A beautiful tribute to Sophia Yin, created by Veteos with MightyVet & Not One More Vet.
Wellness
What I Learned From Getting Stood Up at a Conference
I’m sitting in an empty room at a conference trying to decide if I’m upset that no one showed to hear my lecture. I’m about 90% not taking it personally, and 10% feeling small and unimportant.
Logically I know that it’s Sunday morning (the last day of the conference), and this was a very specialized lecture placed in the first time slot of the morning. This is a recipe for disaster. People often skip the first lecture of the day because it’s too early. I know, because I’ve been one of those people. Ten am seems so much less annoying than driving to get somewhere for 8 or 9, especially on a weekend.
There’s a little bit of disbelief and delight that I’m being paid to sit quietly in an empty room for an hour. How many of my fellow veterinary professionals just wish they could do that for free? What should I do? Meditate? Sleep? Catch up on social media? No, I’m choosing to write an article (i.e. work). Call it a great work ethic if you like. Personally, I think there’s something wrong with me.
So I’m writing an article and being mindful of my breathing (now I’m multitasking – seriously?!?). I’m trying to find the lesson in this moment. I also have three more lectures, and a tiny voice in my head is asking if anyone will show. Is it possible I’ll have four hours of solitude? (spoiler alert – NO – I’m talking about compassion fatigue later, so everyone will be here).
I think the lesson here is to seize the moment. Instead of stressing out and sweating and pacing – I found something to fill the time. I rested my voice (and my aching feet). I wrote. I thought. I breathed. Feeling content with your circumstances isn’t about what you intended to happen. It’s about finding a way to seek the beauty, fortune, or peace in what IS happening. Sometimes we are given a gift in the guise of a loss or disappointment, but if we focus on the loss, we can miss its sidekick: opportunity.
I’m not advocating for “grin and bear it” or always seeking the positive. Ignoring a small or large disappointment isn’t generally the best tactic. However, wallowing in it doesn’t exactly provide great results. Here’s my advice:
Acknowledging that this is something that really upsets you comes first.
Being ok with the fact that you are disappointed, hurt, or upset and loving yourself anyway is second.
Looking for the lesson is third. If you can’t find a lesson, just allow yourself to “grieve” for as long as you need to and then move forward.
Veterinary professionals tend to gravitate toward dissatisfaction, especially with their own performance (at everything). This does not in any way lead to peace or happiness. The next time you are disappointed, look for a way around it, rather than continuing to throw yourself against a closed door. Look at what lies beneath what you want and you may find exactly what you need.
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.
Are You Feeding the Wolves of Vet Med?
One story circling social media is “The Story of Two Wolves.” In this story, a boy walks with an elder and begins telling of a struggle. Two wolves are fighting within him. The first wolf is made up of all negative emotions; anger, hate, ego, and maliciousness.
The second wolf encompasses positive emotion; love, kindness, compassion and empathy. The boy asks his elder which wolf will survive. The elder simply replies, “The one you feed.”
Deep stuff right there. A wonderful story to remind us that our energy contributes to our emotions. But if you’re not into philosophical musings because you are busy in real life, I would like to break this down for you.
These wolves do not just represent our human emotions. They represent small situations we deal with every day. The evil wolves of vet med can be an angry client, coworkers who treat you like crap, 1-star ratings, or a toxic environment.
The good wolf is the client who brings you donuts, the parvo puppy going home after hospitalization, a coworker who teaches you or learning something new. Any life situation or clinic situation has their own versions of evil and good.
So now let’s talk about feeding them. We’ve all had our victories. Seeing a patient who was critically ill respond to treatment walk out the door is one of the most amazing feelings in the world. In those moments we feel like we created magic and our faith in goodness is restored. But it’s fleeting at times.
We experience it and then we move on. We talk to our family about it with dinner. But then the day ends, and we forget about it to a degree.
We all have that one client. The one who doesn’t want to comply with recommendations and is downright rude to the staff. A client who seems to enjoy talking down to others and completely ignoring any attempt to help their pet. The client who gets the team in a tizzy and then staff needs to vent. So, they talk about how awful this person is or how rude they are. And then, one more staff member joins in and then another.
Now we have a full-on venting session that has taken up a huge chunk of our time and no one has left feeling any better.
What wolf do you feed? Do you feed the wolf who encourages, is kind or makes you realize you have the best job in the world? Or do you feed the wolf who leaves you feeling angry, irritated and losing your faith in humanity? Which one do you talk about more? Who do you think of when your head hits the pillow at night?
When we deal with these wolves, it is so important to remember that we get to choose how we feel. We can look at our victories, our amazing work, or our little moments of happiness. Or we can focus on the inconveniences and problems we deal with every day.
We choose where we invest our energy and where we invest it is important in getting through this crazy world of vet med. The battle will always be there. Look for your blessings and remember that we determine what wolf lives in us.
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.
10 Things You Should Know About Suicide
We skirt the cage this tiger circles in. We’ve been taught over decades to walk carefully around this topic and its people like they are in the middle of a mandala and the path is eggshells. I remember being told if we talked about it, then people would do it. We’d best just keep quiet.
It triggered me even then. If someone is asking you to keep a secret and it’s not about something fun, something is wrong. Alarm bells should be going off. Why don’t you want to talk about this? What makes you so uncomfortable? I suspect that it’s not having all the answers. I suspect it’s being afraid of saying the wrong things. I suspect it’s feeling responsible. I suspect it’s helplessness and a lack of understanding. I remember thinking, “Why don’t they want to talk about me?”
What can you do?
You can educate yourself about suicide, about symptoms and signs. You can have open, non-judgmental conversations with your colleagues and your co-workers about suicide. You can speak up against the pervasive suicide shaming and misinformation in our culture.
There are plenty of myths that are still pervasive in culture in general about suicide and suicidality. Let’s debunk them here, not for the first time, and not for the last, but as a solid reminder:
Myth: People who try to kill themselves are mentally ill.
Fact: Mental health, well-being, and balance are topics that are just now being brought to the forefront of conversations about suicide in the veterinary profession. While mental illness may predispose an individual to suicidal thoughts, many suicidal individuals are not struggling with mental illness. They may instead be suffering from extreme distress and emotional pain, which are not necessarily signs of mental illness. The stigma surrounding mental health crisis, suicidality, and depression prevents these individuals from speaking out as openly as we need them to and they need to get help.
Myth: People who talk about suicide don’t do it.
Fact: Most everyone who attempts suicide has given verbal clues. No matter how casually offhand comments are made, they should be taken seriously.
Myth: If a person has made a plan to kill themselves, nothing is going to stop them.
Fact: Suicide isn’t about dying. It’s about stopping pain. The impulse to end it all, however overpowering, does not last forever.
Myth: Talking about suicide may give someone the idea.
Fact: You don’t give a suicidal person ideas by talking about suicide. Removing the stigma surrounding the subject of suicide and discussing it openly is one of the most helpful things you can do.
Here are a few things I’d like you to know about suicide:
- We work in your clinics. We are your top performers. We work in industry. We are world-renowned speakers. You don’t just act shocked when we take our lives, you are shocked because you didn’t notice.
- We have gotten help and yes if we were prescribed medication we are probably taking it. This issue isn’t about getting into counseling or getting onto the right drug regimen. Those things help, but it’s deeper. Studies of suicide victims have shown that more than half had sought medical help in the six months prior to their deaths.
- Suicide isn’t selfish, but it also isn’t about you.
- Suicide isn’t cowardly either. It’s literally a choice someone made and it’s not your place to judge.
- Committing to suicide is not a brief process, it takes time, thought, research, and a great deal of soul searching. Suicide is for so many people the choice they are making to escape unbearable pain.
- There are warning signs. If you see us exhibiting these behaviors, reach out. Please let us know that you are concerned about us and why. Ask how you can help.
- Don’t know what to say, that’s okay. Dial the crisis line number and sit next to them while they talk.
- Don’t minimize how this feels for us. It’s totally okay to say, “I don’t have any idea what you’re going through” or to ask, “how does this feel” and “what does tomorrow look like?” But telling us “we have so much to live for” isn’t the right tact.
- We aren’t contagious. When one of us speaks up, it is a bright light in a dark place and it allows for others to speak up. While we’ve made tremendous roads regarding mental health in veterinary medicine, it’s time that the stigma surrounding suicide fall aside.
- Suicidality doesn’t have to define who we are and it absolutely does not have to define who we were.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – Suicide prevention telephone hotline funded by the U.S. government. Provides free, 24-hour assistance. 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Crisis Text Hotline – Text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the USA, anytime, about any type of crisis.
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.
A Note to the Crying Nurse
Last week I worked with a freshly-minted veterinary nurse who recently joined our practice. Anna has all the skills she needs and an attitude and work ethic that I admire. I’m thrilled she joined our clinic.
At 5:30 p.m. on Friday, a woman in tears walked into the building. Her dog, Maggie, had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer months earlier. Surgery at the time had removed the primary tumor and made Maggie feel much better.
Unfortunately, now it was back. I could feel a mass in her abdomen and knew why she had recently given up eating. As Maggie trembled in fits, her owner and I decided to put her to sleep. Anna did skillful and compassionate work in her assistance.
When it was over, I found Anna gathering supplies to make a clay paw impression of Maggie’s foot, noticeably avoiding the rest of the team in the treatment room. She looked up when I asked if she was okay, and I saw the tears. She hurriedly wiped them away.
In that moment, everyone in the room wanted to make her feel better. There was a chorus of encouraging comments like, “It’s okay,” “We’ve all been there,” and “You did a great job.” Finally, one of the senior nurses said, “In no time, you’ll be dead inside like the rest of us.” We all chuckled, even Anna.
It was past closing time by this point, and another nurse who was already staying late shooed Anna out the door with promises of finishing up for her. I know Anna was still upset when she left. I think it was more about embarrassment over showing her grief than the actual grief itself.
I’ve thought about that afternoon a lot since then, and about what it means when young doctors and nurses weep while the veterans work on.
If you’re new to veterinary medicine and you’re worried that the sadness you feel or the emotions you show when animals suffer or die are somehow a signal that you’re not cut out for this work, I’d like to put your mind at ease. Listen: there is nothing wrong with feeling sorrow or crying.
Tears — or lack thereof — have nothing to do with your levels of strength, maturity, toughness, or resilience. Honestly, I might worry about you if you didn’t have these struggles as you enter this career.
The truth is, you will always have cases that bring you to tears. After a whole career in veterinary medicine, you will probably still choke up when you euthanize someone’s especially beloved pet when you see the dying animal that looks just like the pet you loved and lost, or when you say goodbye to pets you’ve known since they were kittens or puppies or foals. We all have our soft spots, and we always will.
When the sorrow comes, I find it helpful not to resist it. Fighting the urge to cry is frustrating and futile. (I do, however, have a general rule about not showing more emotion that the pet owner in front of that pet owner.) Instead, take a few minutes to reflect and understand why you feel so strongly. Facing and acknowledging your pain is the only way to move past it.
It’s perfectly normal to feel the pain of cases that poke into our own vulnerabilities. For example: when I see young families losing a pet, my heart absolutely breaks. I’m not ashamed of that, and I know I feel this way because I remember the pain my own family recently went through when we lost our faithful dog. I also know I’ll get past this pain as my family moves on, and I remind myself that my clients will, too. As I focus on that, these cases will get much easier.
Thankfully, the more time we spend in veterinary medicine, the more we come to understand that death is rarely the worst outcome. When I began in practice, I deeply mourned the passing of every one of my patients. No matter their age and condition, I felt their passing as my own loss.
What changed is that over time I gained a lot of experience with pets who didn’t die. In those cases, I saw what suffering truly looks like. Later, I went through experiences where I prayed every night that a pet would peacefully pass, only to sigh in the morning when I looked into that pet’s lucid, sorrowful eyes. I came to know pets whose quality of life ended many days before they got the peace they were waiting for. You will, unfortunately, know these pets too, and it will change how you see death.
This is why the young doctors and nurses cry while the others keep working. It’s experience, simple as that. We will always hurt when pets pass before they should. We will feel for the families they have left behind, and we will remember pain from our own lives in their loss. These emotions should be celebrated as a mark of our enduring humanity. Blessedly, for most of us, sorrow will eventually become tempered by perspective and familiarity with both death and its alternatives.
I wish for everyone working with pets to feel sorrow because this means they have not run out of compassion. Let us never forget that pets were not meant to be on this earth for very long, and losing the best pet in the world is only sad because we once had the gift of knowing that blessed soul.
Five Things We Have to Stop Doing in Vet Med
1. Putting ourselves last.
We all care immensely about our jobs. We care for our patients, clients and coworkers. But we often put ourselves last on the list. We must find ways to put ourselves first. Listen to your body. When you feel stressed, anxious or exhausted your body is telling you something is wrong.
Are you putting your physical, emotional and mental health first? Are you leaving work at work when you walk out the clinic door? Are you doing things that you enjoy? We care so much for others that we forget to care for ourselves. This isn’t sustainable. Make yourself a priority! You are worth it!
2. Resisting change.
Back in the old days, we boxed cats down for anesthesia. We used muscle to restrain with the intent of getting the job done. Then we began to see a shift in how we handled cases. We use chemical restraint and practice low-stress techniques to give our patients a better hospital experience.
Change happens. It helps us grow and push forward. It brings innovative ideas and maybe even better ways to do things. We cannot dig our heels into the ground and cling onto how we’ve “always done things”. We must come up with ideas and be willing to let our coworkers feel safe to bring up ideas. Without change there is no growth. We must always be willing to grow.
3. Not speaking up when something seems wrong.
I remember feeling off about a case one day. My gut feeling was this patient wasn’t safe to go under anesthesia. Blood work was normal. There was a heart murmur that had been addressed by the cardiologist. The patient was bright and alert. Something felt wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I asked the doctor what they thought about doing radiographs before anesthesia. They let me go with it.
Turns out the patient had abdominal fluid and needed more than just the elective procedure they came in for that day. I thank my lucky stars that I was willing to say something and that my doctor was willing to listen. Our gut feelings and senses are a mystery on why they work the way they do. And sometimes they are wrong. But by speaking up when something doesn’t sit right, we can continue to be our patient’s advocate.
4. Tolerating bad behavior.
Talking to so many of my colleagues, I have found that many of them have been bullied, spoken down to or made miserable by someone in the clinic. Maybe it’s a boss, coworker or even a client. But many of those who were experiencing this nasty behavior didn’t say or do anything. They put up with it and felt utterly helpless.
I’ve always believed that to make your garden grow, you must remove the weeds. When people are aggressive, abusive or just plain jerks, we must stop putting up with it. By allowing this behavior to happen in clinics or thinking “It’s just part of the field,” we are condoning negative behavior. Make your garden beautiful and don’t put up with those who try and destroy it.
5. Getting lost in our mistakes.
We all want to be right. We are overachievers and a lot of our self-worth comes from being right. We are human beings. We will make mistakes. Those mistakes will haunt us forever. But what we do with those mistakes is crucial to our success. We cannot beat ourselves up over the past.
The best thing we can get from a mistake is to the ability to learn from it. We know that our mistakes can have a huge magnitude. It’s ok to feel guilty or think of what we could have done differently. But don’t live there and don’t let it immobilize you.
This is truly an amazing profession we get to be a part of. We have endless opportunities to learn, grow and evolve into the professional we were meant to be. The most important thing is not to just survive this field, but to be able to provide amazing care for your entire career. When we stop doing these five things, we increase our longevity in this field. I want to see you all do what you do best, for as long as you possibly can. I want to see you happy. You have the power to make it so.