The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

Lift your clinical game with our RACE approved clinical podcasts. Get your first two weeks free at ⁠⁠vvn.supercast.com⁠⁠  for more clinical confidence and better patient outcomes, or check out our Advanced Surgery Podcast at ⁠cutabove.supercast.com⁠. 

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Topics and Time Stamps

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 our contact from at ⁠thevetvault.com⁠, 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. 

07:35 The Role of Compassion and Innovation12:08 Leadership and Management in Veterinary Practices17:55 Addressing Risks and Governance24:51 The Importance of Communication and Training43:23 Implementing Change in Veterinary Practices44:04 The Role of Coaching and Mentoring44:56 Different Models of External Support46:27 Cross-Industry Learning and Its Benefits56:06 Delegation and Managing Multiple Roles01:00:31 The Importance of Trusted Networks01:09:15 Balancing Client Relationships and Clinical Work01:17:13 Innovative Solutions for Veterinary Practices01:23:55 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

et access to our clinical podcast series with our ⁠⁠⁠30% off IVECCS Special.⁠⁠⁠

Get case support from our team at specialists in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Specialist Support Space⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Hands up if you still remember much of the statistics you learned back in vet school… Some of us have looked at way more P nappies than p-values since our student days!

But this is veterinary SCIENCE after all, and part of science is reading the occasional paper. Reading papers—beyond just the abstract and the conclusions—and with at least a little bit of discernment, does involve some degree of understanding statistics, just to make sure you’re not being misled.

So, in this episode, we’re talking about statistics, and we have the best person for the job. (Don’t skip it because of that word—I promise it’s actually quite fun!)

Dr. Steven Epstein is a Professor of Clinical Small Animal Emergency and Critical Care at the University of California, Davis. His research interests include CPR, diagnostic testing in the emergency room, and antimicrobial resistance patterns, and he loves a bit of statistics.

Join us for an easy-to-understand, practical, and entertaining update on statistics, recorded live at IVECCS 2024. You’ll even learn a nifty tip to help you (finally!) remember the difference between sensitivity and specificity!

Sign up for our ⁠⁠⁠free weekly newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to hear about my favourite 3 lessons I learnt in that week from making the podcasts.

Get access to our clinical podcast series with our ⁠⁠30% off IVECCS Special.⁠⁠

Get case support from our team at specialists in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠Specialist Support Space⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Does anyone else feel a bit powerless in those acute diarrhoea consults since we’ve learned that we shouldn’t give metronidazole? Your client has come to you for a solution, and you want to help, but there’s nothing you can give them that will really help that much. Or is there?

Our bonus episode for day three of our IVECCS 2024 highlights series might give you that magic pill you’ve been looking for… poop!

Dr. James Oldeschulte is well-acquainted with treating acute diarrhoea as an experienced ER vet, and in this conversation, he shares some freshly published data that highlights the efficacy and clarifies the practicalities of using psyllium fibre and faecal transplants in the treatment of acute diarrhoea in veterinary patients.

Sign up for our ⁠⁠free weekly newsletter⁠⁠ to hear about my favourite 3 lessons I learnt in that week from making the podcasts.

Get access to our clinical podcast series with our ⁠⁠30% off IVECCS Special.⁠⁠

A bit of a taster plate with some key takeaways from 3 of my favourite sessions today:

1. Bad wounds mean lots of work, and big bills, right? But how often are you faced with those serious wounds and a client with limited funding? ECC Specialist ⁠Dr Jenny Groover ⁠has your back with some highly practical 'plan B' treatment options that might just help you save some lives.

2. You know how you were taught never to aspirate a gallbladder? Along with adrenal glands, for most of us gallbladders are on the list of 'no 'stab' organs, but diagnostic imaging specialist Dr Marc Seitz brings us the evidence, and the experience, that will make you completely rethink some of the dogma around 'risky' ultrasound guided FNA's.

3. Did you know that you can 'patch' a hole in a popped lung with your patients own blood? Critical Care Specialist ⁠Dr Andrew Linklater⁠ gives us the when, why, and how of pleurodesis for pneumothorax in this conversation.

Sign up for our ⁠⁠free weekly newsletter⁠⁠ to hear about my favourite 3 lessons I learnt in that week from making the podcasts.

Get case support from our team at specialists in our ⁠⁠⁠Specialist Support Space⁠⁠⁠.

Get access to our clinical podcast series with our ⁠30% off IVECCS Special.⁠

I have a love-hate relationship with in-house pleural effusion analysis. Love, because it’s really quite interesting, and the results can be tremendously useful for your very sick effusion patient. Hate because it can be REALLY challenging!

But not anymore... This episode highlights some key takeaways from a very informative IVECCS session on how to get maximum information from your in-house effusion analysis to help you make quick and logical treatment decisions, including a real McGyver hack for doing advanced diagnostics on the cheap.

⁠Dr Holly Brown⁠ is a board certified clinical pathologist who works in a bustling general, referral, and emergency practice where she sees a wide variety of diagnostic submissions and enjoys playing an important role at the interface of diagnostics and patient care. Dr. Brown has always been passionate about delivering continuing education to doctors and technicians around maximizing laboratory testing, and she serves an important role as Chief Veterinary Educator for Antech Diagnostics. 

⁠Jessica Wilson-Hess⁠ is a certified veterinary technician and veterinary technician specialist in small animal internal medicine who nerds out on all things clinical pathology, including teaching other techs and nurses how to get really good at it.

Sign up for our ⁠free weekly newsletter⁠ to hear about my favourite 3 lessons I learnt in that week from making the podcasts.

Get case support from our team at specialists in our ⁠⁠Specialist Support Space⁠⁠.

Topics and Time Stamps

02:18 Importance of In-House Analysis

02:48 Understanding Pleural Effusion in Cats and Dogs

05:20 Classifying Effusions: Transudate, Exudate, and More

09:59 Sample Handling and Common Mistakes12:09 Using Analyzers for Fluid Analysis

17:04 Cytology and Concentration Techniques

24:24 Understanding Centrifugation in Cytology

25:33 In-House CSF Analysis Techniques

26:59 DIY Cyto-centrifuge Using a Salad Spinner!

30:43 Manual Cell Counting Methods

33:14 Chemistry and Effusion Analysis

38:15 Identifying Neoplastic Cells

41:46 Empowering Technicians in Veterinary Practice

Lift your clinical game with our RACE approved clinical podcasts. Get your first two weeks free at ⁠vvn.supercast.com⁠  for more clinical confidence and better patient outcomes, or check out our Advanced Surgery Podcast at cutabove.supercast.com. 

Get case support from our team at specialists in our Specialist Support Space.

Contact Credabl  for questions and help around personal and professional finance for medical professionals, and apply for their $10000 Helping Hands Business grant here.

If you’ve ever wondered about starting your own veterinary practice, then this episode is for you. We speak to Dr Amber Christie and Brooke Goodwin, a vet and vet nurse team who are the owners of a brand new clinic, about the highs, the challenges the lessons learnt from building their new practice. 

Dr Amber is on new practice number four, and she tells us what they're doing differently this time around - from the practicalities of setting up the practice, like practice design, business structure, and finance, to how they’re thinking about things like boundaries, values, and growth. Brooke shares her perspective from a first time business owner’s point of view, and tells us how they are making the vet nurse/business owner structure work for them and for their clients. Finance specialist Caroline Willemse from Credabl took care of the money side of practice ownership for Amber and Brooke, and she joins us to answer common questions and bust some myths about business finance. 

Topics and Time Stamps

05:21 Balancing Personal and Professional Life as a Practice Owner

10:49 The Importance of Flexibility 

16:15 Designing the Perfect Vet Clinic

19:51 Financial Planning and Support for New Practices

30:22 Misconceptions and Realities Starting a Vet Practice: 

31:17 Choosing Your Path: Independent vs. Group Practice

31:38 The Joy of Building from Scratch

32:58 Financial Considerations for New Practices

34:48 Renting vs. Buying: Pros and Cons

36:18 Fixed vs. Variable Borrowing

38:51 The Unique Partnership: Vet and Nurse Co-Ownership

46:00 Picking Your Values and Goals

54:33 The One Question

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 our contact from at thevetvault.com, 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. 

You’ll hear a lot of complaining and blaming of leaders for everything that’s wrong with veterinary science. But the reality is that leading people is a very hard job, especially in a profession as complicated and nuanced as veterinary science. So this episode is for our leaders. We hope that it helps make your job of making our profession better just a little bit easier.

David Liss is the Director of West Coast Operations for Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), and in this episode he’ll tell you about the three essential ingredients of great veterinary teams, and what this has to do with The Avengers and how they defeated Thanos! David also shares his strategies for giving hard-to-hear feedback, and tells us why goal setting is so important for building a great team and how to get the team excited for these goals. But we start with what might be the most important question: how do you, as a leader, stay motivated to keep motivating others?!

This episode was recorded live at IVECCS 2023, the conference of the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society. Join me at IVECCS 2024 for MUCH more content like this, and more ECC clinical content than you could ever wish for. 

Get access to our highlights and key takeaways sessions, plus the show notes, from all of the conferences we’ve attended this year by joining our Vet Vault Nerds at vvn.supercast.com for more than 500 short sharp and practical podcasts in Small Animal Medicine, Surgery and Emergency and Critical Care. 

If you need expert help with those tricky cases that you can’t refer - we have a team of specialists on standby to provide you with some extra brains. Contact them here. 

Topics and time stamps

02:54 Motivation and Inspiration in Leadership

11:14 Back to the Avengers: Team Dynamics

15:43 Setting Goals and Achieving Buy-In

19:19 Profit: It's not a dirty word!

21:26 Handling Difficult Conversations

29:30 Carrot or Stick? Motivators

In a world of Amazon and Uber-level convenience, where digital disruptors are changing the way the world interacts and how we do business, why do we think that the vet profession won't be impacted?

"We're facing a lot of disruption. There is this class of digital disruptive dis-intermediators that are emerging and trying to displace the position of the veterinary clinic. Many of them explicitly have the mission to become the most trusted, most convenient touch point in the pet care journey."

Dr Thom Jenkins is the co-founder & CEO of PetsApp, a client engagement platform the streamlines client interactions, and in this episode he'll show you why the veterinary profession is, and should remain, at the heart of animal care, why disruptors  think they can compete for the role of ‘most trusted’, and how they’ll do it. You’ll hear how practices are integrating telemedicine and online services with the physical touch points of traditional bricks and mortar clinics, how we’re our own worst enemies when we overpromise and underdeliver, and how a tech-savvy vet sees the role of AI in the future of veterinary science. Thom also tells us about his experiences of working as a vet in China.

Please give us your feedback on how to make the podcast better by answering 12 questions here.

Join me at the combined ASAV/VBG Conference on 12-16 August on the Sushine Coast, or, for our US listeners, at IVECCS in St Louis on 7-11 September for more emergency and critical care content than you ever imagined possible!

Join our nerds for better patient outcomes and more clinical confidence by signing up for our RACE approved clinical podcasts at vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial.

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. 

Topics and timestamps

05:30 Bad Decisions, Good Stories: Dr. Jenkins' Adventures

11:21 Veterinary Career in China: Challenges and Opportunities

21:51 The Future of Veterinary Medicine: Challenges and Solutions

35:48 Managing Expectations in Veterinary Practice

36:01 The Culture of Martyrdom in Veterinary Medicine

36:46 Setting Realistic Expectations for Customer Delight

38:52 The Role of Disruptors in Veterinary Medicine

40:47 Balancing Quality, Convenience, and Cost

42:29 The Importance of Physical Touchpoints

45:35 Leveraging Technology for Better Client Communication

50:47 The Role of AI in Veterinary Practice

56:37 Addressing Bottlenecks in Veterinary Business

01:09:55 Final Thoughts and Advice for New Graduates

Ah, those liver enzymes... sometimes they are up when you don't expect them to be. Sometimes they're up a bit... but not that much, so you don't know if it's actually significant. Or sometimes they're way out of whack, but you're not sure what that means exactly, or what to do next.

In this episode, Small Animal Medicine Specialist, RCVS Course Director and clinical reasoning guru Prof Jill Maddison helps us take a fresh look at  liver enzymes. We review what each enzyme tells us in dogs and in cats, how to interpret changes in both the 'well' patient with the surprise finding on bloods, and in the sick patient, and Prof Jill clears up common misconceptions and pitfalls around ALP, ALT, GGT, and bile acids.

This clinical episode has been unlocked for you by Vetnostics Pathology, one of the largest veterinary pathology groups in Australia with the most veterinary pathologists and veterinary medicine consultants. Vetnostics is the new nationally aligned name of what used to the SVS Pathology Network ( (Vetnostics NSW/ACT, Vetpath Laboratory Services WA/NT, ASAP Laboratory Vic , QMLVetnostics Qld/NNSW and TML Vetnostics Tas), with a new consolidated website (www.vetnostics.com), but the same exceptional quality diagnostics, same extensive courier network and same veterinary pathologists and veterinary medicine consultants on other the end of the phone or email to talk you through any tricky results and cases. 

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.

Get help with your tricky cases in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Specialist Support Space.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠Subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠for Hubert's favourite clinical and non-clinical learnings from the week.

Episode Topics and Timestamps

05:01 ALT and ALP: Detailed Analysis

05:40 Challenges in Diagnosing Liver Disease

06:40 Liver Enzymes in Cats vs. Dogs

20:44 Bile Acids and Liver Function

26:51 Pre-Anaesthetic Liver Checks

36:35 Understanding Cholangitis in Cats

36:53 The Complexity of Diagnosing Liver Disease

37:45 The Role of Blood Tests in Wellness Checks

38:11 Interpreting Reference Ranges

40:53 Case Studies: Real-World Examples

42:05 The Challenges of Wellness Screening

44:21 The Importance of Biopsies

55:14 Biases in Diagnosis

Be part of the conversation to help shape the Vet Vault with your feedback.

Many of us dream of building a practice, and then one day selling it and walking off into the sunset, minus responsibilities, and with our money problems solved. But what actually happens after what’s supposed to be ‘the big goal’? Who are you when you’re no longer the boss, and what’s next? 

In this episode, ⁠Dr Wolfgang Dohne⁠ tells us how he re-invented and reinvigorated his career post the sale of his practice.  He also give shares what he’s learnt about being a professional locum vet: the pro tips, the pros, and the cons, and what working in telemedicine has taught him about telemedicine as a career option, and also its potential role in our everyday lives in clinical practice. 

Join us at Science Week for the most cutting edge conference topics out there.

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.

Get help with your tricky cases in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Specialist Support Space.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠Subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠for Hubert's favourite clinical and non-clinical learnings from the week.

Topics and Time stamps

04:41 Balancing Work and Personal Life

13:47 The Decision to Sell and Its Impact

23:30 Embracing Locum Work and Telemedicine

28:16 Tips for Successful Locuming

35:22 Overcoming Locum Anxiety

35:45 Essential Tools for Locum Success

36:31 Navigating Different Practice Management Systems

40:51 Building Strong Relationships with Nursing Teams

44:25 Introduction to Telemedicine

48:50 Practical Applications of Telemedicine

53:01 Integrating Telemedicine into Practice

Veterinary Ramblings

Furthest North