The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success

Veterinary work is physically demanding, yet chronic neck, back, and wrist pain are often treated as unavoidable parts of the profession. In this episode of Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss the physical demands of clinical practice, from repetitive strain from dentistry, surgery, to the physical toll of floor-based exams and patient handling. The conversation explores practical adjustments, movement strategies, and workplace habits that can help veterinary professionals reduce physical wear and tear, prevent injury, and support career longevity.

Resources and contact information

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, the focus shifts from motivation to what actually sustains healthy habits. Hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss why relying on motivation often falls short and how small, consistent changes, supportive environments, and realistic expectations can help veterinary professionals build lasting physical and emotional resilience.

This episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success focuses on a familiar challenge in veterinary medicine: maintaining proper nutrition during long, unpredictable workdays. As clinic schedules fill and breaks become limited, meals are often replaced with quick, convenient options.

Cohosts Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, and Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, discuss how those daily choices can affect more than energy levels, including cognitive function, client communication, and team interactions. The episode also outlines practical approaches to help veterinary professionals build more consistent eating habits in a busy clinical setting.

Why do so many workplace frustrations in veterinary medicine feel hard to explain? Building on episode 11 of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, delve deeper into the hidden cost of unspoken expectations—how assumptions, unclear standards, and mismatched “mental bars” quietly erode performance, relationships, and culture. Together, they unpack why resentment is often a signal of unmet expectations, how identity can get tangled up in competence, and what practical steps veterinary professionals can take to create clarity, agreement, and healthier team dynamics.

There is a veterinary technician — you probably know her, or someone exactly like her — who has been at the practice for 11 years. She knows which cats will bite before they're out of the carrier, which clients need five extra minutes, and how to talk a panicked owner off a ledge at 4:45 on a Friday. She is, by every reasonable measure, indispensable. And that is precisely the problem.

Veterinary medicine selects for competence. Veterinary professionals study for it, test for it, get judged by it on every shift. The more issues one individual solves, the more challenges find their way to them. The more people rely on them, the less they learn to function without them. And somewhere in that feedback loop, the practice's greatest asset can become its most significant bottleneck.

Cohost Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, and Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, call this pattern "over-functioning." In this episode of The Resilient Vet, they make the case that this system can burn out individuals, stall team development, and make entire organizations more fragile than they appear.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet Podcast: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss the impact of catabolic energy on veterinary teams. Edwards explains that the exhaustion many veterinary professionals feel is often tied less to their workload and more to the breaking-down, draining nature of catabolic energy. Although useful for short-term survival, this state becomes a primary driver of burnout when it becomes a long-term default.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss how physical and emotional preparation before shifts can help veterinary professionals become more resilient in their careers. They explain that resilience is not a "switch" one flips, nor a product that can be bought. Rather, it is a skill set developed through intentional physical and emotional warm-ups before a shift even begins.

They also explore the concept of the “veterinary athlete”: The idea that surviving the physical and emotional demands of a long shift requires the same kind of intentional warm-up and training an athlete brings to game day. To help veterinary professionals build this resilience, Shaw and Edwards share tips and exercises that veterinary professionals can use to strengthen their mental and physical resilience in their roles.