You regularly update your clinical skills to become a better veterinarian/nurse. Are your leaders developing their skills to become better veterinary leaders?
I caught up with a vet friend this week who I mentored during her first year of practice. Like many of us, she started her vet career in a privately owned small-to-medium-sized small animal clinic. Two or three vets a day, five or six support staff, owner-manager, suburban vetting with middle-class clients who love their pets, but with all the limitations we are all too familiar with.
It was a pretty stock-standard vet job, with all the normal joys and challenges. Lots of good intentions and less-than-perfect execution. A bit more quiet resentment than productive conflict, with gossip being the most prevalent form of communication. I felt well-equipped to provide guidance as I’d spent most of my adult life in a similar environment as many of you reading this have.
Nothing in our many conversations ever struck me as particularly unusual. Management style and team dynamics and culture – warts and all – seemed pretty much par for the course. I know there’s better out there, but I’ve certainly seen worse.
But a few things did get my attention:
She was a mature graduate
My friend was not your standard wet-behind-the-ears, first-job-ever new grad. She had a career and a life before this one, with three kids and a previous job with a lot of responsibility and stress, but then pivoted towards her childhood dream job later in life. What struck me (and her!) was how hard this vetting thing was. Not the fixing animals part – all the stuff on the periphery.
I often wonder if we are trapped in our little bubble of ‘woe is us – this is so hard’ just because most of us have never done anything else. I’ve had many conversations with friends in other professions that make me think what we deal with is small fry. But here was my mentee telling me that, no, this IS really hard. Physically and emotionally draining. I remember her asking me in our fourth meeting, two months into her new ‘dream career’: “Is this normal? Is it meant to feel like this?”
(The sad thing is that the reflex answer in my head was: ‘Well, yeah, it kinda is!’)
She’s now pivoted into a new role away from GP work
After a few years in GP-land, my friend has pivoted into a new role. She’s in a support role for a specialist service where she’s also getting trained in that specialty. She works the same number of hours weekly for about the same pay but in a very different work environment.
Here’s a summary of her life update this week:
“I feel like a new person. I have energy for stuff: – for my work, for my kids, and myself. I go to the gym every day – I’ve lost 21 kilograms because I’m not exhausted whenever I’m not at work. I’m excited to go to work. I didn’t realise what a witch I was being with my family in the last few years. I had no idea how tired and drained I actually was.”
Of course, I asked a lot of whys
Why do you think that is?
What specifically was so draining at the last job?
Why is this one so much better?
Is it because you see fewer clients per day / have fewer money conversations?
Are you just feeling energised because you are actively learning?
What is it about the team that is so much better?
She couldn’t put her finger on it. But a few things kept floating to the top of the conversation:
1. Culture.
A leader who actively works on making the team better. This means getting outside help with this. Not once, because there’s a crisis and half the nursing team has fled. All the time. BEFORE things go wrong.
2. Support.
Not just: “I believe in you – you’ve got this.” Actual support.: “Let me show you. Now let me do it with you. Now you do it – but I’m right here.”
So here’s my big thing to think about…
Is the standard business model for how we run private general practice destined to fail?
Because the things that we often seem to be missing require time and resources. That means money. (I don’t know many clinics that can afford an extra vet just to be there in a support role.) That money has to be generated somehow, and in a private for-profit business, that usually means we need our clients to pay more. This means our clients will complain, or the animals we want to help won’t get helped, and our morals will rebel, which is the other major stressor for many of us.
It’s a catch-22, and I don’t really know the solution.
But I do have a few final thoughts:
And note – this is not meant to disparage our veterinary leaders. It’s a bloody hard job, and most people are trying their best. I know – I’ve been there and did it badly!
No, apparently it’s not normal to feel that way.
It might be ‘the norm’, but work doesn’t have to feel like that.
Culture. Culture. Culture. If it’s not supporting you, it’s hurting you.
You are putting in the hours to get better at your job (you are, right?)
What is your leader – your boss or your manager – doing to get better at theirs? (Leaders, what are you doing?) If the answer is nothing, start looking around for a leader who is. No leader is perfect, but acknowledging this and actively working to improve it is so much better than the head-in-the-sand approach.
This post first appeared in The Vet Vault 3.2.1 email 4.10.2024
