There I Said It

With two of the biggest conferences in the States just around the bend, one DrAndyRoark.com reader has some advice for those who bemoan the sight of attendees in athleisure at veterinary CE events:

Yoga pants. You are spending this lecture focused on what I am wearing and how unprofessional I am.  You have gone so far as to snap a quick, but not unnoticed picture of me, posted it on your Twitter, and put it up in your private veterinary Facebook group.

What would make my yoga pants acceptable to you?  A recent c-section or gallbladder surgery? What about the death of a parent, severe social anxiety, or my luggage being lost at the airport? Stop for a moment. Did you just ask yourself, “What would make this acceptable to me?” Why?  Why do you care what I’m wearing? I showed up at this conference to learn, not to be judged.  Why are you here?

The truth is, what I wear does not impact your learning.  Your scorn does impact my quality of life.  It impacts how other people see me, people who don’t know me.  Come to think of it, you don’t know me.  Your post and your criticism of a stranger does, however, speak volumes about you.  How I dress at a veterinary conference that does not have a dress code does not impact you.

How you treat other people behind their backs and in front of the world does have an impact. It impacts your colleagues and how everyone who sees your posts perceives the veterinary community.  The problem is you, not what I am wearing.

I understand that you feel strongly that how I dress at a veterinary conference is a representation of the profession and you think I’m a poor representative.  You think I’m unprofessional. Would you rather I didn’t come to continuing education? Would the profession be better off without me?  Are you ready to make that call?  Your judgment says yes.

When the next veterinarian or support staff member commits suicide (that will be sometime this week), you will post about how tragic it is. You will quote #NotOneMoreVet.  You will speak of how you want to be part of the solution.  You will be outraged. Nearly as outraged as when I wear yoga pants to a veterinary conference.

Buddha has been credited with saying, “If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?” Everything else is gossip. Gossip is insidious.  It is ugly and it is pervasive in our community.  It alienates people at best and at worst it drives them from the field entirely, or to suicide. The solution does start with you.  It starts with compassion, focusing on what matters, keeping kindness at your forefront, and my photo off your phone and your social media.

The next time you are at a conference and you catch yourself judging how someone is dressed, here are four things you can do instead:

1.Turn to the person closest to you that you don’t know and introduce yourself.

Turning your focus to purposeful and meaningful engagement with another person will make you feel less lonely and less likely to be critical of others.

2. Walk out to the information booth and ask if they need any additional moderators.

That’s right, turn that energy into something positive.  Hands down, conferences always need extra help and volunteering will make you feel good about yourself.  When you feel good about you, you’re kinder to others.

3. Raise your hand in a lecture and ask a question.

It’s not so easy when the focus is on you, is it? Turning the table to draw attention to yourself and putting yourself out on a limb is a great technique to staying humble.

4. Text or call a therapist.

No, seriously, reach out to a professional.  Let them know you are struggling with criticizing your colleagues and that isn’t the person you want to be.

“It’s not what you look at that matters.  It’s what you see.”  -Henry David Thoreau

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The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

By Anonymous

 

You do not want make the moms angry.

 

Here is the reality of working in a majority female medical profession:

 

1 – A lot of us are mothers

2 – We are required to get continuing education

 

So, a decent percentage of us at any time need to feed our babies AND get continuing education at the same time.

 

Since many states have limits on how much continuing education can be pursued online or because many of us prefer in-person continuing education, that means moms need a place to nurse or pump at such conferences.

 

This should not be a surprise. Nor should it be challenging to provide.

 

It would be very rare for a place providing continuing education to not also be a workplace. By law, workplaces should be able to provide “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.[1]”

 

Women who make up 50% of our population should be able to perform normal bodily functions in peace and safety.

 

Recently, a veterinarian who was nursing attended sponsored continuing education event and asked for a space to pump.  Without going into the uglier details, she was directed to use a bathroom. Even when clean, bathrooms are not considered sanitary places to produce breastmilk that will be fed to an infant.

 

She was later told in writing that she should have let them know in advance about her need for “special accommodation.”

 

Frankly, many women do not consider performing this non-pathologic, natural, and common bodily function as something that requires “special accommodation.”

 

As a nursing mother myself, when I attended the AVMA convention this year, I certainly wouldn’t have thought to call ahead for a “special accommodation.”

 

Luckily, the veterinary moms from around the world have each others’ backs. They have banded together to try and help prevent things like this from happening again.

 

After discussing the less than ideal pumping conditions at one convention this year, several other conferencest appear to be making concerted efforts to provide more comfortable nursing spaces and a welcoming atmosphere for mothers.

 

Our profession is small. Even if you are not a mother in our field, you likely care about one. Many of us in the veterinary profession are friends with women and mothers in other medical professions too.

 

As the world grows smaller every day, not only are companies who recognize the realities of life as a woman doing the right thing, they helping ensure their financial survival.

 

The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

 

[1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/nursingmothers/faqBTNM.htm

Working in a veterinary hospital poses some unique situations that may not be experienced in other workplace settings.  You have a freezer you don’t keep food in, random body fluid stains appear on your clothing, and you can go from happy to sad and right back in a matter of minutes.  You also might find yourself in your co-workers’ personal bubble more often than you realize as you work together on patients.  Working in a vet clinic also means you spend an insane amount of time with your work family.  It’s not uncommon that many of your friends also work with you.

As with any workplace, someone will be in a leadership role.  In this case, probably a manager, a veterinarian, or lead technician.  Frankly, anyone can be looked upon as a leader.  These are the people who will help glue the team together as you kick ass and save lives.  But they’re also the people who sometimes have to make hard choices such as who gets the holiday shift, who works with who, and in some cases, who doesn’t work at the hospital any longer.

The complication arises when that leader is also friends with the staff.  The lines between “friend” and “boss” get blurred and feelings may be hurt.  It can be exhausting for those in-between people…the ones that don’t have full authority but are the shoulder to cry on or complain to.  Rest assured, these types of relationships get tested but ultimately the end goal of exemplary patient care and customer service must not be forgotten.

Let’s be real for a second.  Your co-workers are those who will be there for you when you have a reason to celebrate and come to work happy.  They’ll also be there when something is wrong….and more often than not, this is the case which we hear.  My spouse is a jerk.  My kids are being a pain.  The “other vet team member” makes more than me.  My vacation got denied.  The boss is a jerk.  I’m looking for a new job.  The list of complaints can go on, but hey, there’s an animal in the clinic that needs our help.  So when you get to work, check your s**t at the door.  Focus on the patients and save the drama for after-work drinks.

It’s not that I don’t care about you.  Enough distractions though and ultimately our patients or the business might be affected negatively.  It’s not worth it.  If everyone does what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to do it, we can have a more positive and productive work environment.  But you might think I’m a jerk for asking you to do your job properly.  Hey, I’m your friend, but do your damn job.

The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

For as much as we as veterinary professionals speak so highly about the desire to support one another, in my experience, that support often comes with conditions. We support those who do what we do, but can be downright hostile to those who do something we are not familiar with.

When I first started working as a vet assistant in high school, I had this awkward feeling about my job. I enjoyed my job immensely, and I even had a fantastic work environment, but I never quite felt that loved my job. At the time, I assumed this would change once I moved forward and was given more responsibility and taught new skills – it didn’t.

My sophomore year of undergrad, I was working in a rural mixed animal practice. I thought maybe the tone shift would be exactly what I needed to finally love what I was doing. After all, before I had only had experience in suburban small animal practices, and my new place of employment could not have been more different. Perhaps this was where I would find my calling.

I quit after two months.

After the failure of that job I felt broken. I didn’t understand why even though I had always felt my place was in vet med, I couldn’t connect with, I couldn’t love, any job I had had so far. I decided to stop applying to work in veterinary practices. I just knew, no matter how much I wanted to love it, it was not for me.

I was still a college student in need for a job, so I applied to other animal related jobs around my campus. The first one I was offered was simply titled “Animal Caretaker”. It turned out to be a job as an animal husbandry technician for the university’s research department, and the pay was excellent. I took the job, expecting to at least not be broke for the rest of my undergrad and then go back to contemplating what I was going to do with my life.

I loved this job.

Something about this job just immediately clicked with me. I enjoyed every second I was at work, and for once in my life I was actually excited to get up and go to a job. Working in animal research, this was my calling, I could feel it.

I was elated by my new discovery – until I decided to tell people about it.

All the support and comradery I had felt from other veterinary professionals has suddenly vanished. People asked me why I would want to do something so evil with my life. Why would I want to hurt animals for a living? What kind of person would want work in animal research? They always said those words like they were a derogatory expletive. I felt shame.

I didn’t understand. I was a good person, I drove an hour and half to adopt a dog from a high-kill shelter while I was still in college. I loved animals. I didn’t see my job as evil. Without research, we wouldn’t have all of the products and technology we use in our profession, but no one else seemed to see this.

After that, I stopped talking about my job to other veterinary professionals I met. I would either say nothing or lie about what I did. In fact, after talking to my coworkers, they even recommend not being honest with other people about what we did, unless you wanted to risk backlash.

I still love working in research with all my heart. I’m working towards my next certification and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. But I just wish I had the freedom to talk about what I do just like everyone else can.

I shouldn’t feel ashamed for working in research, and we still have a long way to come as a profession if we truly want to make each other all feel supported, and not just the ones who do exactly what we do.

The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SAY ANONYMOUSLY?

Submit your article to editor@drandyroark.com!

In three years of residency, I’ve lost two friends to suicide; one former coworker, and one classmate. I wasn’t permitted to go to either funeral due to clinical obligations. The experiences prompted me to write the following:

Stop pretending that a normal work schedule is five consecutive 12 hr work days, not counting on-call responsibilities. Stop pretending that a scheduled work day only involves what you do for that day’s patients, ignoring the preparatory work that must be completed for the next work day’s patients.

Stop pretending that the only work that’s done is daily clinical, ignoring the supplemental work associated with the program and what necessary for the career and preparation for the specialty board exam – which is kind of the point after all. Stop pretending that unhappiness at being taken advantage of is unreasonable. How dare we say anything?  Stop ignoring the underlying situation prompting the observations and comments. Stop setting us up to fail.

Want us to not burn out? We don’t try to. We don’t go out of our way to pretend that we do what we do because we want to have compassion fatigue, neuroses, and untreated, unrecognized, denied mental health issues. The system dictates our priorities. We’re accustomed to succeeding. We recognize what’s necessary to succeed, regardless of how self-destructive it is. The penalty for pointing out systemic deficiencies is having our future threatened. Rather than acknowledging the validity of our feelings and reactions to our situation, we’re set up to fail.

Four day work weeks. Quarterly mental health check ups with independent professionals who can refer us for further therapy if indicated, without professional penalty. Relief from routine clinical duties if on call work exceeds a certain threshold time. Nothing earth shattering, but ideas that may keep us alive.

The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

Welcome to There, I Said It- a column where we give you, the reader, a chance to get something off your chest in an anonymous fashion. Be it embarrassing, frustrating, or just something you don’t want to admit out loud, it still might make someone else having a bad day feel just a bit better. If you have a story of your own, unburden yourself at editor@drandyroark.com.

By Anonymous

I sat on my living room couch, phone in hand, staring at the number I had queued up. My thumb just a half inch from the dial symbol, but I was frozen there. I couldn’t seem to make my thumb press the button. The number on the screen was that of my university’s student counseling services.  I was two weeks from the end of my second year of vet school. I was navigating the curriculum well enough, but my nose was barely above water. I was stressed, anxious, and feared I had a mental illness. I needed help, but I was terrified to ask for it.

All I had to do was hit that call button, make an appointment, and show up. I could have help with confidentiality, and the service was free of charge. However, my mind was flooding with a hundred different thoughts of why I should put down the phone, ignore the problem, and just keep treading water. What if my family found out I had a problem? What if people in my class found out? What if clinicians or professors found out? Would that hold me back in my profession? Did I really even have a problem, or was I just too weak to handle vet school? Maybe I am not as strong as I thought; maybe I am not cut out to be a veterinarian.

I spent the next hour alternating between sitting on the couch staring at my phone screen and pacing the living room, trying to dig deep enough to find the courage to make that call. “Just make the call, you can do this,” I told myself. “No, this is silly, you don’t need help.” Eventually I made the call; I scheduled an appointment. Against all of my fear, anxiousness, and trembling hands, I went to that first appointment, and I kept going back nearly every week. Showing up to each session got a little bit easier. I was slightly less nervous and embarrassed about having a problem and needing help.

There is still a long battle ahead, but I am fighting, and I will be a veterinarian.

I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I am not overly neat or organized, and I do not wash my hands every thirty seconds. I am fixated on patterns. Whether it be a physical or mental motion, I repeat the same acts over and over and over, then usually over again like a broken record. I have done this for almost as long as I can remember. When I was younger it was just an annoyance, something I felt I had to do, but I still led a relatively normal life. Once I entered college and began the treacherous pre-vet curriculum, the struggle became more obvious. Now it wasn’t just an annoyance, it was a malicious distraction that demanded the majority of my time and attention. I dredged my way through undergrad, but in vet school the obsessions and compulsions were further amplified as the stress accumulated.

I spent a large portion of my life not knowing that these obsessions and compulsions were symptoms of a mental illness. As a child I didn’t realize just how abnormal they were, and in college I assumed everyone struggled this much. During my first year of vet school, I heard a radio interview piece on NPR; the interviewee suffered from OCD. As he described his symptoms I began to have a realization: there is someone else out there who understands this! I might not be alone! There could be an explanation for the turmoil that has afflicted my mind for so many years.

I am fortunate enough to attend a college of veterinary medicine that values mental health. We have a representative from student counseling services that dedicates a portion of their schedule to service the vet school exclusively. If this opportunity were not so readily available, I may have never sought help. I would still be fighting a battle alone, silently, without the confidence that I could persevere.

I am a male third year veterinary student, less than twenty one months from entering practice. One of my main goals as a practicing veterinarian will be to change the stigma surrounding mental health of the veterinary profession. In an occupation where we are so dedicated to caring for and saving the lives of others, we often forget the importance of caring for ourselves. We may perform superhero like acts, but we are not superheroes. We are human beings, we are imperfect, we may struggle with mental illness, and sometimes the bravest thing we can do is to admit that. It is the responsibility of our profession to make sure that when one of our members makes that admission there is a compassionate community to turn to for the service and support they desperately need.

The views and opinions featured on There, I Said It are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.