The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

Vicarious trauma, burnout, and living with the critic inside your head is supported by Heska Australia. It's time to re-imagine how you run your in-house pathology and radiography. Visit https://www.heska.com.au/products/lab-diagnostics/ to discover how. 

In this conversation, we explore some ideas that we’re all familiar with, like how to live with those annoying self-critical voices that we all carry around inside our heads. Our guests, Rhonda Andrews and Dr Louisa Johnson also introduce us to some concepts that are brand new to us: cumulative trauma and vicarious trauma. Odds are that you'll recognise these culprits - those insidious, unexpected, sometimes small things that add up and add up and add up until they suddenly become overwhelming. But this is not a doom and gloom or fear-mongering episode. This conversation is ultimately about identifying risk factors and putting preventative actions in place to protect ourselves and our friends and colleagues.

Rhonda Andrews is a psychologist with almost 3 decades of experience. She’s also 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, including government, education, legal, entertainment and emergency services. 

Recently Rhonda has partnered with one of our own: Dr Louisa Johnson. Dr Louisa is a veterinarian who has a special interest in staff welfare and new grad care and is also the founder of Safervets. Rhonda and Louisa have been working together to adapt The Systems of Support Program for the Veterinary Industry. System of support, or SoS - is a positive psychological health program that was designed for high-stress professions, and therefore a perfect fit for the vet world. It’s an evidence-based program that helps to reduce the negative psychological impacts associated with work that can lead to anxiety, burnout, depression... or worse. 

Barrington Centre:  (http://www.barrington-e2e.com/about_us/about_us.htm)

SoS Vet: https://www.barringtoncentre.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Systems-of-Support-for-Veterinary-Industry_Barrington-Centre.pdf

Safer Vets: (https://safervets.com/)

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/ for the 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 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 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.

Dr Justin Ward is a veterinarian and practice owner from the Gold Coast in Australia. He grew up in South Africa where he studied veterinary science before heading to the UK for a 5 years stint of locuming and travelling, eventually putting down roots in Australia. 

After 4 more years of working as an employed vet, he had his first crack at practice ownership. In this episode, Justin shares his experience and the lessons learnt from when this first venture didn't go according to plan. But it was with his second attempt at ownership that fate took him to all the right places. Fast forward 9 years, and he is now the co-owner of a thriving practice that has gone from 1 vet and 1 and a half nurses to 9 vets and 22 staff, plus a stint as the AVA's brach committee president. We dig into Justin's views on what makes a good practice, what a good partnership looks like, and how to find the balance of financial sustainability without sacrificing your values. 

Beyond his own practice, Justin is also actively involved in trying to bring about sensible positive changes to make our profession better. In our conversation, we pick at the loose threads of the multiple issues that vets around the world are facing to see if we can unravel some solutions, and Justin gives some very solid insights on the stories we tell ourselves and the many GOOD things about being a vet. 

Visit  https://thrivingvet.com.au/ to learn more about Thrive 2021 - AEA's 3-day team conference that has been opened up to the rest of the vet world. 

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/ for the 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.

Other than conundrums around the legalities of labelling and wondering if you're allowed to stock any compounded meds for 'emergency use', drug compounding is probably not something that most of us give a lot of thought to. You pick a dose, write a script, and your patient gets what they need, right? Right? 

But what about quality? Does someone regulate what goes into the meds you prescribe? And can we be sure that the active ingredients are 'active' - are they doing what they're supposed to? Surely someone checks that?! One version of drug X is the same as another, right? 

 Fear not - we have you covered. Gerardo and Hubert recently facilitated a group discussion and QnA session about exaclty these questions. This episode is the result of that session and answers all the questions you've (n)ever asked about veterinary compounding. (Including how to label them!)

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/ for the 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.

Does it drive you crazy how you'll sometimes look at an X-ray image and you don't see anything significant, but then you send it to a radiologist and they come up with a long list of important things!? How do they do it?! Well, a lot of it is practice, but here's a secret - a lot of it is also just good technique. And these are techniques you can easily apply in your practice to take great images and interpret them like the pros. 

We did a series on tips for rads of the acute abdomen over on the Vet Vault Clinical, but rather than tell us which abnormalities to look for, our guest radiologist, Dr Steve Joslyn, started off by telling us HOW to look, and how to make sure you great images. Enjoy!

If you found this episode valuable and you want to listen to the rest of the series, or any of our emergency, surgery or medicine episodes then head over to https://vvn.supercast.tech/ for a free two-week trial.

This episode is supported by our friends at Heska Australia. You'll know Heska as the new(ish) kid on the block who's taking the block by storm in the Australian in-house lab market, but now they're also shaking up Xray-land with their exceptional radiology offering. Learn more at https://www.heska.com.au/

Dr Penny Thomas’ career has taken her from working as a nurse in a specialist clinic while she was doing her vet degree, to a stint in mixed practise after graduating from the University of Sydney in 2011, and all the way to gaining registration as a Specialist in Veterinary Oncology in 2019.  Penny is a member of the Veterinary Cancer Society and has also obtained her Memberships of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists in small animal medicine. She has a keen interest in haematological cancers and has published papers on multiple myeloma, anal sac cancer in cats and chemotherapy for T cell lymphoma in dogs, and is a regular participant in continuing education talks to general practitioners. 

On her journey to becoming a specialist Penny did a 2-year internship programme followed by a residency at SASH in Sydney. During her training, she spent time at Colorado State University, the University of Madison Wisconsin, The Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and the Animal Health Trust in the UK. 

And it’s this part of her career - the internship years - where we start our conversation with Penny. She talks us through the decision-making process around whether doing an internship is for you, and gives us advice on what to look for in a good internship programme, and how to choose the RIGHT internship programme. 

As usual, the conversation strays into all sorts of interesting places, like masochistic work cultures where working crazy hours is worn like a badge of honour, helping your clients make end-of-life decisions for their animals, and we talk about the risk of having pre-conceived ideas around what is best for our patients without giving our clients ALL of the options and making decisions for them.  And of course, we have to dig into what it’s like being a veterinary oncologist - all the good and all the bad and all the stuff that you probably didn’t know. 

Enjoy!

If you like listening to Penny then you should definitely check out the oncology series that we're doing with her over on the medicine stream on The Vet Vault Clinical. We started with a 3 part series on mast ell tumours that has answered all of the questions I’ve had for decades about these often tricky cancers, including a run-down of all the newest therapies that are becoming available to us.  

Our clinical podcasts live at https://vvn.supercast.tech/ with a free 2-week trial when you subscribe. 

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/  for the 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 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/) 

Andf 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.

Welcome back to another one of our clinical episodes. I decided to share this one today because of a case I dealt with just this morning. We had a cat in hospital with what was thought to be acute renal failure, but what turned out to be a ureteral obstruction. That's ureTEral, not urethral. Seeing this case reminded me how dangerous this disease is, and how easily it can be missed. So I thought I'd share this episode that we recently did on the topic with our resident medicine specialist, Dr Dave Collins. The thing is - until we did this interview with Dave, ureteral obstructions just wasn’t on my radar, but we're learning that it's apparently more common than we think it is. Probably because we’ve been missing them. 

If this comes as a surprise to you then I recommend you plug in and let Dave tell you everything you need to know about ureteral obstructions: from spotting them, to diagnosing them, and all the way to how to fix them. 

Enjoy!

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/  for the show notes about everything we talk about in the show.

If you found this episode useful then you'll love our clinical podcast series. We have a bunch of other free clinical content at https://thevetvault.com/clinical-content/t, or subscribe at https://vvn.supercast.tech for weekly short and sharp high-value clinical updates that you can consume on the go. 

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/) 

What do you think when you hear the words ‘holistic’, or ‘alternative’. What about "complimentary"? These are terms that can evoke quite strong opinions and responses in many vets one way or another, right? 

100% honest - I was a bit apprehensive about doing this interview. I’m a natural skeptic, and I was worried that our guest was going to be a bit  ‘out there" in his ideas, but I’m very glad that we took the time for this conversation. Turns out that, like me, and like you, Dr Gary Richter is a vet who cares about his patients and wants to find as many ways as he can to help them. He just happened to have found his niche in offering treatments that are a bit outside of the norm. And I must admit, it’s made me very curious. 

Dr Gary Richter has been practicing veterinary medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1998, after starting out his career in emergency. These days he runs a practice that focuses on the benefits of conventional and holistic treatment methods for the preventative and therapeutic care of pets as well as educating professionals and pet owners on the benefits of integrative care. Dr Richter was named Holistic Veterinarian of the Year for 2019 by the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, is currently the President of the American College of Veterinary Botanical Medicine, and is a founding member of the Veterinary Cannabis Society. He’s also the author of a book called The Ultimate Pet Health Guide. 

In our conversation, we dig up and chew on a few of the old bones on contention in our profession, like the role of alternative or complementary medicine in veterinary science, and the processed foods vs whole foods debate. Gary talks about integrative medicine as a practice model and as a business model, and he tells us about a few of his favourite and most useful therapeutic discoveries that he's made on his explorations. And of course we can’t talk about alternatives to a Californian vet without talking about cannibis!

Please enjoy this enlightening view of our profession from a slightly different angle. 

Aussies and Kiwis - if you're itching for some face-to-face CPD and for some fun on the ski slopes - go book your spot for Vets On Tour's upcoming August conferences at https://www.vetsontour.com.au/events/vets-on-tour-lake-wanaka-august-2021/

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

Subscribe to our clinical podcast series at  https://vvn.supercast.tech for weekly short and sharp high-value clinical updates from world-class specialists that you can consume on the go. 

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us 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.

A bonus episode from the Vet Vault Clinical ECC podcast. We deal with fat lips from bee and wasp stings on a daily basis in practice, but what about the more severe full-blown anaphylaxis reaction? It's a whole different kettle of fish!

In this recent episode from the Vet Vault Clinical podcast, critical care specialist Dr Rob Webster talks us through treating the collapsed anaphylactic dog, including the role of steroids, anti-histamines, and adrenaline.  

If you enjoy this format of continuing education then go to https://thevetvault.com/clinical-content/ to access more episodes on small animal medicine, emergency/critical care, and surgery, and to access the show notes with doses and treatment reminders. 

Enjoy. 

Our guest for today Is Dr Ivan Zakharenkov, or Ivan Zak as he’s better known. Ivan is a veterinarian and an entrepreneur committed to creating products that empower healthcare teams to live their passion.

If you haven’t heard of Ivan then there’s a fair chance that you have heard of, or possibly use his brainchild on a daily basis in your hospital: Ivan was the founder of the now-ubiquitous veterinary software Smartflow. It was Ivan’s personal journey as a practicing veterinarian for 12 years that led to the development of Smartflow, and eventually to his current mission.

Early in his career, Ivan experienced severe burnout, and it was that experience that has led him to explore the psychological triggers of burnout and business methodologies that veterinary organizations can apply to work against them. Researching this topic, Ivan obtained an MBA degree in International Healthcare Management and wrote a dissertation “Implementation of lean thinking to improve employee experience.” Today Ivan is leading Veterinary Integration Solutions, a technology company helping veterinary groups implement an operating framework for sustainable integration of practices with a special focus on burnout prevention.

Our conversation covers some of the highlights of the findings of the burnout study and his thinking about solutions to burnout. What I love about Ivan’s thinking that has flowed from the study is that the focus is not on how we as individuals can get better at preventing burnout - instead it focuses on the causes of burnout at a management and leadership level, and on practical solutions.

Ivan talks openly about his experience with burnout and how to identify it, we discuss the 6 triggers of burnout and strategies to mitigate it, Ivan gives us an inside perspective on how corporate veterinary practice works that might surprise you, and we talk about money and it’s role in job satisfaction and burnout, and much more.

https://vetintegrations.com/

Go to https://thevetvault.com/podcasts/  for the show notes, to get your hands on the answers to ‘the one question’ from our first 20 guests, 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, subscribe to our clinical podcast series at https://vvn.supercast.tech for weekly short and sharp high-value clinical updates that you can consume on the go.

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 iff 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.