The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

Many of us struggle with attaching a dollars-and-cents value to this ‘fixing animals’ thing that we do for a living. We tell ourselves stories about how our work is a labor of love, about ethics and about the noble nature of our profession, and we underestimate the value of our skills and knowledge. But stories can become limiting beliefs that hold us back from realizing our full potential as veterinary professionals and as thriving humans, which all-too-often ends up with this story that Dr Olivia James hears over and over in her coaching work: "I’m overworked, I’m poor, and I’m lonely."

Dr Olivia James is an equine dentistry specialist, former practice owner, founder and director of the educational platforms The Veterinary Dental Company and The Equine Practice Company and mentor and teacher though the business masterminds and coaching groups she hosts for equine practice owners, and in this episode she helps change our stories and beliefs around valuing our services. Olivia also provides practical strategies for reviewing what you charge in your business. Ultimately, this is a conversation about avoiding 'overworked, poor, and lonely.'

Topic list:

2:50 What has Olivia been up to since our last conversation.

7:20 Happy/ Thrive /Flourish: What are we actually aiming for?

9:20 Loneliness in practice.

14:40 How Olivia learnt how to charge.

19:50 Life changes that can happen when your business works better.

26:10 Why it sometimes makes more sense to invest money in the stock market than in buying a practice.

29:10 The mental blocks that make it hard for us to charge appropriately .

30:40 When clients accuse us of 'just being in it for the money.

34:30 Getting the team on board with price changes in your business.

36:50 The three ways of setting your charges.

42:10 The things we commonly fail to account for in working out cost of service.

44:30 The ethics of what we charge.

47:40 How to decide which prices to adjust.

50:30 Tying business to what matter most.

56:00 Olivia's book choices.

59:00 Olivia's answer to the one question.

Join our community of Vet Vault Nerds to lift your clinical game and get your groove back with our up to date easy-to-consume clinical episodes at vvn.supercast.com.

Visit thevetvault.com for the show notes and resources for this episode.

Join us in at Vets on Tour in Wanaka, New Zealand on 13 - 18 August 2023 for great CE, live podcasting and snow... lots of snow!

This episode from our clinical series is brought to you by Elanco, makers of the broadest range of parasiticides including Advocate, Milbemax, Seresto and Credelio Plus.

"The question about the biochemistry is really interesting, because what your question now is, is 'what is it, and where is it?' And the problem that we have is that the liver enzymes aren't gonna tell us, because it's really hard to separate hepatic from post-hepatic on bloods. ALP is very insensitive in the cat and will go up with both hepatic and post-hepatic. ALT will go up with hepatic and post-hepatic. Bilirubin will be up. So what?!"

We recorded this case-based interactive session about how to work up the jaundiced cat with one of the world's leading Small Animal Medicine specialists and teachers, ⁠Prof Jill Maddison⁠ at session our live event in 2022.

Prof Jill Jill Maddison, BVSc, DipVetClinStud, PhD, SFHEA, MRCVS, is a professor of general practice, the director of professional development, and the BVetMed and CertAVP course director at Royal Veterinary College. She is also a coordinator for London Vet Show and is a consultant at a local veterinary practice and at Beaumont Sainsbury Animal Hospital in London. Dr Maddison is the senior editor of the second edition of Small Animal Clinical Pharmacology and the senior editor of Clinical Reasoning in Small Animal Practice. She has lectured worldwide on clinical problem-solving, small animal internal medicine, and clinical pharmacology. 

In this session she helps us reason through a case of jaundice in a cat to create a deeper understanding, rather than a simple list of facts. She also shifts some long-standing beliefs around diagnostic testing in liver disease in both dogs and cats.

Topic list:

5:07 Where to begin your workup.

6:05 Defining the problem and localising the problem: Pre-hepatic, hepatic or post-hepatic?

9:17 How much does dehydration actually affect PCV?

10:43 Bilirubin - how useful is it?

"It’s the most over-interpreted test I reckon. I have so many vets tell me, “Oh, the bilirubin is 16, it has to have a problem with its liver…” No, it probably just has inflammatory disease."

13:14 Dd’s for hepatic disease in cats.

14:20 Dd’s for post-hepatic causes of jaundice.

16:04 Biochem in jaundice: ALP, ALT, GGT.

"The problem that we have is that the liver enzymes aren't going to tell us."

19:51 Why bile acids are useless in the diagnosis of liver disease.

"The bile acids don't tell you anything more than you already know. There is no relationship between the level of bile acids and the prognosis or reversibility of the lesion."

24:25 Can't I just trial-treat?

26:16 Ultrasound.

28:27 Signalment: how useful is it?

29:36 Cholesterol and liver disease.

30:52 Pancreatic lipase and pancreatitis in cats.

"What we found was that we had 24% false negatives. So we had a quarter of our cats who had what seemed to be pancreatitis that did not have an increased Pli."

36:54 Hepatic lipidosis.

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Visit thevetvault.com for the show notes for this episode.

Join us in at Vets on Tour in Wanaka, New Zealand on 13 - 18 August 2023 for great CE, more live podcasting and snow... lots of snow!

Dr Andrew Ciccolini is a Medical Director at the National Mill Dog Rescue, a non-profit that rescues and rehomes discarded breeding dogs, and also the Director of Non-Profit Initiatives at Galaxy Vets. His background includes serving in the U.S. Army, where he worked his way up from Associate Veterinarian to VP of Operations. In addition to his veterinary degree, he also has a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership.

In this conversation Andrew takes us on a wild ride through his career with detours into what it’s like to be a military vet, working with high-performance dogs, why choosing not-for-profit work works for him, why it might work for you, and how incorporating some of it in your business might work for your team. We draw on Andrew’s military experience and his leadership Master's to talk about leadership styles, finding the right ways to motivate a vet team beyond money (but also including money!), and Andrew tells us about his current work for the Galaxy Vets Foundation to support pet owners in Ukraine. 

Time markers: 

1. Bad decisions, good stories. 6:00

2. Life as an army vet in the US. 9:00

3. Working with high-performance dogs 12:15

4. What Andrew learnt in his time as a military vet. 14:46

5. Leadership lessons from the military. 16:00

6. Can you change your leadership style?  23:19

7. Motivating veterinary teams: beyond the $$$'s.  26:41

8. National Mill Dog Rescue. 31:40

9. Dealing with 'divided' teams. 33:30

10. Not-for-profit work. 35:54

11. Galaxy Vets Foundation and its work in Ukraine. 39:58

12. What we've learnt about Telemedicine from their work in Ukraine. 41:07

13. Rediscovering your passion through charity work. 43:24

14. Being okay with being okay. 49:10

15. The pass-along question. (Chihuahuas!)  53:00

16. Andrew's podcast choices.  56:20

17. The one question. 56:56

Join the mailing list to hear about new opportunities at Galaxy Vets here, or volunteer to provide telehealth services to the pets and pet owners of Ukraine here.

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Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear, please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. 

Dr Steve Joslyn is a specialist veterinary radiologist and tech enthusiast with more than two decades of experience consulting for referral, teaching, and general practice hospitals on four continents. Steve is highly regarded for his radiology work on designing imaging workflows and clinical 3D printing services, among other ground-breaking projects. Steve’s passion for technology and informatics led him to co-chair a joint American and European Radiology committee exploring the role AI has to play in veterinary diagnostic imaging. With his latest project, Vedi, Steve and his team have created a universal health record that locks patient data to an animal's existing microchip, revolutionizing the way veterinary data is collected and disseminated in an effort to fix what he sees as one of the biggest, yet insidious, problems in the industry today - the "patient-data disconnect." 

In this episode, Dr Steve takes us on a tour of the possibilities, current and coming, that new technologies offer us in the veterinary space. We discuss artificial intelligence in veterinary practice, including the pitfalls to look out for, with a focus on where AI fits into the world of diagnostic imaging. Steve also gives some useful insights for anyone considering a residency, specifically a career in diagnostic imaging, and he shares candidly about his personal experience with a work-related breakdown episode. And of course, we dive deep into why our current ways of managing patient data are broken, and how we're going to fix it. 

(Oh, and just for fun - Steve's bio was written by AI, and an AI image generator designed the episode artwork for this one!)

Time markers for our topics of discussion: 

00:00 - 09:20: Steve’s bad decision / good story answer. 

09:20 - 29:20: Is imaging a dream job? And the residency journey. 

29:20 - 34:50: Breakdown to breakthrough, and the birth of Vedi.

34:50 - 39:20: Love the work, hate the job? What Steve learnt from his experience of a work-related mental breakdown episode. 

39:30 - 60:00: A better way to manage our patient data. 

60:00 - 60:09: Getting better at learning from our mistakes and the benefits of MnM rounds. 

60:09 - 78:00: AI in veterinary science. 

78:00 - 86:00: AI radiology interpretation software.

86:00 - 93:00: Steve’s podcast and book choices.

93:00 - 98:00: The one question.

Join the team for Vets For Climate Action for their epic hike on the Larapinta Trek from 28 June - 3 July 2023.

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. 

Who loves neurology?! That little blob of skull-jelly and all the wires that come off it can be very confusing and very intimidating, even more so when we start talking about the encephalitis/meningitis complex of diseases that we encounter in our veterinary patients. To help us make sense of the different immune-mediated neurological diseases we’re joined by specialist veterinary neurologist Dr Sam Long. Dr Sam gives us a clear plan for getting to a diagnosis, including how to make sense of serology testing and how to use some new diagnostic tools available to us. He also shares his tips on a practical treatment plan, even if you don’t manage to confirm a diagnosis. 

Dr Long underwent his residency and specialist training in Glasgow in the UK.  Following his specialist training he undertook a PhD in canine brain cancer before moving to the United States to take up a position as head of the Section of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Veterinary Hospital.  In 2008 Dr Long returned to Melbourne to establish the University of Melbourne Veterinary Hospital’s first-ever Neurology clinical service and specialist training programme. In 2017 he established Melbourne’s first private referral neurology service and in 2020 moved his service to the Veterinary Referral Hospital in Dandenong.  His research interests are in the field of brain tumours, canine epilepsy, canine spinal cord trauma and canine degenerative myelopathy.  He supervises resident and registrar training and has authored more than 30 papers and multiple book chapters on veterinary neurology. 

This episode is supported by the SVS Pathology Network. Contact their veterinary pathologists to discuss a diagnostic plan for your neurology cases at:

QML/TML Vetnostics (QLD & Tas): 1300 838 765 [email protected]

Vetnostics (NSW & ACT): 02 9006 7468 [email protected]

ASAP Laboratory (VIC): 1300 838 522 [email protected]

Vetpath (WA): 08 9317 0777 [email protected]

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. 

How nice are you to your fellow veterinarians? It's likely that most of us feel that we're professional and supportive with a high degree of collegiality. But if this is true, then why is it that so many vets have experiences that don't fit with this narrative - feelings of being 'thrown under the bus'? 

Dr Denis Verwilghen is boarded in both large animal surgery and equine dentistry. He’s a graduate of the University of Ghent in Belgium and he’s currently the clinical director of Goulburn Valley Equine Hospital. The path between those two points has taken him on a journey across many continents, cultures and institutions and afforded him the opportunity to wear multiple hats within the vet space, and has given him a unique set of insights. And Denis feels that when it comes to collegiality, we can do better. 

In this conversation, we explore where and how we fall short when it comes to our working relationships with each other, including some less obvious ways in which we sometimes unintentionally undermine each other.  We also talk about career goals vs life goals and the personal cost of chasing these, Denis’s thoughts on making major life decisions, and what he’s learnt about happiness. 

Join us at the VECCS Spring Symposium in Port Douglas on 23-26 March for some serious deep dives on all things fluid therapy and critical care, live podcasting, and heaps of fun in the jungles of Far North Queensland. 

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

Get confident in your clinical game with our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts at vvn.supercast.com.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. 

We talk about well-being a lot on this podcast, but one thing we don’t really discuss all that often is financial well-being. And while it’s a truism that money can’t buy you happiness, I'm also of the opinion that if the number of shifts you do is purely determined by your level of debt rather than your level of enthusiasm that there is likely to be an increase in sadness! Which is why we invited one of the world’s foremost authorities on personal finance, Noel Whittaker, to set us off on the right path. 

This episode is a recording of a Q&A session that we did with Australian finance icon, Noel Whittaker, and several of the team from Animal Emergency Australia to help us with our burning money questions.  Noel is a bestselling author, finance and investment expert, radio broadcaster, newspaper columnist and public speaker. He reaches over three million readers each week through his columns in major Australian newspapers and magazines, and also broadcasts on over 50 radio stations. He has over 20 bestselling books, including a brand new one called 10 Simple Steps To Financial Freedom.  His first book, Making Money Made Simple, set sales records across the country and was named in The 100 Most Influential Books of the Twentieth Century. For 30 years, Noel was the Director of Whittaker Macnaught, one of Australia’s leading financial advisory companies, with more than two billion dollars under management. In 1988 Noel was named Australian Investment Planner of the Year and, in 2003, he was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal in recognition of his services to the financial services industry. In 2011 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the community in raising awareness of personal finance. He is currently an Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence with the Queensland University of Technology, as well as a committee member advising the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.

We're joined by the team from AEA to answer questions about financial topics relevant to most of us, including whether it's best to buy or rent, smash the mortgage or start investing, whether it makes sense for younger people to pay extra into their retirement fund, how to think about student debt, insurance planning, balancing debt with investment, planning advice for rising interest rates and much more.  (Quick translation for our non-Australian listeners: Super  = Retirement fund. HECS debt = Student loan) 

If you'd like your financial and professional journey to be as part of a veterinary team that does more than just talk about team well-being, listen to our job add at the end of episode 83 to find out about working with me in one of the best locations in Australia and AES Tanawha, or contact me at [email protected] to ask all your questions. 

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram.

This episode is supported by Animal Emergency Services Tanawha, part of the AEA group. If you're interested in the career opportunity discussed in this episode contact us at [email protected] to find out more. 

Dr Kate Toyer graduated as a vet in 1995, got married in 1996 and bought shares in a veterinary practice with her partner in 2000. In 2007 she gained Memberships of the ANZCVS in Veterinary Surgery and also the College Prize for her work on developing one of the first interactive online courses with the then PGF. (Sydney University CVE). She and her partner had 3 children, and what looked like the perfect veterinary life. But Kate felt like a fraud because the person living this dream life was a man called Adam. In 2011 Kate told her wife she wasn’t a “normal” guy, and in 2015 she started HRT and publicly transitioned, becoming the only 'out' trans female veterinarian in the world at the time. In 2016 Kate founded Australian Rainbow Veterinarians and Allies, a support and advocacy organisation for LGBTIQA+ people in the veterinary industry which she currently leads. In 2021 she joined forces with Dr Cam Raw to start The Veterinary Kaleidoscope Podcast where they explore the experiences of people from diverse backgrounds in the veterinary world. 

Dr Cam is a Palawa man with family links to the far south of Lutruwita (Tasmania). In the nine years since graduating he’s worked in cattle practice in Victoria, mixed practice in the UK, remote small animal practice in the Northern Territory and now in a teaching and research role in Melbourne. Providing veterinary care and building relationships in remote communities across the Top End have provided pathways to explore his cultural identity in ways he never imagined growing up, and a big focus of his current work relates to Indigenous representation, mental well-being and diversity and inclusion. 

Kate and Cam are the perfect guides through this conversation about inclusion and diversity, including what these terms mean, whether they are the same thing, how the vet profession fairs when it comes to being inclusive, and how we can get better at it. Dr Kate shares her story and tells us about how something called 'gender dysphoria' has parallels in the veterinary profession and how can choose euphoria. Cam tells us about the rediscovery of his own indigenous Australian culture, how his career journey deviated out of standard clinical practice and his work in remote Australian communities, and I get to ask all the questions you've probably always wanted to ask!

Attend the Veterinary Kaleidoscope Summit 2023, Australia's first-ever summit dedicated to exploring diversity and inclusion in veterinary science on 27 and 28 February. 

Increase your knowledge, skills and confidence with our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts at vvn.supercast.com. 

Dr Micheal Archinal has been a vet for over 35 years and is the senior director of 9 veterinary hospitals. He has post-graduate training in animal behaviour, acupuncture, dermatology and pharmacology. Michael has also had an illustrious media career that includes 13 years as a weekly guest presenter on Channel Nine’s Mornings with Kerri-Anne and  21 years as an ABC radio talk-back host, as well as being a regular contributor on National ABC radio afternoons. He's a long-term columnist for multiple publications and the author of  "Animal Wisdom", which has sold over 10,000 copies. Michael also helped to establish a remote indigenous dog health programme in Utopia in the Northern Territory where he still volunteers and which saw him nominated as an Australian of the Year Finalist for the ACT in 2016. 

Our conversation covers Michaels's journey from struggling practice owner to building a large group of vet hospitals, the joys and challenges of working in remote communities, how Michael makes hard decisions and how he deals with less-than-ideal outcomes, his media career, his fascination with the human-animal bond, the importance of ongoing learning, gratitude, and much more. 

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. 

If you are a clinician working in a paralysis tick area of Australia then you’ll be well aware of the 2022 shortage of tick antiserum, and you very likely have some questions, like how do we ensure that we still do the best for our patients, where do our previous dose rates for TAS even come from, and why is it suddenly ok for us to use less? You might even be wondering how the vet boards will view deviations from the label dose if that’s what we’re required to do in response to the shortage. 

We’ve gathered some of the smartest people on the topic to get your questions answered. The smart people in question are Prof Rick Atwell, Dr Terry King, Dr Heather Russel and Dr Rob Webster, who are all members of the Tick Paralysis Advisory Panel, a group of veterinary and scientific experts who convene to review the latest scientific information regarding the prevention and management of tick paralysis to provide guidance and recommendations to vets and pet owners. This discussion covers what we know (and what we think we know!)  about paralysis ticks, their toxins and how it relates to antiserum dose, as well as new insights around managing tick cases beyond just TAS. 

Visit VETAPEDIA.com.au for additional resources on tick paralysis and many other Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care guidelines from the team at Animal Emergency Australia. 

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at  [email protected], or find us on Instagram.

And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.