Team Culture

It’s Veterinary Receptionist Week! A time to celebrate the Front Desk Rockstars, the Chaos Coordinators, the Lobby Guardians, the Multitasking Magicians, the Unsung Healthcare Heroes we know and love as Veterinary Receptionists.

So in preparation for the big week, we took to social media (our virtual version of walking up to the front desk) and asked them directly: What do YOU want for Veterinary Receptionist Week? Here’s what they had to say!

“The best gift I’ve gotten was a gift card from Dunkin’ Donuts because you need a LOT of coffee to keep up with the multiple phone calls, the needy clients and the insane ability to multi-task.” – Katie K.

I know I’m not the only one who still rehearses my voicemail messages in advance. Do you have any idea how much caffeine courage it would take for me to handle half as many phone calls as our Client Service Reps do?? They deserve all the caffeine. ALL OF IT. And maybe a goody bag of wine and margarita mix to take home wouldn’t hurt either.

“Our boss brought in a massage therapist and we each got a 30 minute massage at the office.” – Sherry N.

Carrying the weight of the hospital on your shoulders has to result in some tension. A massage (COVID-careful of course) is the least we could do!

“My coworkers and managers overheard that I had gotten furniture for the new backyard I had. So for my birthday I received a beautiful potted ponytail palm with a stand and string lights for the back porch.” – Courtney C.

“My AH has always done a nice job of giving a special gift to us like a personalized mask/picture/toy for my child…and I appreciate that so, so much.” – Kelly D.

“Best gift is the gift that I wasn’t expecting and was completely out of nowhere. Like a vet I work with just recently got me a watercolor portrait of my cats! All because she saw it and thought ‘Oh, April would love that of her cats!’ She always does nice little things like that.” – April M.

It’s the thought that counts. Pro Tip: DO stalk Facebook and Instagram for great personalized gift ideas. DO NOT accidentally like a photo from 3 and a half years ago. That’s awkward.

“A day without getting yelled at by a client would be good.” – Juliet B.

“A DVM to do my job for an afternoon.” – Sara D.

“What I would LOVE next week would either be: a well deserved extra PTO day, or for someone to trade places with for one day.” – Katie K.

Give Veterinary Receptionists what they really want: A Kit Kat–I mean, err, A BREAK! Give them time: If you can’t offer a full day off, send them home a couple hours early! An extended lunch! A late start so they can sleep in! Give them support: Have their backs when they’re on the receiving end of a client behaving badly. Give them a laugh: Try checking your own voicemail messages or taking a deposit for a hospitalized patient. That should make for a break AND some great comedic entertainment.

I wouldn’t say no to a raise – Jo-Anne S.

“A cash gift and 2 hours to go spend it on me!” – Amy K.

“I’ll take a raise and pizza.” – Abbey S.

How many of us have uttered this phrase: “You couldn’t pay me enough to deal with those phones all day.” That constant ringing makes beeping fluid pumps sound like spa music. Let’s make sure Veterinary Receptionists are fairly compensated for their uniquely developed skills, their unwavering patience, and the number of times they’ve had to remind me how to transfer a phone call. Pay them what they’re worth (which is a lot)!

“Receiving that same professional respect we give would be nice.” – Juliet B.

“Similar CE opportunities for growth that other areas of the clinic get.” – Kaylie F.

“What I want more than anything at my hospital is to be truly heard, and to feel truly appreciated. what I need is to feel valued and understood and to feel like what I have to say matters.” – Kelly D.

“WE WANT RESPECT. We want to be included in the conversation when people talk about vet staff. Also to maybe not call us ‘the girls up front’ or ‘the people that answer the phones.’” – JD P.

“The best thing I could ever receive is respect and understanding from clients…I do wish clients realized the receptionists carry a lot of responsibility & deserve just as much respect for our job as our techs and doctors.” – Sam S.

Respect is the love language of any veterinary clinic. Well…respect and puppies. Veterinary Receptionists deserve both. If veterinary medicine were a team sport, Veterinary Receptionists would be the chasers, the beaters, the keepers…ok they’d be the entire Gryffindor team, alright?! (Quidditch is the only sport I know.) They deserve our respect, as our teammates and our peers.

“I truly believe all receptionists would just love a THANKS.” – Linda F.

“Being recognized for a whole week like Vet Techs is so awesome!!! We all work as a team at our hospital, so to be recognized (finally!) is so great!” – Traci N.

“I said on the phone today to a client ‘I’m just the receptionist’ and she said ‘DO NOT SAY JUST! You are important.’ Definitely made my day.” – Taylore T.

“Just to be celebrated.” – Kate A.H.

And celebrated you shall be. It’s long overdue, and well deserved!

So, there you have it folks! There are plenty of opportunities to make our Veterinary Reception Rockstars feel the love, support, and appreciation they deserve this week. And we’ll start it off right here: A big THANK YOU to Veterinary Receptionists everywhere for all the hats you wear and how darn well you wear them – we truly couldn’t do this without you.

P.S. – If anyone does the “Doctor working reception for a day” option, we want video footage.

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

I looked at the schedule and saw it was going to be a very busy day. Our surgery schedule was overbooked, meaning procedures would probably go into lunchtime. In addition, the appointment schedule was double booked for most of the morning.

“I will buy lunch today,” I announced and assigned one of the technicians to pick the place and take everyone’s order. To my surprise, my announcement wasn’t met with the excitement I expected. Usually, everyone loves a free lunch, and it’s even better when they get to pick the place. There were mumblings amongst the team and one technician announced “I would rather pay for my own lunch and actually get a full lunch break!” she complained.

I was taken back by her comment. Every day I made an effort to make sure that everyone had a lunch break. If surgeries went into lunch hour, the technicians swapped out to give everyone a chance to leave. It was myself and the other doctor who sacrificed our lunch time in surgery many days.

I made a conscious effort over the next week to observe how lunch times went. The head technicians and managers made sure that everyone took a lunch break, but many days it was very rushed. They came back after fifteen to twenty minutes to swap out and allow someone else to have lunch. On days when appointments and procedures didn’t go into the lunch hour, it seemed that the phone rang as someone was about to clock out, and the unlucky person was dealing with the client’s needs for the next 10-20 minutes, eating away at their break. On days when everyone left on time, one lone receptionist was left to deal with four phone lines that never seemed to stop ringing.

I thought about my dentist’s office. They were closed from 12-1, they locked the doors and shut off the phones. Could we do that, too? We closed over lunch for our monthly team meetings, what would happen if we did it every day? Would our clients be angry if they couldn’t reach us for an hour? Would our team be overwhelmed before or after the lunch hour? What about UPS and Fed Ex – they always made their deliveries around 12:15.

I talked over the idea with my leadership team and was met with resistance. They had the same questions I had – “but what about our clients???” “But what about our team?” I asked. We were weary. Summers have always been our busiest time and now with COVID, we felt ten times busier. There wasn’t anything I could do about COVID and all the changes, hassles, and headaches it brought, but I could give my team a small break during the day, a chance to leave for a while, to get fresh air, recharge, and refresh. I convinced the leadership team to try it for a month. If it didn’t work, we could always go back.

We planned ahead to start in two weeks. That gave us time to get the word out through Facebook, signs on the door, and to inform the clients of changes coming. I announced the change at our next team meeting. Again, I didn’t get the excitement I hoped. It was more of a muted optimism wondering how long this change would last.

I was out of the office the first week of our lunch time closure. One less doctor should make it less busy and make it easier to implement the new change. Still, I was concerned how the closure went over. Was my team dealing with angry clients? Were they feeling rushed trying to wrap everything up by noon? Were they inundated with messages when they came back an hour later?

I walked in the door Monday morning and what I saw brought a smile to my face. Everyone was more at ease and relaxed. There was no longer the uncertainty of “will I actually get a real break today?” Instead there was laughter as they made plans for their lunch hours. The technicians held a mini Olympics with various competitions, including arm wrestling and a sprint down the street, with bragging rights for the winner of that week’s competition. They brought their dogs to work and walked to the park across the street to let them play. When everyone came back at 1, they were ready to face the afternoon again.

I asked how clients handled our new schedule. If someone had called in a refill, everyone had done a great job of telling them our new hours. Much to our surprise, the clients did not complain. Some clients have even said that they would adjust their lunch break to pick up their medication, food, or pets either before or after our lunch break. Even Fed Ex and UPS quickly learned and started dropping off our packages an hour later.

Our system isn’t perfect. There are still many times when appointments or surgical procedures run into the lunch hour. But when this happens, we still turn the phones over to voicemail and have one less thing to worry about. We often come back from lunch to see three cars waiting in front of the clinic. They arrived a little early for their one o’clock appointment. We always thank them for being patient and accommodating our lunch break. Messages are checked and clients are called back immediately.

COVID has brought a lot of changes to veterinary clinics, most of which have made our jobs harder and added more stress to our teams. I am happy that I was able to find a change that made their jobs a little easier. I had planned for the lunchtime closure to be a temporary change that would end when COVID restrictions lifted, but seeing the morale boost it created makes me think it might just be a permanent change.

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

We hear so often about how toxic our work environment can be. Yes, we all know about the clients who can tear us down, but a larger and harder part of our field is when our own bosses or peers do it.

I once came from a clinic that was toxic in this sense – feigned compassion for staff, feeling as if nothing was ever good enough, constantly throwing one another under the bus, and never a true sense of camaraderie, especially from the ones in charge. You left for the day feeling defeated. I thought that was just the way it was. Then, my at-the-time fiancé got a new job and we had to move cities. Once I joined a new clinic, I saw what true compassion and kindness meant, and I was astounded. It’s like when one must go through a bad relationship to truly understand a healthy one.

I’ve worked at this new clinic for over a year now. I instantly felt at home there. It’s a cozy small animal clinic with one doctor that recently expanded to two. It was immediately clear that the doctors and staff would do whatever was in their power for their patients. The passion I felt rivaled my own. I knew this was the place I was meant to be.

Throughout this time, I have formed wonderful relationships with these people. This past September, I was lucky enough to be married to the love of my life and got to share that joy with my new work family. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, shortly met by one of the saddest.

I was pregnant, thought to about nine-weeks along. My boss and peers obviously knew, as there were certain things I could no longer do as a certified veterinary technician. We all shared in the excitement and had put on a contest for guessing things like what the gender would be and when the baby would be due. The winner got to be the first one to hold the baby out of the group.

When I went in for my first prenatal appointment, that excitement quickly turned into anxiety. After some routine diagnostics, my husband and I were sent to have an urgent ultrasound. There we received the bad news. They couldn’t detect a heartbeat. It turns out I had what is referred to as a silent miscarriage. I had likely miscarried a few weeks prior. I was devastated.

Fast forward a couple weeks and through a lot of details, I ended up having an emergency D & C.

Through all this, I cannot even begin to explain the kindness, the support, and the compassion I felt from my clinic. If I was having an emotionally draining day, they acknowledged it and let me do what I needed to do, whether that was working through it, making awkward jokes, or going home so I could cry in peace.

When I was physically in too much pain, there was no flack for the days of work I had to miss. There were times I couldn’t stop talking and days when I could barely speak. They understood when I couldn’t talk about it but were there to listen when I finally could. I cannot imagine having to go through this terribly hard situation without their support. I will never be able to fully express the gratitude I have towards every single caring person I have had the fortune to work beside. I am so proud to work at this clinic, with these people, my boss, my coworkers, my friends – my work family.

Today, November 13^th is world kindness day, the reason I wrote this article. If you could take anything away from these words I wrote, remember that your “bad relationship” isn’t something you need to settle for. Don’t give up on your passion. There is the right place for you out there. A place with true understanding, compassion and kindness. Which, really, is all the same thing.

CMR, CML, CLS, JKA, ASP, and SCR, all I can ever offer is a simple thank you. And maybe some coffee.

-CJS, CVT
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