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Perspective

This Article is NOT About Technicians

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It’s the end of National Veterinary Technician Week. After six days of (hopefully) a huge celebration of these amazing folks, I thought the veterinarians might be ready for something absolutely non-technician-celebrating to read. Well, I’ve totally got you covered. I’m not even going to mention technicians starting now. Here goes:

Over the last 15 years or so, I’ve worked with literally thousands of veterinarians that want to be better doctors, leaders and managers of people. Their reasons for wanting to improve are as diverse as they are, but they all have one thing in common: they want to make a bigger impact.

For anyone who reads my writing regularly, you know I have a lot to say about how veterinarians are trained. One of my favorite axes to grind is the idea that, while we generally receive very solid medical training in our vet schools, we are not well trained in how best to impact pet healthcare beyond our ability to lay our hands on patients. 

I do think it’s fair to say that you have to know how to fix problems before you can lead others, so I don’t mean this as a critique of what schools are doing. Our veterinary schools are packing a TON into 4 years, and most new graduates have a greater level of clinical skills than they think they do upon arrival in the clinic. I do however see a stark divergence in the ability of doctors to have an impact on the patients, clients and communities they serve based on how they utilize their training.

It turns out there are two kinds of veterinarians in this world. There are those who look at an over-packed appointment schedule and think “How do I treat all these pets?” and there are those who look at the same schedule and think “How do I get all these pets treated?” The difference in these two thoughts may not seem large, but in my experience it is a chasm dividing vets who have a fairly fixed capacity for impacting the world around them, and those who do not.

Doctors who fixate on using their training to administer care themselves will always find a ceiling on how much impact they can have in a day. Those who instead seek to leverage the passions, skills and desires of others can theoretically scale infinitely in their ability to do good. This is a belief I hold strongly, and I often share it with both veterinarians who are feeling overwhelmed and with veterinarians who want to make a bigger difference than they ever could with their own two hands.

It’s time for veterinarians to look at our training differently. Yes, our ability to do technical clinical work is important and always will be. However, most of us will not be able to keep up with the demands that the public places on us (or that our internal drives place on ourselves) unless we adopt a team-focused mindset.

For veterinarians who want to have a greater impact, it’s time to look around and recognize the value of… other people in the veterinary clinic who are willing and able to help you have a greater impact. It’s time to truly appreciate… um… folks who have been trained to do a lot of stuff, and to help them help you. It’s time to embrace being part of something bigger than ourselves, while still keeping our pride and sense of satisfaction for the work that we do. 

We can start today. All we have to do is decide to trust, train, support, encourage and appreciate.. er.. some group of freaking awesome people who we share the clinic with and who rhyme with schmeck-schnishans.

When Vet Techs Consider Leaving the Field

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Dave Cowan and Jeff Backus, Emergency & Critical Care Veterinary Technician Specialists and the hosts of the Vet Tech Cafe podcast, join Dr. Andy Roark to talk about when veterinary technicians consider leaving vet medicine.

Both Dave and Jeff were considering walking away from vet medicine when they met and decided to start their own podcast. Since then, they’ve learned lessons and gained insight on how to keep technicians engaged with vet medicine (and also when it’s just better to go ahead and leave).

Let’s get into it!

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS


Vet Tech Cafe Podcast Homepage

Dr. Andy Roark on Vet Tech Cafe

Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/

Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/

Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop

All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Dave Cowan BA, CVT, VTS(ECC) has been in the veterinary field for over 25 years.  He has worked for an educational farm, the Animal Rescue League, general practice and emergency/specialty practices  In 2013, Dave passed the Academy of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Technician (AVECCT) exam and became a Veterinary Technician Specialist (VTS) in Emergency and Critical Care.  He moved to North Carolina in 2016 and has spent time as a technician supervisor, an education and training coordinator, and was lead instructor for a Veterinary Technician Program. In 2019, Dave co-founded the Vet Tech Cafe Podcast with Jeff Backus.  The podcast tackles difficult issues that veterinary technicians face as well as highlighting some of the many career opportunities available to technicians. Dave joined Action Vet Tech Services in 2020 and now works relief shifts at various practices both ER/referral and GP while also providing CE and training opportunities 

Dave has served on the New Hampshire Veterinary Technician board as the head of the credentials committee.  He has been the chairperson of the AVECCTN credentials committee and is now one of the Members at Large on the AVECCTN Board.  Dave lives in Hillsborough NC on a farm with his partner Robyn and her daughter Ruby. They have many animals to care for including goats, horses, chickens, and a donkey to go along with 2 dogs, and 2 cats., I have a one year old daughter.

Jeff Backus started as a veterinary assistant in general practice in 1995 and began working in ECC in 2004. He became an RVT in 2009 and VTS(ECC) in 2013. Jeff also taught veterinary technician education for 7 years. He has been on the Board of Directors for the California RVT Association for 8 years, serving as President position from 2020-2022, and is now past President. After 4 years in academia at Tufts University, he relocated back to Southern California with his wife and began working for the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. He is also a frequent lecturer and speaker with a focus on toxicology. He co-founded the Vet Tech Café podcast with Dave Cowan in 2019, talking about issues that face the veterinary technician profession with leaders in the field, and all of the amazing opportunities of the veterinary technician profession.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast, I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got two friends in today, Dave Cowan and Jeff Backus, they are the host of the Vet Tech Cafe Podcast, we talk about that a little bit getting started. And we come in and I started to talk to them, I want to talk to them about lessons learned from their years of interviewing mostly veterinary technicians and we immediately found the path that I was really interested in, which was when they talked about when they met each other and were both basically burned out and thinking about leaving that medicine. And I said, “man, is that common, do I hear that from technicians, including boarded technicians like they are, I just hear this a lot of, I reached this point and I was thinking about leaving the profession, I was ready to get out.”
And so we stopped there and just started to unpack the lessons they have learned about when we reached the point of thinking about leaving the profession. And so we get into that, we talk about headspace, we talk about all the people that they’ve interviewed, and what lessons they’ve learned, and what keeps them engaged and things like that. But it is really an interesting conversation, it’s a lot about technicians specifically, but it’s also a lot just about burnout, it’s about the stresses of our profession, and it’s about the idea that just because you have done something, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it forever. Just because you’ve been in that medicine for 10 years, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to continue practicing as you did for the rest of your career. I think a lot of times we put that weight on ourself, but it’s not real, we make it in our own minds. So anyway, that’s the episode, that’s what we’re here talking about, so guys, let’s get into this.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark!

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dave Cowan and Jeff Backus, how are you guys?

Dave Cowan:
We’re doing great, how are you doing?

Jeff Backus:
Yeah, doing well.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m doing really well, I’m glad that we could sit down and talk. For those who do not know you, you are both veterinary technicians, you both have veterinary technician specialties in emergency and critical care. And I met you as you two are the host of a podcast called Vet Tech Cafe, and you invited me to be on a year ago and I just had the most lovely time.

Dave Cowan:
Yeah, it was great, we enjoyed talking to you.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It was really good. I felt very honored because it is very rare to have a veterinarian on the podcast-

Dave Cowan:
That’s true.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… As you guys-

Jeff Backus:
That’s true.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… Tend to talk to technicians, so that was quite an honor for me. But I enjoyed the conversation so much, I thought it’s been a year since I came and met with you guys. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about your podcast, I want to talk mostly about the veterinary technician space and culture and things like that.
And I want to talk about that because it was funny when we were here doing the soundcheck, getting ready for the podcast, our producer said, “so you guys you are techs, you work with techs, you also do the podcast, it’s like you guys are putting on the cape and going and doing the thing.” And I thought that was funny, but let me go ahead and just start this out, let’s talk a little bit about Vet Tech Cafe and what it is before we start to get into what it means for technicians. So what was the vision for your podcast when you got started?

Jeff Backus:
Honestly, Dave and I met when we were doing our specialty certification several years ago and we were at Ivex in-

Dave Cowan:
2019.

Jeff Backus:
… Twenty eight-

Dave Cowan:
2019.

Jeff Backus:
… 2019 in DC, we were sharing an Airbnb and we were just hanging out one night after lectures and we were both in the same like, do we want to keep doing this or do we want to get out of med headspace? We were both not in a great spot in veterinary medicine and then we started talking about this podcast, somehow the conversation shifted to that and got us really thinking about all the cool things and cool people we knew that were doing these cool things and that reinvigorated us. And we talked for a couple of hours and then the next day we were like, “so are we doing this?” And now almost four years later, here we are.

Dave Cowan:
And it was more about the fact that we were frustrated, we’re like, “is there something we could do that’s different?” Because all we knew was clinic work, because we worked on the floor for 20 some odd years and we were both frustrated in our jobs and frustrated with where our career was stuck and we said, “there’s got to be something else out there.” And it shifted to a talk about a podcast, I don’t exactly remember how we shifted to that, but we said, “there’s nothing really in the podcast space for technicians, there’s a lot for the field, there’s a lot for veterinarians, but nothing really specifically for us,” and we’re like, “we should probably do that.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
I love that you did it. I think there’s a lot of people out there doing really good stuff at this, specifically the thing I liked about the way you set it up, it’s what I started trying to do with here with the Cone of Shame, was there were people out there I wanted to talk to and give a platform to. And so it wasn’t that you guys set out, or at least not since I became aware of you, it wasn’t that you were like, “we want people to hear us,” it was more like, “we’d like to talk to these other people and learn from them.” And I just think that it’s almost like a service position in that way of trying to shine the light on what others are doing. I think you do that really well, I encourage people to take a look at your podcast and look at the episodes you have.
It’s fascinating to hear you talk about that, about how you met. And so now I get to talk to some of the most successful people in the world in either in our industry and the proportion of highly successful technicians that tell me, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” or that they went through that period, it’s enormous. It is usually after we turn the microphone off or whatever, they’ll be like, “God, I was so burned out two years ago, I was trying to get… Or they’ll be like, “I’m thinking about doing something different,” and it seems to be such a widespread problem of people just getting tired of the technician role and burning out.
I’ve also had people who have come to me and asked the same questions that you were asking each other, which is, “what else is there?” Or say, “I’m in my forties, I’m into my fifties, my body’s not holding up like it used to. I have this background, I have this experience, I may have this advanced training, but I don’t know if I can keep doing that.” Talk to me a little bit, so when I say that, do you think that your position of, do we want to get out of the industry, do you think that that’s common?

Dave Cowan:
Very common.

Jeff Backus:
Yeah, very common. When we started, I was living in New England, my wife had just graduated vet school, was doing a couple of internships in Rhode Island and I was working at Tufts University. And working in academia darn near broke me and I was ready to get out, I was ready to go pour beer to brewery, that was going to be my next step. And we were coming back home to California and we had started this podcast, which frankly for me, I have found so reinvigorating for this career, hearing from people that found their niche and found what they love to do and they’ve carved out a path and a career for themselves.
Because like Dave was just saying, we’re ECC techs, that’s what we’re boarded in and sure you can move around to other ERs or ICUs or maybe even move into different departments in the hospital, but you’re still in the hospital. It was a little bit of a narrow focus, but with all of these guests that we’ve talked to, and we have learned so much about so many things that we didn’t even know existed after 20 some years in the field. So it’s been really, really reinvigorating for my career especially.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Dave Cowan:
You don’t know this, but Jeff and I are both extreme introverts and when we said we’re going to start a podcast, my partner, she’s like, “the guy who doesn’t want to talk to anyone’s going to have a podcast?” I’m like, “yeah, this is different.” And the fact that we can do that and talk to these people and bring their stories to our listeners, that’s amazing because we’ve gotten feedback from a lot of people saying, “I want to try that, I want to do that,” and going down that path of saying, “I’m tired of doing this too, so what else can I do?” So I think a lot of our listeners listen to us because they want to figure out something different to do, which was the whole point of starting the thing, right?

Jeff Backus:
Yeah. And there really is a lot you can do as a veterinary technician, under the umbrella of veterinary medicine, there are a lot of roles and careers inside and outside of the clinic that are out there. I think now in 2023 with remote jobs, there’s more than there’s ever been, but a lot of us just don’t know how to find it or don’t know what those jobs are. And so talking to some of these people that figured it out and are doing it, it’s awesome to listen to, from my perspective.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Taking a step back from the path, which is looking at alternate ways to practice, if someone came to you now in the position that you were in when you started and they were like, “man, I’m thinking about getting out of the profession, just leaving vet med in general, I’m not sure if I want to, but really, that’s where I am.” Based on your experience and then also the hundreds of people that you’ve talked to, what kind of roadmap would you build for somebody like that? Give me a quick action step, give me a treatment plan for someone who’s there.
And again, you don’t exactly know what’s going to work and what’s going to be different, but if they came to you and said, “I need a treatment plan, what are the steps, things like that.” And so let’s start with headspace, is what I like to talk about, it’s just before we get into what would you do, just philosophically, what have you come to believe about when you’re ready to leave? Where would you try to get them in their head to look at the profession or look at the options? Would you be optimistic? Would you tell them, “no, this may be unavoidable?” What would you try to get them to visualize for themselves?

Dave Cowan:
Well, first thing is, do you want to be in this field? That’s my first question, figure out why did you get into this field in the beginning and then find out is that still true? And I’m going to refer back to something you told us when you were on the show, find out what you love to do and find ways to do more of it. If working on the floor is not what you want to do, figure out where you can go from there and figure out what it is that you like doing in this field and figure out ways to do more of it. And the other part is that, is this field isn’t for everyone, so if you’re two, three years in it and you’re burnt out already, maybe this isn’t the field for you. For Jeff and I-

Jeff Backus:
And that’s okay.

Dave Cowan:
… Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. Don’t stay in it if you’re going to be miserable because we’ve got plenty of miserable people in this field that we don’t-

Dr. Andy Roark:
We’ve got enough miserable people.

Dave Cowan:
… Yeah, we’ve got enough miserable people, we don’t need to add to it, and just figure out what you like to do and find ways to do that.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s fascinating to me that you just own it like, “this might not be the place for you.” I think that’s true, I love the candor in just saying that, why do you want to be here, I think that’s good.

Jeff Backus:
And I think on our side of the spectrum too, our schooling, if you go the traditional AVMA route, it’s only two years, yes, there’s some student debt associated with that, but there are so many assistants that come into the field that haven’t gone through the educational path. So I don’t feel like they have the burden of the undergrad and the four years of vet school and the level of debt associated with that. So it’s a little bit easier to exit if so desired.
But I think to Dave’s point is, you work in a clinic for a little while, maybe that becomes stagnant, maybe it doesn’t interest you any longer. Or sometimes people just get promoted to supervisory or managerial roles that they’re not thriving in that they don’t love just because they were the most senior person there and that’s taking away from their love of the job. And so it’s like Dave said, getting back to what drew you to it in the first place, it’s like if you want to be on the floor, just be on the floor and take yourself out of those other roles. Or if you don’t want to be on the floor anymore, then what about being on the floor that you like, and what kind of things can you do with that that are just no longer on the floor anymore?

Dr. Andy Roark:
There’s this narrative that the career path, especially for paraprofessionals, but even for doctors, but definitely for paraprofessionals, the career path is upward into management. And you’re like, “why would that be true necessarily?” The thing that makes you a great practitioner on the floor, that doesn’t prepare you to manage other people in my experience, and you said that this is what you wanted to do.
I think one of the biggest challenges for technicians, and it is also true for doctors, I think both are opening up now, but it used to be, it was a hard development ceiling at the clinic level of, well, you’re a new tech and now you’re an experienced tech, and-

Dave Cowan:
And that’s it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… That’s the end of … yeah, that’s it, and next step, management.

Dave Cowan:
Congratulations, you made it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
You made it, exactly right. So first of all, actually let me pause here and just so say, because you’re both in emergency critical care, do you think emergency critical care is worse as far as people burning out or over a certain period of time they go, “I don’t want to do this?” I’ve always wondered if the lifestyle that’s usually associated with it, if that puts more stresses on people or if you disagree?

Jeff Backus:
I would say I agree, I think each individual facet, each specialty deals with its own things that make it more difficult than others in certain areas. But I will say for emergency and ICU, the off hours, I will say I did overnights exclusively for 15 years and the toll it takes is not worth the $2 an hour shift differential.
But also, I think the level of the cases and the frequent interaction with futile care and just cases that we know are not going to end well and still pouring everything that we’ve got and such a high volume of those cases, I think it takes a little bit more toll. That being said, for internal medicine techs, I imagine the chronicity of some of those cases and just the slow linear progression takes the same kind of toll in a different way on them. And same thing too with general practice, I think it’s much the same, it’s just in a little bit different way.

Dave Cowan:
Yeah, I’ve worked in general practice and I’ve worked in emergency, and when I made that switch to emergency, I looked back at some of my colleagues that were still in general practice and the things that they were complaining about, for a lack of a better term, I’m like, “I don’t even care about that stuff anymore, it’s just a different mindset in emergency.” So like Jeff said, there’s stresses on every department of this field that I think sometimes people go to ER because they like the chaos, they like constantly having stuff to do and constantly be moving and the critical nature of it.
But other people like the, I don’t want to say relaxed, that’s probably not the right term, but the more steady pace or scheduled thing of working in general practice, where Jeff and I enjoy the ones where we have to think about things and use our brains and be active in the treatment of these cases. But I think every department in this field has its own stressors that are pushing people out of the field really.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Coming up on November the 14th with my good friend Dr. Emily Tincher, she’s been on the podcast a number of times, I love having her here, she is such a fun, interesting person who’s a deep thinker. And so anyway, she is doing a webinar called Clinical Empathy: The Exam Room Skill That Can Transform Your Team. I’ve had Emily on the podcast before talking about Clinical Empathy, this is a really good skill building webinar, this is great for your support staff as well as your doctors, but your team leads especially, but your technicians, your assistants, your CSRs, all of this is just is such a great communication content, I think you’re going to really like it. So anyway, that is on November the 14th, it is at 3:00 PM eastern noon Pacific.
And then the last one in the series is on December 13th, it is with Dr. Simon Platt, it is called, Head Cases: A Spectrum of Care Approach to Neurology in General Practice. So if you’re a neurology buff, if you like seizures, not like seizures, if you like knowing about seizures, if you like neurophysical exam tips, tricks and hacks, things like that, this is going to be a great webinar. So again, this is on December 13th, it’s at 1:00 PM Eastern, that’s 10:00 AM Pacific Time. Gang, I would love to see there, the links to all this stuff are in the show notes, go ahead and grab a spot, I’ll see you there. Let’s get back into this episode.
Well, going back to our treatment plan for I’m not sure I want to do this anymore, so we talked a bit about headspace, recognize why you want to be here, I think that’s great remembering your why point. Let’s move into other action steps, so once you come to that place and you are sure you do the reflection, and I talk to a lot of people who say, “I do really love it, I’m just unhappy, Verizon Wireless is not calling out to me, I’m not purpose driven to be a cell phone salesperson, but the benefits are not bad and it’s close to my house and I’m honestly thinking about going there.” So help me start to walk towards understanding what my options are.

Dave Cowan:
Well, as the three of us know, this is a very small field, everybody knows somebody. If there’s something that you want to do, there’s probably somebody you know or somebody that you are in direct contact with that has experience in that department or the field, you just have to talk to people, you have to network. And we talk about this on the podcast a lot, is that when we first started out, social media was not a thing, and now social media is very wide and it’s got its pros and cons. But one of the pros is that we can network with people that we would never have contact with years ago, there’s ways to find those career opportunities just by scrolling through social media.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I think that’s a great point.

Jeff Backus:
And I think too, in some ways in this field, a lot of times we have almost an adversarial relationship with our management team and depending on what that structure is. But I think if you are seriously contemplating leaving your clinic or changing jobs or whatever it is, I think an honest conversation with management and actually involving them is really important because just don’t look at it as just their manager and you’re going to get fired or whatever, but they might actually be a resource to help network like Dave’s talked.
I would hope that that person actually wants to see you succeed, and maybe that’s not always the case, but they might have suggestions for you or this conversation of, “what do you like specifically about being here and your job here? Can we help do more of that and take away some of what you don’t like so that you feel more valued here or you start to enjoy your job more?” And again, I realize maybe that’s just rose colored glasses, but I think at some point, you have to have those conversations with the people that are responsible for the work that you do in your clinic because otherwise, it’s just going to be the same old thing.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I love these points, I think this is excellent. So I started thinking about thinking about this, so I want to start with David’s point, but, boy, 20 years ago, the idea of technicians networking was just dumb. And I would say that to people and they would just look at me like, what are you talking about? I think Jeff’s point of social media coming up is a huge one, it’s been particularly huge for technicians because there are so many groups of technicians online, things like that. None of that stuff used to exist, all the practices were very siloed and the practices would even try to keep the techs away from other techs because you didn’t want them to jump ship and-

Jeff Backus:
You didn’t want them to compare notes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… You didn’t want them to compare notes, you didn’t want them to jump ship and go to the place down the road. And so you’re like, “you know what, I keep my people here and their people can be over there.” That’s an old school mentality that has nicely gone away, but I think social media opened up a lot for that. And there’s been so many technicians like yourself who have said things like, “you should go to CE.” And again, that’s another massive opportunity that just wasn’t there that long ago, there just wasn’t a lot of tech CE and now there’s so many more options, so I really do love that.
To Jeff’s point about talking to management, there’s two pieces to it, the first is, I’m a big believer in Brene Brown’s saying that, “clear as kind.” Which is, if you’re seriously thinking about bailing, if you seriously think, I can’t keep doing this, is it kind to the place that you work to not say anything until you’re totally toast and then just to give them your two weeks notice and be gone? Is it kind to go get another job and being like, “all right, well, I give my two weeks because I’m already set up there.” That’s not kind, kind is saying, “I just want you to know where I’m at and this is what I’m starting to feel and I’m looking for some opportunities to do some different things, try to maybe get to do more of the things that I’m really excited about, or I’m wondering if you guys have ideas for advancement for me or what my career development might look like.”
And savvy leaders, they’ll make something, I’ve done that with my people a number of times as they come and they’re like, “look, this is what I’m looking for,” and I go, “well, I don’t want this person to leave, let’s figure out how to create some opportunities for them to see if we can keep them here.” And then going originally back to the candor of like maybe this isn’t the right place for you, I wrote an article, it’s probably been over a year ago, but it was called Fare Thee Truly Well, and this is from the other side, is from the management leadership side.
But I don’t think a lot of people can do this, but I have met more and more people who said, “I hire these people and I want to train them and I want to grow them, and I do that in the full knowledge that they might outgrow my practice. They might come along and get skills and knowledge and grow until there’s really not much else here for them to do and they’re going to go somewhere else. And rather than resent that, rather than try to not let that happen, I’m just going to accept that that is going to happen, I’m going to continue to grow and develop people because it’s morally right and teaching is what I love to do and I’m going to believe that karma is out there and that good things will come back to me from growing people and even facilitating them going on to the next adventure.”
But I’ve met enough of those people over the years and people who have worked for those people and then gone on that really, when you start thinking about what’s important in life and the type of employer you want to be, I think that there’s a lot to that. But it’s not a mindset that comes naturally to people, people, they generally want to, if they have talented people that work for them, they want to keep those people and of course they do.

Jeff Backus:
And it’s very easy from that managerial perspective to become defensive and take it personally that this person is not happy in their role and they’re not being fulfilled. And so you have to lay down that armor a little bit and just be like, “look, we can do this, but let’s just have a couple of conversations and involve some other people here about this,” because probably that’s not the only person in the clinic that feels that way and it’s not going to be the only person down the road that feels that way and so got to find solutions.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I heard some terminology recently, someone told to me, I can’t remember where it comes from, but basically they were like, “there’s a couple of different types of really high-flyers in a business, there’s your superstars and there’s your rock stars. And your rock stars are people who are good at what they do and they like coming out and playing the song. And your superstars are the ones who, they are going somewhere, meaning that they’re doing new things, they are trying new things and they are soaring. And the superstars are great, they are self-driven, they know where they want to be, they want to grow. But the downside to superstars is they’re probably going to leave, they’re probably going to come and they’re going to leave.”
And I just thought it was really interesting the idea of just owning that to say and there are some people who are not interested in going on, they want to be very good at what they do and they want to remain challenged. And as long as they feel like they are good and they are challenged in their work and they do good jobs, they’re totally fine to punch the clock for 25 years and do it. And it’s not a bad thing, it’s not a knock, but for those people who are superstars and feel like, “I’m really internally driven, I want to keep trying new things, I get bored easily,” that can just be a different environment.
And so it was funny because the point of the article was, you want to have a mixture of rock stars and superstars, is you really don’t want everybody who’s gunning and trying to be a high-flyer like a couple of those people because they push everything forward. But it’s also really good to have people who are happy to be challenged in the way they were, so anyway, I thought that was really interesting.
What are your favorite resources for technicians? So obviously you guys have a podcast, it’s called Vet Tech Cafe, it’s an excellent podcast, as I said, I really like it, I really enjoy it, it is a lot of technician guests and talking to them about their careers and lessons that they learned and things like that. Are there other resources that you like for technicians?

Dave Cowan:
In terms of podcasting or-

Dr. Andy Roark:
No-

Dave Cowan:
… Just in general?

Dr. Andy Roark:
… I was more thinking, well, in terms of our action plan of trying to figure out where you want to go, what you want your career to be like. Just in general, if somebody said, “God, I’m feeling stagnant, not necessarily that I’m looking to go somewhere different or do something different, but I want something that’s going to make me not feel stagnant.”

Dave Cowan:
I would advocate for CE and it used to be a very commonplace thing where everyone had this CE allowance where they could go to conferences, they could go to different CE. And many years ago, one of the stipulations that I had with some of my CE was that if you’re going to go learn something, come back and teach it. And I really enjoyed that and I think that’s probably what got me on my path to enjoying teaching and enjoying doing CE and things like that.
But just going out and networking with other people and getting some continuing education, a lot of times you’ll go there and you may not learn anything new, but the experience of being there, like we have this post-conference invigoration always when we come back we’re like, “I learned this thing, we’re going to do this on our practice,” and we get back and a lot of times the people that we work with are like, “we’re not going to do that.” But if you come back invigorated and you can bring that to management and say, “we learned how to do this one little thing with these types of cases, can we try and incorporate that?” And I feel like people that get stuck and stagnant and burned out and leave is because they’re doing the same thing over and over and over again.
And back to Jeff’s point about finding other things to do in your practice, it’s a little bit more relevant to an ER referral practice because there are different departments. I feel like for me, the reason that I’ve stayed in this field so long is that I’ve done different things, I haven’t been doing the one thing for 25 years, I’ve been doing different things. And I feel like if you go to CE, you’ll learn about something and maybe that inspires you to try a different way or even move to a different department in your hospital to entertain your mind and make you more useful and get you thinking instead of just doing the same thing over and over again.
I feel like that’s one of the things that I would recommend for people, is to educate yourself, there’s a vast amount of knowledge and we are never going to learn all of it in this field and I think sometimes people don’t realize that, that there’s no limit to what we can learn here. And I found that the more that I educated myself, the more that I went to CE, the more invigorated I was to stay in the field.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I love it. Guys, I’m going to put links to the Vet Tech Cafe in the show notes, I’ll put a link to the episode that I did with you guys a year ago, if you want to hear us, flip it around and go the other way, they can check that out. Thank you both so much for being here, guys, thanks for tuning in and listening, take care of yourselves everybody.


And that is the episode, that’s what I got for you guys, I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to Dave and Jeff for coming on, gang, check out their podcast about Tech Cafe, I said I’ll put links into it down in the show notes. If you are enjoying this podcast, one of the nice things you can do is leave me an honest review wherever you get your podcast, it always means the world to me, it’s how people find the show, it’s super important, so like and share the episodes if you enjoy them. Guys, take care of yourselves out there, be well everybody, talk to you soon, bye.

The Correlation Between Struggle, Perception, and Success

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I Have No Idea What to Write

First, I struggled to come up with something to write about today. Then, I struggled with the realization that I was struggling. “Why is this so hard?” I thought. “Surely I should be better at coming up with things to say at this point.”

It’s not easy to write something new every week, or to say things that will be valuable to [at least some of] those who read it. I was lamenting this fact as I walked my dog this morning, and I was honestly beating myself up a bit. At some point, challenges can start to feel like failure and I was reaching that point.

When I got home, I mentioned to my wife, a college professor who is fascinated by how people learn, that I was having a hard time getting anything good on paper. I told her I was feeling a bit stuck and demoralized.

In response, she shared with me that one characteristic that correlates with academic success in students is how they perceive struggles like the one I was facing. Students who believe that struggle is a sign of weakness are less likely to be successful academically than students who believe struggle is part of learning and improvement. The ability to frame struggle as progress (and not as a sign of impending failure) makes a big difference in how we think we are doing. How we think we are doing, interestingly, tends to correlate with where we actually end up. 

As I sat down to write to you today, I had two thoughts. The first was that I’m glad I wrestled to come up with what to say. The struggle was part of the process. Without the frustration, I would not have learned the lesson that I want to share today.

The second thought I had was “I bet I’m not alone.” I suspect that everyone has something with which they are struggling. Whether it’s working up a tough case or juggling family schedules, I think everyone faces challenges pretty much continuously in one way or another. We all toil and feel frustration.

My hope for today is simply to ask the question “How are you looking at the struggle?” Are you seeing the hard work you are putting in as the required path to improvement and ultimate success? Or are you internalizing it as a sign that you are weak, unprepared or failing?

We can choose how we perceive hardships. The middle of success often feels like failure. Maybe the struggles you are facing are not red flags and stop lights. Maybe those struggles are the rocky path you are simply required to climb to reach your goals.

Sometimes It’s Worth The Risk

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A few months ago, I got a text from one of my neighbors. Her husband was traveling and their senior dog had collapsed and wouldn’t eat or move around. I was home when it happened and decided to walk down the street to see what was going on.

When I got to her house, you can imagine what I found. Copper, their beloved 10-ish year old hound mix, was laying sternal on the floor, panting. His gums were pale and his heart rate was elevated. His abdomen felt markedly distended.

I told Copper’s owner that I was worried about a splenic tumor (or some other internal bleeding issue) and that he should get some imaging done ASAP. She took Copper into the vet clinic.

The next day, I got another call. It was as I’d feared: Copper had a splenic tumor and secondary bleeding. His owners were asking for advice about whether or not to take Copper to surgery.

Like most veterinarians, I’ve gotten this question many times in my career, and my answer is always highly context-dependent. I generally talk to pet owners about the chances of the tumor being malignant and having already spread being around 70% versus a 30% chance of it being benign. I tell them what to expect from surgical recovery and talk about the price of the procedure. I also talk about life expectancy in the best case scenario and also in the worst. After all of that, I end with some version of the statement “I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer.”

I hate to say it, but I think I’ve gotten accustomed to people either looking at all of these factors in a senior pet and then deciding not to go to surgery, or deciding that they will go to surgery and then finding out that the mass their pooch developed was malignant and has spread. I am supportive of either decision, but I think I’ve subconsciously come to expect that this will end badly.

I was fully prepared to be supportive of my neighbors’ decision to pass on surgery when they decided they were “going for it.” I don’t know why this caught me off guard. My neighbors are great pet owners and lovely people. Their young kids love Copper, and he has been a faithful companion for years. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Last night I visited my neighbors’ house for a cookout. The husband had recently… (I kid you not)… jumped out of his car while traveling, stopped a car jacking, wrestled the criminal to the ground, and handed him over to the police. He was being honored with a service award and our neighborhood was coming to congratulate him.

Right there in the middle of the cookout was Copper. He was bright, active and energetic. He asked me very politely for a tortilla chip and I absolutely did not give him one (regardless of what witnesses at the event might say). Copper played with the kids, demanded to be petted by anyone sitting down with a free hand, and made lots of friends. He was right back to his energetic old self. It was wonderful.

I have been reflecting on my reaction to Copper since I was there. Over the years, I think I kind of gave up on dogs with splenic masses coming back and having wonderful times after their diagnoses. I had convinced myself that, even though the statistics said these dogs could have benign lesions, most of the cases would turn out poorly, and I did that so I wouldn’t be so sad when people decided not to go to surgery or when the surgeries didn’t go well.

Copper is a reminder to me that sometimes things work out. Sometimes you go to surgery on a senior patient, everything goes splendidly and you get more time with a wonderful four-legged soul. He is a symbol for me that it’s worth hoping and it’s worth trying. 

From now on, when I talk about the decision to go to surgery on a senior patient, I’ll still paint an honest picture of the situation, but I will have to mention Copper and how well he recovered. I’ll have to give that head nod to hope and optimism. I’ll have to remember that sometimes trying is worth the risk.

A Profession in Crisis? Far From It.

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Dr. Eleanor Green, Founding Dean at Lyon College School of Veterinary Medicine, joins the podcast to discuss her recent article on the narrative that veterinary medicine is a profession in crisis.

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

Article: A profession in Crisis? Far From it

Dr. Eleanor Green on LinkedIn

Dr. Andy Roark Resources 

Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Swag

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Eleanor Green holds the Carl B. King deanship of Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. She is a Diplomate of ACVIM and ABVP. She received a BS in Animal Science from the University of Florida and a DVM from Auburn University.

She established a veterinary practice in Mississippi as partner/owner. She became a founding faculty member of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. Her academic appointments have included: equine faculty member at University of Missouri; head of Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences and director of large animal hospital at the University of Tennessee; chair of Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences and Chief of Staff of large animal hospital at the University of Florida. She served as president of three national organizations: American Association of Equine Practitioners, American Board of Veterinary Practitioners, American Association of Veterinary Clinicians.

Her awards include: 2004 Award of Distinction from UF College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 2011 Wilford S. Bailey Distinguished Alumni Award from Auburn, 2012 Women‘s Progress Award for Administration and 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award for Administration at Texas A&M, and induction into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 2013.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark, as I am here with the one and only Dr. Eleanor Green. Eleanor is someone that I have admired my entire career just because she has done so many things and we get into that right at the very beginning and start to lay down what her bio is. Guys, I am a perpetual optimist. I am. I love vet medicine. I am big on the future of vet medicine. I know it’s hard, and you guys have all heard me talk about the challenges of vet medicine. I still love it and I still think it’s great, and I still think it’s sad that oftentimes I feel like we focus on the downsides and not enough on the upsides of what makes it really good. And if you feel that way, this is a great conversation.
So at first we kind of start off talking at a high level, but then Eleanor just starts to kind of unpack her ideas and we get kind of down the rabbit hole a little bit. And she’s so inspiring. We were talking after the podcast was over, and I wish this was on the podcast. So when she was the dean at Texas A&M’s College of Vet Medicine, she asked her incoming students or her students, it was like a sample of 500 vet students. She said, “Raise your hand if you were discouraged from becoming a veterinarian.” And 495 of the 500 students raised their hands. And she asked, “Who discouraged you?” And they said, “Other veterinarians.” And I get it. Again, this should not be a path that you undertake lightly, but in another way, as someone who just loves our profession and what we do, I go, man, I want to spread the positivity. I want to spread the light. I want to change the story a little bit and be more honest about the balance of good and bad, and how darn rewarding this profession can be. So anyway, that’s what we get into in this conversation, guys. I hope you will enjoy it. Let’s get into this episode.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast Dr. Eleanor Green. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Yeah, thank you for having me. This will be fun today.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man, what a treat for me. I have always admired you. You are on the faculty at the University of Florida when I was a vet student there. I have seen your career from afar. You’re a veterinarian, you have been in private practice, you’ve been in academia. You were the dean at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinarian Medicine. You’ve had a consulting career. You are now the founding dean at Lyon College School of Veterinary Medicine, and I got the opportunity to talk with you. What I want to talk to you about was you’re also writing articles, and I saw one of your pieces that just spoke to me immediately and it was titled A Profession in Crisis, I think Not. And I, as a fan of optimism and positivity and a lover of vet medicine, I wanted to talk to you kind of about where your head was in that regard and what inspired you to write the article.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, thank you, Andy. Again, it must be mutual admiration, because I’m so pleased with everything that you’re doing in the profession. It’s always great to see a good University of Florida graduate get out there and affect the practice of veterinary medicine and the whole profession just like you are. So the article, we have all looked around and seen headlines, and these headlines are dominated by descriptions of challenges. In fact, veterinary medicine has been called a profession in crisis. And I am not saying that we shouldn’t look at our challenges, try to make our profession better and tackle each one individually and appropriately. But I think there’s so much sensationalism about the negativity of this profession that I think it’s having an adverse effect on the profession. And that worries me, because I think this is one of the most fulfilling professions that’s out there.
It’s still highly ranked. Veterinarians are looked at more favorably than medical doctors and they’re seen to be more compassionate and understanding and approachable and so many of the things, and they’re seen as contributing to society. And so I think that we really need to take a hard look at that as veterinarians because I think we’re hurting the profession by being so focused in sensationalizing the negativity.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, one of my favorite pieces of advice that I’ve gotten in my life is your life is what you focus on. And so if you walk around looking at the negativity and you just focus on it, that’s what your life is going to be. And again, you can say that without discounting real problems and real struggles that people have, but I think that that’s really important. When you think about education, so you come out of being the dean at Texas A&M, you’re the founding dean at a new school. Talk to me about with the mindset that you hope to instill in vet students, what does that look like and how do you go about trying to set a mentality that says, “Yes, this is challenging, you’re about to do a hard job, but it’s a great job.” How do you put that together?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, I think we certainly need to get to vet students early on, and maybe day one, and I don’t know if you remember this, but at University of Florida, the first day of the freshman year at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, we had a session that was co-sponsored with the Florida Veterinary Medical Association that brought in some veterinarians from different walks of professional life. And we certainly handpicked them to be the ones who are the very enthusiastic lovers of this profession. And we had them talk to the students. And so there was a purpose of that, and one is welcoming them to a wonderful profession, showing them and showcasing some veterinarians who have had unbelievable careers and throughout their profession, they’re still enormously fulfilled in all walks of life. And the other thing was to open their eyes to the many opportunities in veterinary medicine are out there, because so many of us think of veterinary medicine as just taking care of pets.
And that’s enormously important. I don’t want to minimize that at all, but veterinarians can do almost anything. And so I think that we need to make sure that students know that. I think the other thing that we need to let them know is that the education can be taxing because of so much volume, and that we’re here to help them. We’ve got support for them, we’ve got peer support, we’ve got counselors, we’ve got all kinds of ways that if they’re having any struggles, we are there for them. And there are actually a lot of programs that are going on now beyond veterinary school that can provide a lot of support for veterinarians who are struggling.

Dr. Andy Roark:
What do you see as the main pitfalls as trying to drag our mentality out of the profession and crisis and start to look at things as, I don’t know, to look at things in a more balanced way? What sort of holds people back?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, let me just tell you what veterinarians have been telling me. I polled a bunch of veterinarians and have been doing this for quite some time. This is not official. I haven’t sent out a form. I’ve just talked to people and I’ve asked them several questions. I’ve said, what do you like most about this profession? What do you like the least? And if you could change one thing, what would it be? And I also asked them if they would encourage or discourage others from becoming veterinarians. And there were common themes across the first three questions. One is they were committed to the human-animal bond and they were very fulfilled by being part of a happiness that animals bring to people. They love that. They love taking care of animals and taking care of their clients as well. We talk about some people have criticized the profession that all they care about is animals, but their people with every animal.
That’s not what I found. They love taking care of the clients and their needs also. And really what they love is the experiencing the happy outcomes. They love it when things go well. They also enjoyed variety in the practice. Never a dull moment. It’s just not going and doing the same thing every day. And here’s another one that really keeps you stimulated, they love the intrigue of the mystery of unraveling the cases. Isn’t that neat? And they also, this is going to be surprising for some who are critical of perhaps the new graduates, but the veterinarians of all ages appreciated the work ethic within the profession.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I think that that’s true. That resonates with me.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Yeah, it does with me too. And then here’s one that I really, really love. A striking component was that the empathy was plentiful within the veterinary medicine, in a world where many have lost empathy. I think we ought to say that one again. Empathy is plentiful in our profession in a world where many have lost empathy. Now if that’s not a reason to join this profession, I don’t know what is.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I love it. One of the big pieces of advice that I offer to vet students these days, and it’s sort of come to me in just in the last year or two, is I think you have to enjoy the mundane. And what I mean is it’s just going into the room and doing the wellness appointment and you got to enjoy that path and you have to enjoy that person and just genuinely take pleasure in helping them and sort of being there and being present. But I really do think if you focus down on those things, it’s a really good job. It’s a hard job. I am not one of the people who enjoys the mystery. I one who I enjoy fixing the problem. I will tell you just for me, the ability to put hands on a pet and fix the problem to make this animal comfortable, send this person away with one less problem than they had when they came in. That’s it for me. I guess probably I was just never the sharpest clinicians, but I was always, I very much prefer to know what the answer is and be able to do it as opposed to trying to figure it out. But that’s [inaudible 00:10:10].

Dr. Eleanor Green:
You sound like a surgeon.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I do.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
[inaudible 00:10:13] move on.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I had this thought. It’s funny, I was telling someone recently, there’s two kinds of doctors, the doctor that looks at the vomiting cat and says, “Boy, I need to know why that cat’s vomiting.” And there’s the other kind that looks at the vomiting cat and says, “I need to know how to make that cat stop vomiting.” And I’m definitely the latter of the two, which is how do I make it stop vomiting?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Yeah. Interestingly, I started out in surgery. Everybody in my family’s a human surgeon and I thought that’s what I wanted to do. And I did. I love surgery, and this is a number of years ago, I was very frustrated by not knowing what was going on in the whole animal. I ended up in internal medicine and music play because I’m one of those ones that loves the mystery and loves the unraveling and loves the critical care and the adjusting this and that happens, but it’s a different mentality. But back to why veterinary medicine’s so intriguing and appealing is that there’s something for everyone regardless of your way of thinking.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I love one of the questions you asked, you said, “If you could change one thing in medicine, what would it be?” Let me ask you that question, Eleanor, if you could change one thing in that medicine, what would you change?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
If I could change one thing about this profession or the veterinarians within it, I would never want to give up the traditionalism and the dedication, but I would want to add a lot more interest in the future and receptivity to the innovations in a changing world that’s actually changing at an exponential rate. And somehow we seem reluctant not only organizationally, but sometimes individually to be receptive to the new things that are possible in our profession. That’s the one thing I would love to change.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s a great answer.
Hey guys, I have some huge news for my technicians out there, guys. I am speaking at the NAVC Vet Nurse+Tech HiVE event in Austin, Texas. This is October 16th through the 18th. It is live in person in Austin, Texas. It is 25 bucks to register, but I got you hooked up. There’s a promo code, it’s just Andy, promo code, Andy, and you get in for $15, $15 registration for the event. I’m going to be there. I have my friend Meg Pearson who’s an improv comedian, an actress. You will recognize her from some of my funny videos. She is hilarious. She’s going to be role-playing with me. I’ve got four sessions. We are going to do what to say and how to say it when talking to difficult clients, when talking up to management, when talking to doctors and when talking to colleagues.
And so all of those challenging conversations, we are going to be not just talking through how to do it, but I’m going to try to do it for you and show you what it looks like. And I promise we are going to laugh and have a lot of fun, but it’s going to be a great time. I’d love to see you there. Remember promo code, Andy, get 10 bucks off. Come out and see me. Also, if you are a technician, team lead. If you’re any type of team lead, come and see me at the Uncharted Team Lead Summit. This is a one-day virtual summit. It’s only for team leads. Guys, we put team leads up there and we want them to lead and motivate and manage and take care of problems and take care of patients. And also we hold them accountable to management, but then also they’re accountable to the people that they’re leading.
And we don’t give them any leadership training or support. Guys, it’s time for that to be over. Unchartered is dedicated to making team leads successful. It’s a new world, it’s a team game. We need to be investing into our leads and that’s what we want to do. So if you are a team lead, come and check out our virtual summit. It’s November the 8th. I’ll put a link in the show notes over to Uncharted. One day virtual, check it out, work with other team leads. I promise you’re going to get a ton out of it. Let’s get back into this episode.
I’ve heard you speak passionately about Lyons and what you sort of envisioned there and how it’s ideally going to be a different sort of education model and things like that. Can you talk a little bit as you talk about innovation and openness to change and things, can you tell me a little bit about how you envision education and vet school and kind where it’s going?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Yeah, I will. I want to talk about Lyon, but even before I do that, I want to throw out one thing. Adaptability. When we were on the Veterinary Futures Commission, we were looking at core competencies and what should they be for the future. And the one new core competency we added was adaptability. And that’s something else I’ve gotten intrigued with. I actually lecture on this, but there’s a thing called adaptability quotient, which actually has been shown now to Trump EQ and IQ. And it is the success of businesses, it’s the success of individuals of the future. And so I think one thing that we need to do at Lyon is make sure that we’re recruiting for adaptability, but in addition to that, adaptability is trainable. So we are training for adaptability, and then within practices I would say not only recruit and retain for, but also evaluate for.
And I think that’s going to change this big stumbling block for our professionals as we enter the future. Now back to Lyon. One thing that I’m pretty excited about and the reason that I’m the dean at Lyon is that they have given me pretty much a blank slate within reason to create a veterinary education model of the future. What’s that going to look like? I’m going to get a lot of people together to add to some opinions that I have because I’m always very open to the opinions of others. So we haven’t shaped it finally. But in essence, what I want to do conceptually is I want to create a community of collaborators, not a community of competitors. I want to make learning fun and create lifelong learners who are curious and who love the process rather than who are struggling and taken down by memorizing a thousand things for anatomy. Medical information doubles every 73 days with a half life of 18 to 24 months. We are not going to have them memorize everything they need to know. We can’t. So what we need to do is we need to expose them, teach them how to access information and how to use it and how interpret it and how to apply it. That’s the future. And then the other piece of that, and pardon me for going on, I could do this for three [inaudible 00:16:31].

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I love it.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Is that I’ve seen some struggles in higher education about what do we do about AI and ChatGPT, because there’s certainly some detrimental parts and potential for cheating. And there are some that were trying to fence students away from that. I want to block down all those fences and I want us to teach students how to use AI and how to use ChatGPT and how to use it ethically and what are some of the pitfalls. That’s their life. We can’t keep it from them. We have to teach them how to use it. So things like that. There’s more, I mean, simulation, I think we’ve got to minimize the use of live animals in teaching until they get to patients. So I think they need to get really good. We’ve got wonderful simulations today, and so I’d love to have an experiential and simulation-based learning center in a collaborative way. I think we need to share, I don’t think we need to recreate all the wheels we need to share with other schools, and not just schools, but industry. And there are a lot of people out there doing wonderful things that we ought to bring in to our educational process. So like I said, I could go on and on. I’ll stop there and I can crank back up anytime you want.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I love it. I love where your head’s at. I love the collaborative approach. All of this just resonates with me so much, as far as ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. We’re not putting the genie back in the bottle. The best thing we can do is train practitioners to utilize the tools that they have. And as you said, in an ethical and helpful way, I love where your head’s at. I want to ask you to back up for a second a little bit. I’m going to go back to adaptability, because I think that’s really interesting about adaptability quotient, and kind of how this is such an important strength. Can you give me an example of what adaptability looks like in the clinic? Help me understand what that looks like in a doctor or in a technician that I see on the floor.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, adaptability or curious, they use the challenge of change as opportunity and they use that for excitement to move forward and do something good. They’re risk-takers. They want to try the new things. They don’t say no. They say, “Let me think about it.” So they consider new things, or they say yes to new things, and say, “Yes, let’s try it.” And then if it doesn’t work, that’s great. All you’ve done is made yourself better by finding something that didn’t work. And I think they’re team players, they tend to collaborate more with others. They’re inspirational for others. So that’s what an adaptable person looks like, and that’s what an adaptable business looks like as well.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, that absolutely makes sense. So when you kind of look into your crystal ball and you sort of see the profession and where it’s going, what are you most excited about outside of the vet schools? Are there things, when you look five years into the future, how do you see our profession functioning differently than it does today?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, this is another dream. I don’t know if this is a dream I’ll fulfill. Maybe I will. I hope I will. I would love to create a hospital the future, as a functioning hospital, but also a demonstration hospital, because there are so many great things available to us today that in your end, busy life and you’re trying to look at the bottom line and what’s the return on investment and how can any patients that I see, it’s hard to raise your head up and look at what’s possible and what could be implemented new. Telemedicine’s one great example of that, that’s just one tiny example. A digital health is another. How do we integrate and provide connected care? But wouldn’t it be fun to create one hospital that has the technologies that are available to us today to provide connected care, integrated care, and again, I’d love to do that where you get veterinarians who are operating in that sphere, but we also have companies and other people with new things, who can bring those new things to this hospital and sort of demonstrate what they have out there.
And that is going to accelerate growth of some of our startup companies, or quite frankly, struggling with adoption. They’ve got a great product and it’s just hard to get people to adopt it. And yet we don’t have time in practice to try everything that comes along. And so if we can find a place where we can be the ones who are trying some of these things and then saying, “You’re going to love this.” We’ll work on this one a little more, but wouldn’t that be fun? And wouldn’t that be a great facility to have in association with a vet school?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, I love this vision, like I said, I’m sort of a Chinese junkie. And so all of this gets me super excited. Do you think we’re coming to a place of a bit of reset? So what I mean when I say that is there’s a traditional vet practice, which is what pops into your mind when you think of a vet practice. And I think that people have done a good job, really. They’ve tried to upgrade different pieces, but it’s almost kind of patchwork. We had the traditional model and we’ve kind of slapped a patch on it. At some point in my career, I’ve looked at different projects. I’ve run our programs or businesses, and I keep upgrading. And at some point I finally stop and just reset. I go, look, this is all built on an old operating system. I’m going to shut it all down for a moment and then start absolutely brand new, fresh. Do you see something like that coming in our profession as technology continues to advance?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
I do. And I think it is going to be technology driven. And just one tiny example, and this is an asset, not a criticism in any way, but PIM systems. Early on, they were very competitive and they still are somewhat, and they wanted to fence in again their system. But they’ve got, I think the PIM system that will win the future is the one that’s integratable and interoperative, and that’s in the end, that’s going to win. And right now, the ones that are winning or have been winning is the ones that feel like they hoard, you have to use me. And that’s not the last. So that’s going to be a big change, I think.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I think you’re right too. And I also think as there’s these other companies that come up with new technologies that are really good and that people want to use, I think that the PIM system that wins is the one that allows that kind of integration and lets you pull these new things in and use them. Because you can see in practices where they say, “Well, I’ve got this classic system and it doesn’t use the interesting thing that my friends are using in their practice. And we’re not able to do that.” And I think you’re probably spot on. It goes back to your point about adaptability, doesn’t it?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
It really does. And there are some examples of that already with cloud, those that didn’t have the cloud, now they do have the cloud. There’s a lot of migration towards the cloud. Just one tiny example of that. People are going to go where it’s better. And I want to tell you one example, and this was a number of years ago, the principle applies, but this is a time ago. I know there were some concerns about we couldn’t get anybody to buy my practice. So this is again, a number of years ago, and I was at this meeting and it was the AVMA and the AAVMC, and they had student reps there. And this was a very loudly expressed concern. Nobody will buy my practice, et cetera.
So I went and sat with the students and I said, “Say, tell me about that.” And they said, “Oh, yeah. Well, here’s the thing. We don’t mind buying a practice, but it’s antiquated. The equipment’s outdated. It just doesn’t even have digital records. It’s still all paper, medical record system. What is there to buy?” I know that’s outdated. Most people don’t do that anymore, but when are the ones today going to be outdated and not going to be sold because they’re so much more, and I think we need to be mindful of that.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. No, I think that’s a great point. I love where your head’s at. I love your positivity about the future. I love your optimism about technology. It’s so refreshing, and you and I are so in alignment in that regard. Dr. Green, where can people find you online? Where can they learn more? I love that you’re writing. But yeah, where can people who want to see more about your adventures kind of find you?

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Well, I’m on LinkedIn, so you can find me there. And I’d love to link up. I link up with several every day. My email address is dreleanorgreen@gmail.com. That’s all lowercase, no dots. And it’s D-R-E-L-E-A-N-O-R-G-R-E-E-N@gmail.com.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Perfect.

Dr. Eleanor Green:
Yeah, that’s the main two. I’m on Facebook, but I would say go to LinkedIn rather than Facebook.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s amazing how often guests are on LinkedIn and not the other social media, so it definitely seems to be a common place where we can find people today. Anyway, thank you so much for being here. Gang, thanks a lot for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. Take care of yourselves, everybody.
And that’s what I got for you. That’s it. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks to Dr. Eleanor Green for being here. I can’t wait to see how her new deanship goes and the start of her new vet school. I am absolutely rooting for her and the vision that she sort of has for education in the future. Anyway, guys, thanks for being here. If you enjoyed the podcast, leave us an honest review wherever you get your podcast. It means the world to me. It’s how people find us, and I hope to talk to you again in the future. Take care of yourselves, everybody. I will talk to you soon. Bye.

Does Production-Based Pay Undermine Veterinary Team Well-Being?

by

Dr. Ivan “Zak” Zakharenkov joins the show to talk about a recent article of his, and the wellness research he is doing in the veterinary industry. He and Dr. Andy Roark discuss the impacts of production-based compensation on wellness and well-being, and how veterinary teams might be compensated in a more satisfying way.

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

Article: Does Production Pay Undermine Veterinary Team Well-Being?

Galaxy Vets: An Employee-Owned Veterinary Group

Veterinary Innovation Podcast

Dr. Ivan Zak on LinkedIn

Book: Great Game of Business
(Links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and help support the show)

Dr. Andy Roark Resources 

Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Swag

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Ivan “Zak” Zakharenkov is a veterinarian, entrepreneur, and advocate for the well-being of veterinary professionals. After graduating from the Atlantic Veterinary College, he worked in various settings across Canada, from emergency to general practice. Twelve years in veterinary medicine inspired Ivan to create Smart Flow, a workflow optimization system, and Veterinary Integration Solutions, a consultancy serving veterinary consolidators. In 2021, he founded Galaxy Vets, an employee-owned veterinary healthcare system that prioritizes burnout prevention. He holds an MBA degree from the University of Cumbria in international healthcare management. Ivan serves on the board of Galaxy Vets Foundation and co-hosts Veterinary Innovation Podcast and Consolidate That!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I’m here with the one and only Dr. Ivan Zak. Ivan is the CEO of Galaxy Vets, and he does a lot of things. He wears a lot of hats. He’s a practicing emergency vet. He’s a genuinely, deeply interesting guy. This is a sprawling conversation about, it starts off talking about compensation and production-based compensation and the impacts it has on wellness in vet medicine. And then we get into lots of different aspects of how vet medicine works and what are some of the underlying issues that we see with burnout, and is vet medicine really worse about burnout than other industries? And it all goes from there.
And so anyway, it is a really good, fun discussion. A lot to think about. I thoroughly enjoyed having Ivan on the podcast. Gang, I hope you’re going to enjoy this. Let’s get into it.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Ivan Zak, thanks for being here.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Hey, and nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Man, I am so psyched that you’re here. First of all, I thoroughly enjoy talking with you. You are just an interesting guy. You’re doing a ton of stuff. For those who do not know you, you are the CEO of Galaxy Vets. You were the creator of Smart Flow. You are a co-host of the Veterinary Innovation Podcast. You’re practicing, you do some emergency work, you’re still in practice. You got your hands in it. You’re just a genuinely interesting guy doing a lot of stuff. And so I was really happy to have you on because I saw something that you wrote on VIN. It was on the VIN News Service. And first of all, just stop and shout out to the VIN News Service. I love that team. They just do do great work, and they just put out really interesting stuff. So if you’re not reading VIN News, you’re missing out.
But anyway, you wrote an article called, Does Production Pay Undermine Veterinary Team Wellbeing? And this was something that I saw it immediately, it spoke to me. I think this is fascinating. So we talk a lot about compensation of veterinarians on this podcast and how the business of vet medicine happens. And so production based compensation is really common in our industry. And I actually just got an email from a veterinarian who’s not paid on ProSal or production based compensation, and they were like, “I feel like I should be. Do you agree?” And I thought, oh man, production-based compensation has become fairly ubiquitous in our industry. And I’ve always had some questions about it.
And let me be open and say I get paid on production when I work in the practice and I don’t seem to have problems with it, things like that. But I’ve always been a little wary of being like, yeah, paying doctors on production is the answer. It does not have drawbacks. It’s the way we should go. And so I saw your article and it really spoke to me. Let me just pause here for a second and say why, if you don’t mind, lay out your philosophy here as you start talking about production-based compensation as it interacts with team wellbeing.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Yeah, so the topic is fairly early long standing with me too, because as a practicing veterinarian, I actually worked only my first year out of vet school on production because I saw the numbers. They said You could be on salary, you could be on production. And then they showed me numbers in three months and you would be an idiot not to start on production. I was making better money. And then the first year out, I think I was making more than anybody in my class. I jumped right into emerge. So that was good. But then because you’re an emergency and because I realized that when people are yelling in your face that you’re doing it only for money, then that was my, I was like, what if I was not, and I can prove it?
And then since then, after the first year, never worked on production. So I had my own thinking about it and it’s just an opinion. And you put three vets in the room, you’ll get four opinions as usual. So we tried to test that. I wanted to see actually statistically can we survey? And the third year in a row we’re doing this study where we are measuring the burnout and what we do in parallel with that, we give it a color and we say, okay, well what does burnout correlate? So one thing we do, we measure how burnout the industry is based on a sample size, usually about 2000 people.
And then with it, we had certain hypotheses that we throw in every year into a study. For example, what does compensation method do to burnout? What does the age do? What does the experience? What is the gender? And things that we want to know to better understand who’s the biggest risk, and then how can we manage hospitals, people, and everything to have less burnout? So that was the intent with which we studied it, and I wanted to prove myself right or wrong in my own hypothesis that production’s evil. So that was how we started.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. You were a bit more to the point that I was, but yeah. All right. So the null hypothesis is production is evil. All right. Talk to me a little bit about, before we get into this, talk to me a little bit more about the burnout study. I have been watching this for years. I read it whenever it comes out. I’ve not talked to you about it in the past, but I have always watched it and I’ve always appreciated that you do it. It seems like good work. You do get a pretty good sample size. It’s across different roles in the vet profession, things like that. Talk to me about where your interest in burnout came from and just start to tell me the story of the previous years leading up to this one, if you don’t mind.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
So I got exposed to it through my personal experience and I’m fairly comfortable talking about it right now. But I personally almost lost my life through a suicide attempt. And essentially I didn’t know that. Now I know about myself back then and then I just thought, I hate my life now. I understand that more than myself. People hate life and a lot of them are veterinarians. And I’m comfortable because I think that we should talk about these things, especially if we get through it and then we are trying to analyze it.
So when I pivoted in my career career, we built Smart Flow, I love our profession. And at the time when it happened, I hated it. So then when I had a choice in what am I going to do next? And I was going through MBA and I chose as my thesis for the dissertation to research burnout, I wanted to find out is it systematic? Is it actually a problem in the industry? And if it is there a solution for it? And I wasn’t looking for a solution in medical or mental or anything like that. I was thinking that there’s probably a management problem to it. I think we’re driving people insane and then is there something that we can do better by managing people and prevent burnout through that? You should do yoga, you should meditate, you should work in flow that we talked about before recording. All of those things, but can we manage people better?
So I made it my career choice now in the next hopefully five, 10 years to focus on understanding how can we manage organizations better to prevent burnout. And that’s why this study became the research portion of my dissertation. And I’ve been repeating it since then. This is the third year that we came up with it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. First of all, I love that and I think you’re spot on when I talk about burnout and preventing burnout, to me, I don’t like when I hear this idea that self-care is the answer to burnout. Because what you’re doing then is you’re acting like the person, the individual on the floor in the clinic, they have the power to take care of themselves and there’s no obligation of the practice that they’re in to not burn their people out. And I go, look, let’s be honest, it’s a division of labor here. It’s one, I have responsibility to take care of myself and to rest and recharge, and my practice has a responsibility to not throw me to the wolves every day and push and not let me take breaks or make me feel bad for taking breaks and things like that. I think about in two levels there’s the individual level and there’s a practice level when we start talking about this.
So listen, I’ve always enjoyed that you do this. I also, I a hundred percent with you on telling the stories of burnout and depression and things like that is just, I went through a period of burnout. It’s been about four years ago and I burned out pretty bad. And the thing that bothered me the most at the time was that I didn’t know anyone who had really burned out and then come back and seemed to be having a good time later on. And it felt like the end for me. And so I’m like, I did it. I would not recommend it. If you’re like, “I’m thinking about burning out,” I’d be like, “You should do yoga instead. Go on vacate, do something else, pick something different.” But if you do decide to burn out, just know that you can work through it. And honestly, you can have the best days ever on the other side.
So anyway, I love that you did that. Let’s start to talk about your findings on compensation in wellbeing. So will you break that down for me?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Yeah. So the hypothesis, every research, our first research that we’ve done for my actual dissertation was we wanted just to measure it and then understand, is it because I thought maybe it’s like a shark attack, someone is killed by a shark and everybody’s like, “Oh my god.” But no truly we’re burnout. We determined in the first year, but then in parallel we just ask random questions like, what’s your age? What’s your gender? Do you work in corporate setting? I thought that corporate is evil, so therefore they probably burn out people more. Turned out that they’re actually not true, which-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, I believe that. Yeah.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Yeah. So that was proven wrong. So then we thought, oh cool. So we have a standard measurement of burnout. There’s a standard thing that we use, it’s called professional fulfillment. And this is just 16 questions, but it gives you this temperature gauge. And then in parallel we’ll throw in questions that we’ll read the stats and say, okay, people that are over 40, they’re less burned out than those that are under 40. And then women are more burnout than men. So there’s things that we started to look for last year. I was interested is goal setting in your career and life affecting your burnout status, which it does if you don’t have goal setting.
And this year I was wondering, okay, the evil production that I thought it was, is it actually evil in terms of burnout? Does it contribute to burnout? And that was one of the three things that we tested this year. And we’ve proven myself almost wrong. So essentially it was the reverse, which was shocking to me because there’s multiple studies in human health where it clearly says that production actually does cause burnout. So that’s an interesting finding.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so talk to me about this. So what you’re saying is in the studies that you’re doing, you found that production was anti burnout related. Do you feel like being salaried is more likely to lead to a path to burnout? Tell me about that.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
So not necessarily in that direct correlation. It wasn’t like, oh, stop being on salary and you’re fine. You can’t apply it as a treatment. But the point is that what we found out, people that have less financial security and certainty in the future are more burned-out, which logical, but we wanted statistically to prove that. But then the second comparison of data showed that people that are on commission feel like they have better financial security. So it was not a direct, but it was an inference through this people that are on commission or production, they feel like they’re more secure in their financial future or retirement planning. And it turned out that those people are less burned out. So it didn’t show that it directly causes the burnout, which I was surprised. It could have proven my 20-year hypothesis being wrong. But that’s why you do the research to prove yourself wrong.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, that makes sense to me.
Hey guys, I just want to let you know real quick, I got something really big coming down the pipes that is super fun. It’s not a workshop, it’s not a webinar, it’s not a live event, it’s not a summit, it’s not a program. It is something that is just going to be a ton of fun. And some of you have already found the path to learn more about it. I’m not going to tell you what it is here, I’m just going to tell you it’s great and it’s coming. And if you want to look around a little bit, you might be able to find the path to learn more. And so some of you already have, some of you have not.
If you’re like, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.” [inaudible 00:12:53] don’t know if you like puzzles, if you like trivia, trying to figure things out, find the root of questions. It might be worth poking around DrandyRoark.com. Definitely the newsletters, if you get the newsletters, there’s fun stuff there. But if you like figuring things out, it might be time just to poke around a little bit. We got some fun stuff going on. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m just going to leave you with that, guys. As you were. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. I’ll have some more news for you sometime soon.
So I like [inaudible 00:13:26]. Do you think the idea basically is that if you’re paid on production, then you feel like you have more control of your situation as you summarize it that way?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
I think that’s one of those things. But if I correlate it to burnout, because burnout has a lot of people only talk about burnout. They really imagine it’s like working too much. I work in a facility right now, I do a couple shifts a week in ER for fun. And I have clear understanding that people are burned out in it, but they don’t have a full workload. This hospital is not loaded enough with the patients, it’s a new startup, and they have all other things that organizations can do wrong to actually cause the burnout, such as there’s lack of control, they feel like they’re top-down managed, there’s complete disconnects of values. So that’s the second one.
These are defined in 1986 by Christina Maslach who researched burnout in organizational behavior. So these are the actual triggers. So lack of control, conflict of values, insufficient reward not only in monetary because they actually compensated well, but not enough thank you and just basic gratitude, unfairness, favoritism people on the same sort of level getting different pay rate with no explanation. And community breakdown, which means that we don’t know how to give feedback to each other and we don’t know how to resolve conflict, which is systemic.
So it’s not about working too much, it’s about other things that can happen with it. So I think that when we talk about people on compensation or not compensation, I think we need to look at the big picture of how people are working. Because let’s say I’m on production and it seems like I’ll have less burnout, but what I’m doing, I’m driving the entire team crazy and I’m just go, go, go, go, go because I am chasing the dollar. I want to be a productive, but what techs get per hour while I’m burning them out? And they’re actually more burned-out than vets usually. So I’m actually creating the environment in which techs assistants and receptionists are running crazy without compensating more. So the question of compensation of the organization is bigger than just one individual as a vet, but how do you compensate the team and align the incentives so everybody’s rowing in the same direction?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Is it possible to see that? Is it possible to look at the support staff who work with doctors paid on compensation versus support staff who work with salary doctors?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
So we are trying this, so we just launched it two months, actually two quarters ago, and we launched this and it’s very interesting. So there’s a book called Great Game of Business. It’s the whole methodology. And what they recommend is creating this bonus structure in which essentially what vets don’t do as business people, they don’t set the budget. That’s just, corporations do that. Individual vets, they never say, “This is my budget.” Because when we hear budget, we always think that budget is how much I can spend. This is not in the budget. You can’t buy an extra chair, you can’t buy another anesthetic monitor or whatever. But also budget is how much I’m planning to earn.
So what we’ve done in our bonus design, we said, okay, our plan and we reporting to investors is to be in this budget, you need to hit this number in June, this number is July, this number in August. If we all as a team hit the number above that, anything in surplus will be split between the teams as a bonus. The bonus is not in January, here is Christmas bonus for no reason. It’s not a gift. The reward with a very clearly articulated goal.
So essentially I think, and this is my new hypothesis, is that this way if the doctors on the production driving the team and driving everybody, but then the team knows is if they help this doctor to produce and they hit it above the budget that we clearly identified for them, we show it actually in the app. We have an app that all our employees have. They know how much they make per day in the clinic. It’s open book management and they’re trying to hit it above the waterline that we set. And if they do in the end of the quarter, each quarter they get a little check that represents the bonus.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I like it. I always like it. So I’m a big fan of positive reinforcement and like you said, giving positive reinforcement when it’s a clear link to the behavior that we’re reinforcing and you’re like, this is what it is and this is what you did and this is when you’re successful and here’s how we’re being rewarded. That’s always spoken to me. Talk to me a little bit more about we have a problem with feedback and conflict resolution. You said that’s systemic. What do you mean when you say that?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Well, we had a really interesting conversation today in our podcast about in general how we communicate in veterinary domain. So I can’t quote the study and I know that it floated through my desk one day, but apparently vet industry is the lowest EQ that you can find profession. People that want to work with animals and not talk to people, everybody says that. And then we’re just not trained through either we’re in tech school, whether we’re trained for animal attendant or veterinarian, there’s very little on how to talk to each other. There’s how to talk to clients. There’s how to articulate diagnosis in more simple terms. Now it’s there in schools, there’s never, how do you become a leader? How do you become a communicator? How do you provide and take, which is very important feedback, and then how do you resolve the conflict?
So I think that those are the huge, huge deficiencies. And whenever we go into a new team, so when we acquire practice, we go in and we understand, do people know that? And it’s just a baseline. It’s the basic training where you type people. I hate saying it like that, where you’re typing people, but you do the disc, you understand what they are so you can communicate with each other and understand that person like me would never talk to someone analytical and solve something on the spot. They’ll need a day to think about it. And then also, how do you resolve things? How do you don’t become passive-aggressive? All of these things, I think we just don’t have it. It’s just not in the curriculum wherever we come from. And I think it is pretty chronic in the industry.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That does make some sense. If you had your magic wand, and so you’re looking at this and you’re looking at the data, not just this year’s wellness study, but previous year’s wellness studies and we’re talking about feedback and we’re talking about resolving conflict and things. How do you fix this profession in the next five years? You got magic wand power, you could make some changes. What would you do?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a million dollar multimillion dollar question.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, sure.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
I think if you let people solve their problems and the place where they work themselves, that’s the main thing. Stop being a manager who decides for the people that do the job how to do their job. If you can just give them the autonomy to decide that I have a problem X, but you need to give them power and say you are responsible and accountable. And then that leads to the compensation through the proper compensation structure that by fixing these problems and becoming more productive and efficient, you’re rewarded at the end as the business owner or just someone who receives bonuses is there as well. I think if we can allow all of our people, techs, vets solve things and the management would just support and create a system of idea generation and putting them into practice, I think that would be the best way.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I have this theory that veterinary medicine, I don’t have a survey to back it up, but I have this theory that veterinary medicine, I think we’re disproportionately perfectionistic. I think that there is a perfectionistic tendency in veterinary medicine. I think there’s a lot of people who want to get things right. I think we select for that tendency in veterinary schools and our education and things like that. And my thesis goes, if you buy into the idea that veterinary medicine as a whole is more perfectionist than other industries, I think that this is the number one reason that we struggle to delegate effectively is because there’s a right way to do it, and we know what the answer is, and we want to give the answer.
And in order to delegate effectively and empower people, just like you’re saying, Ivan, I’m a huge believer in this, take people the problem and let them come up with their own solution. But I feel like people struggle so much to do that because they want to say, “This is the answer, now do the answer.” And that just, it’s hard to get traction. Do you buy into any of that? Do you buy into the perfectionistic part? Do you think that that’s a barrier to letting people be empowered to fix problems on their own?

Dr. Ivan Zak:
A hundred percent. And I think that this is a huge part of our burnout problem because it’s almost like we’re in the veterinary podcast, so it’s almost like we’re breeding and selecting the breed with a certain traits for intelligence, solution orientation, everything else. But in parallel, we get this perfection. And perfectionism actually is not a good thing. People that are proud and saying, “I’m perfectionist,” it’s a form of fear. You’re afraid to make a mistake. So if you look at it from that angle and thinking that you’re proud of being perfectionist, that’s not a good thing. That means that you’re afraid to make a mistake and try something new. So I think that you’re absolutely right. We’re selecting people with a certain traits and it drags behind it, the burnout, people that are more susceptible to it and all other things.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I love that you say that way. It’s funny, the paradox that I put together is our selection criteria is very much pro perfectionism, right? Because you take that test by yourself, there is no delegating. It is you, yourself, self-improvement is painful because you’re both the hammer and the chisel or you’re both to stone in the chisel. And it’s sort of the same thing as people who excel in the academic part and get into vet school and do well in vet school are often that driven perfectionistic personality. But then if you want to become a high performing veterinarian, you want to build a really good, positive workplace, that’s antithetical to that mentality. It has to be the doctors that really perform there are a little bit more loosey goosey.
They’re a little more willing to let other people do things and say, “The team is excited about this. It’s not exactly what I would do, but I think it’s positive. I think my idea is better, but it’s not the one they’re excited about. So I’m just going to go along and be supportive of them.” I think that that’s one of the weird pain points that we have is what gets you a degree is not necessarily what’s going to make you happy and maximally successful afterwards.
Anyway, Ivan, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for talking with me. You’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Do you want to talk real quickly about where people can find you? Where can they learn more about Galaxy Vets? Where can they hear the Veterinary Innovation Podcast? Tell me about all you got going on where people can keep up with you.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me first, and then that was a great conversation.I do recommend, suggest subscribing to Veteran Innovation podcast, which you can find@veteraninnovationpodcast.com. There’s a great conversation always about innovation, so sign up for that. That’s a cool one as well. And then Galaxy Vets is just the project we’re trying to implement all of these anti burnout practices and management. So all the research that we do, it’s incorporated into building this organization that is owned by veterinarians and employee ownership is incorporated into it. And that one is at galaxyvets.com. So either one, you can find us there or on LinkedIn if you can spell my full last name, but I’m not going to do it here.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I’ll put links in the show notes to all that stuff. Guys, I’m going to link to the Great Game of Business, the book that Ivan mentioned earlier. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Guys, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves, everybody. I’ll see you later.

Dr. Ivan Zak:
Thanks, Andy.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And that’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks, doctor Ivan Zak for being here. Man, he was great. I’m going to have him back on the podcast. I just really enjoyed this conversation. I think I’d like to talk to him more often. So anyway, I thought it’s super fun. I love these idea type conversations. I hope you guys enjoyed them as well. If you did, do me a favor and write me an honest review wherever you get your podcast, share the podcast with your friends. That’s really nice thing that you can do. Anyway, guys, take care of yourselves. Be well. Talk to you later. Bye.