The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

Dr Rosie Booth is a wildlife veterinarian and has been one since before that was even a job description. 

Rosie has 40 years of experience in conservation and wildlife work, which started with a masters degree in koala adrenal glands in 1986 and sparked a lifetime of caring for this iconic species. Since that time she has worked in many of Australia’s most prominent zoos and wildlife hospitals. Rosie spent 7 years working for the Queensland government leading a breeding program for endangered species, during which time they released 170 individuals from several endangered species back into the wild. Most recently she worked as the director of the wildlife hospital at Australia Zoo. She has written more than a hundred wildlife related publications and has trained a small army of others to contribute to this vital work. Recently retired from her full-time role at Australia Zoo she is now focussing her energy on freelance conservation projects and educating and inspiring a new generation of vets.

In this episode, we talk about the challenges, the misconceptions and the implications of a career in wildlife, about staying motivated in a job where your best efforts can sometimes feel fruitless, about big problems, and big solutions.  Rosie also gives practical advice for those considering a career in wildlife, shares stories about some amazing patients, and so 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 high-value 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 know will enjoy listening.

Imagine a world where vets and their team members are bubbling with excitement about their job. Where they go on about how great their clients are, they talk about how good their pay is, and about how very fulfilling their careers are...

Can’t do it? Don’t worry - our guest for this episode has been imagining exactly this, and if the buzz out there about VEG is anything to go by, then he and his team of Veggies may well have found a way to make this a reality. 

VEG, or Veterinary Emergency Group, is a US-based group of emergency-only vet hospitals and Dr David Bessler is the CEO and co-founder. He’s been a career emergency veterinarian since 2003, worked with reptiles at the Bronx Zoo, teaches “Veterinary Science” to elementary school children at the American Museum of Natural History and was even been featured on the one and only Sesame Street, and, as you’ll hear, he’s a man with a very clear vision.

So who’s this episode for? We’ll, EVERYONE in the profession. Whether you’re are a vet or a Veg or a nurse or even a vegetinary student, basically,  anyone attached to a vet business - there are some things in here that you need to hear. If you are a vet business owner then this is DEFINITELY for you. Join us as we veg with Bessler on topics like why mission, vision and core values are so much more than just corporate speak, how a clinic can 'do shit for free', yet pay well AND still be profitable, why you may be on the wrong island, why the spiritual side of your job is critical for career happiness, and so 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 high-value 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 know will enjoy listening.

There’s something about eyes that makes vets either love treating them, or totally hate them, and in my experience, a lot of vets hate them! They tend to be at maximum grossness and highest levels of intimidating when they present as emergencies, with a popped-out eyeball probably being the most spectacular-looking emergency of all. It may be an easy diagnosis, and the fix is not technically too challenging, but I’ve always found the decision making around them quite hard, like: should we save this eye, or should it just come out? 

Which is why we wanted to share this episode about proptosis with you. We released a series on ocular emergencies over on the clinical podcasts with ophthalmologist Dr Izak Venter. Izak was my ophthalmology lecturer back in South Africa, and probably the reason that I actually LIKE treating eyes. These days he is the brains behind Digital Veterinary Ophthalmology Services, or DVOS, which is a digital consulting service to support practising vets with those tricky eye cases, as well as an outstanding ophthalmology education platform. Check out their free content at dvos.co.za or find him on Facebook at DVOS VETS for some really cool tips and insights about those weird little bags of jelly. 

In this episode, Izak tells us how to make sensible decisions for the proposed eye, and then he gives us some great tips on how to get them back in (and keeping them in!) successfully.

Check out the other episodes in the series on corneal lacerations, foreign bodies and glaucoma at vvn.supercast.com on the emergency stream.

You'll bump onto grief several times a day on an average shift at a vet clinic. But do you UNDERSTAND it?  Do you face it head-on, or does it make you uncomfortable, so you run and hide when you see it coming? Do you even see it coming? Can you recognise the stages of grief in your clients and your co-workers? What about yourself?

Did you know, for example, that when that client is lashing out at you and your team, it may just be that they are stuck in one of the stages of grief, and that with the right tools, you can help guide them to a more appropriate stage? Don’t worry - neither did we, which is why we invited our friend Rhonda Andrews back to give us some guidance and strategies for dealing with grief in constructive ways. 

You’ll remember Rhonda from episode 47 on Trauma and Burnout, and if you listened to that one you’ll know that she is a psychologist with almost 3 decades of experience and that she is the principal psychologist and managing director of the Barrington Centre, which provides organisational and personal psychological services to a large number of sectors both in Australia and abroad.

Rhonda is also part of the team that has adapted a programme called Systems of Support, or SOS, for the vet profession. SOS is an evidence-based positive psychological health program that was designed for high-stress professions that reduces the negative psychological impacts associated with work. Also, look out for the Barrington Centre's vet-specific Employee Assist Programme launching in March of 2022. 

In this episode, Rhonda teaches us about the stages of grief: what they look like, and how to respond to someone when they are transitioning through each stage. We also talk about dealing with grief in our items and in ourselves. 

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 high-value 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 leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.

Dr Riati Scarboroughis is a researcher at the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and a PhD fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on improving our understanding of the conscious and subconscious motivations behind suboptimal antimicrobial prescribing in Australian veterinary practices, and designing sustainable strategies to support better antimicrobial prescribing in veterinarians. Ri is particularly interested in the use of social norms and nudges to modify behaviour. 

And it's these behaviours that we discuss in this episode. Ri highlights some common areas where many vet practices could rethink their antibiotic prescribing protocols, with a great discussion on WHY it's so important.  We cover topics like

A word of warning: some of these topics might wake up an annoying little voice in the back of your head that will bother you every time you head into the dispensary for those AB's, but we think it's worth it. See it as a little nudge!

Here are the resources as promised in the episode. 

Thanks to the SVS Pathology Network, who our Australian listeners will know as Vetnostics in NSW, QML Vetnostics in Queensland, TML Vetnostics in Tasmania, ASAP in Victoria and Vetpath in WA, for supporting the podcast and introducing us to Ri and her work. Have a look at this video about Maldi TOF spectrometry - the technology that explains why SVS clients will now get super-fast turnaround times for their microbiology testing.

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 high-value 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 leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram.

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.

Culture. It can be hard to put your finger on it, yet in the setting of a vet practice, it permeates the work areas, floats into reception and beyond and ricochets off the walls. You can feel it when you walk in the door. Long ago I sat in the reception area waiting for my interview at a practice where I ended up spending many years of life.  I distinctly remember sitting there and thinking: "I don’t like the feel of this place." It took me more than a decade to figure out that what I felt that day was a broken culture. 

So what do we do about it? That's the question we ask of our guests for this episode. We're joined by Dr Dave Nicol - author, speaker, coach, doctor, practice owner, head vet, podcaster, and founder of VetX International and his teammate Dr Dermot McInerney. Dermot serves as the VetX International Head of Veterinary Partnerships and Research, and is the main author of the VetX research article "Leadership actions and their effects on veterinary practice culture", and it's this article and the concepts around it that we got together to discuss. Dave and Dermot answer important questions, like the current crisis that the vet profession finds itself in, the role bad culture in this crisis, what toxic workplace behaviour looks like, how leaders can help create thriving workplace cultures, and why you don't have to a 'leader' to influence culture. 

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 high-value clinical podcasts. And if you join up for an annual all-in subscription before 18 January 2022 we'll send you a free MiniVet Guide to help you start your year in top form.

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram. 

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.

We chose to share this episode on mitral valve disease from our clinical podcast series (vvn.supercast.com) because I went into this interview thinking that, after 20 years in practice, I wasn't really going to learn many new things...I was wrong!

Our guest for this series on canine heart disease is medicine specialist Dr Clint Yudelman, and in this series he talks us through so many critically important concepts, like differentiating the cardiac cough from the non-cardiac cough, when to start treating, which combinations of meds is best for each stage, when to escalate your treatment, HOW to escalate, what to look for on ultrasound, why many of your heart patients should probably be on Viagra, and much more. There are several potentially paradigm-shifting ideas in here, or at least there was for me, and it's too good not to share.

You can contact Clint at [email protected] if you are in Victoria and in need of some in-house help with your cardiac or other complicated medical cases. 

Why does it sting so much when a client accuses us of ‘just being in it for the money”. I think it hurts because for most of us money is really quite low on the list of what drives us, so much so that we often actively avoid talking about it, especially in terms of our own earnings, like it’s a taboo subject. But the things is - it IS also about the money. For most of us, at some point in our adult life, it’s very likely that you’ll find yourself thinking: "Hey, I could really do with a little bit more money!' 

So how do we earn that little bit more money? How do we get over the erroneous belief that ‘there’s just no money in vet’?

Our guest for this episode is Dr Sam Burke. Sam is a practicing vet, former practice owner, investor and entrepreneur. He’s also a former colleague and a good friend, and one of the most-money wise people I know. If I have a money question a conversation with Sam is usually my first stop. So we thought we’d have one of those conversations on the air and share it with you to see if we can help change ‘money’ from a dirty word into just another word that we are comfortable talking about and comfortable generating. 

Oh, and if you're curious about Sam's shoes, check it out at Tarkine.com

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 high-value 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 leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on anchor and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram. 

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.

For such a seemingly simple sample there’s a lot you can learn from a urinalysis. Many of us also have a fair amount of uncertainty around much of the 'how' of urine sample handling, analysis and interpretation. It’s also the one bit of lab work where being good at in-house testing can make a big difference to the reliability of your results. 

We KNOW you’ll have had some disagreements at some point in your career about at least a few of the questions we answer in this episode, like fridge vs benchtop, how old is too old for a urine sample, how long after starting antibiotics can you still culture, is it even worth culturing a free-flow sample, WHEN should I culture, can you trust your dipstick, can you trust AI, why some urinary bugs just won't die, and what the heck is the deal with casts?! I also suspect that, like us, you’ll learn a few things that you didn’t even KNOW you should know. 

Our guest is Dr Kristen Todhunter, a pathologist for the SVS Pathology Network who confesses to having a bit of a soft spot for all things microbiology. She answers all of the questions we've ever had around how to get the most from your urinalysis. 

Thanks to the SVS Pathology Network, who our Aussie listeners will know as Vetnostics in NSW, QML Vetnostics in Queensland, TML Vetnostics in Tasmania, ASAP in Victoria and Vetpath in WA, for providing us with the brainpower for our pathology series and for supporting the podcast. If you love new toys and tech (or if you like lasers!) you should definitely check out this video about Maldi TOF spectrometry - the amazing new technology that will explain why SVS clients will now get super-fast turnaround times for their microbiology testing. 

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 high-value 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 leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram. 

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.

It's the end of the academic year, and around the world, thousands of final year vet students are facing the start of their careers. It's an exciting time with a lot of optimism, but likely also a fair whack of anxiety. There are so many major decisions to make, and you've heard so many scary stories about life as a vet?! 

This is why we're having this conversation with Dr Moriah McCauley. Moriah is on the other side of this breakwater between student life and vet life. Just more than a year out of vet school, still keeping her head above water, still at her first job as a small animal GP practitioner, and mostly enjoying it, despite the massive curveball that a global pandemic has thrown at her and her friends. 

But Moriah is not your average recent grad. Well, she is, but she has an unfair advantage: when she was a student she started That Vet Life Podcast (https://bit.ly/ThatVetLife), and in later 2021 her and the podcast joined VetX International as part of a global team of mentors. On the podcast, she's had dozens of in-depth conversations with experienced vets about how to survive and thrive as a veterinarian. This means that she has been accumulating the skills needed to navigate this profession for a long time, unlike most of us who learn the hard way!

So this one is for you new grads of the world, bravely facing the adventure that awaits: we talk about picking the right first job, the things that still surprised Moriah about real life as a vet, tips for survival, making sure you keep growing, and Moriah gives us a guide to setting up the RIGHT kind of mentoring relationships. 

But it's also for you senior vets, managers and bosses, who will be in charge of taking care of our new colleagues. You need to hear what Moriah has to say about her first year out - about how she planned her growth with the help of mentors, about what her and her classmates value, what they need, why they leave jobs, and what they can bring to your business. 

Thank you to the team at Heska Australia for helping us to support you by supporting the podcast. Visit heska.com.au to find out how to streamline your in-house lab work and digital radiology for faster simpler and reliable diagnostics. 

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/ 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 https://vvn.supercast.tech for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value 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 leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app (https://anchor.fm) and hitting the record button, via email at [email protected], or just catch up with us on Instagram. (https://www.instagram.com/thevetvault/) 

And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening.