a person, they are willing to overlook or completely dismiss the long line of scientists who will tell you in no uncertain terms all the reasons her approach to science is completely incorrect. After all, she means well. If you call her out on being wrong, you are insulting this very nice lady personally, and you therefore are horrible.

It carries over into veterinary medicine too. All of us know the agony of spending an hour discussing evidence based treatment of newly diagnosed diabetics and why diet X is the one we recommend, only to have them call back the next day and say “I read prescription dog food is full of dead cats and you just prescribe it to get free trips, so I’m going to go with this treatment I read about online.”

And how do we react? The exact same way we do when our blustery Uncle Joe shares some horribly biased article about the candidate we can’t bear: with anger, with a long list of our own (much more accurate, of course) fact sources, probably served with a not so small hint of irritation. At the end of a long exchange, you’ve unfriended 5 people and need a stiff shot just to get to bed. It never really works.

When clients react to our recommendations with hesitation and we respond by saying, “No really, that’s wrong and I’m SO RIGHT, SO, SO RIGHT, and here’s why” it becomes about who is more right rather than why they were concerned in the first place, and that’s a problem.

 

We need to earn our clients’ trust long before they encounter facts that contradict our own.

We do that through our interactions with them every day, through sharing posts on social media that demonstrate our interest in our clients, by listening to their concerns and acknowledging that even though their conclusions might be incorrect, they’re out there asking questions because they love their pet, and want to do right by them.

When someone asks me if Milk Bones really cause cancer, I bite my tongue while silently cursing the goofy websites that post things like that because they get lots of clicks, and then sit down to have a discussion about their concern. It’s very important to separate how wrong a purported fact is from the idea that a person is wrong for believing it. Because fear of cancer is legitimate, and I want my clients to know that I will do everything in my power to help minimize its impact on their lives.

We discuss obesity and preventive care and screening lumps and all those things we know make a difference; if they still want to skip a certain dog treat, so be it, but I know I have shared information that I know is truly important. It starts with acknowledging the underlying concern and demonstrating that you see it, and want to help.

Build your relationships and the facts will follow.

Our country is facing a lot of fear and uncertainty, and when we vote, we gravitate towards those who we feel empower us to do something about it. Our clients are the same way. Empower them, don’t bludgeon them. Facts are less important than trust, yes, but when we do it correctly, we can be the source for both. And you can take that to the voting booth.

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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.