How Can Veterinary Professionals Maintain Focus in High Pressure Situations?
At some point, something awful happens to veterinarians and veterinary staff members in high pressure situations. They lose their ability, even if momentarily, to care for their patients.
They freeze up and lose focus. And if you’ve experienced this, it’s important for you to know that you’re not alone. It is far more common than you might be able to see from within the walls of your own exam rooms.
There’s nothing easy about these moments. They’re especially devastating when you think about what brings most of us to this profession.
You love animals. You trained and studied and worked your tail off to enter the profession, and to end up in a situation where you freeze up and can’t remember what to do from fear of making a mistake.
As I wrote the title for this article, I found myself wondering if someone who has worked in a veterinary clinic would scoff and think,
“Are you kidding? The whole day can be high pressure situation!”
You’re not wrong. A day in a veterinary clinic or hospital often feels like a roller coaster, but not the fun kind where you ride it once and leave to go find a funnel cake. It feels like a nightmare where you can’t get off the ride. One stressful challenge follows another as the day rolls along.
It feels that way, at least, when we aren’t prepared with the right skill set to manage the stress of the day.
As it turns out, it is possible to thrive in the pressure cooker of veterinary practice. It is possible to feel focused and energized and to remember why you love your work in high pressure situations, but first, let’s try to understand why it’s so hard to begin with.
Losing Focus in a Veterinary Exam Room
The veterinary exam room creates a constant barrage of stressful events. You realize how behind schedule you are, and your anxiety spikes. You make a mistake. Someone else makes a mistake. Patients become aggressive. Owners become equally aggressive. You suddenly realize you will have to explain (and justify) an expensive course of treatment for an animal to survive.
And of course, other moments reach an entirely new level of stress where it becomes clear an animal may not survive or needs to be euthanized.
Each stressful event adds up, and you quickly hit overload. You get overstimulated, and as you worry whether an animal might die or what an owner is about to say, suddenly . . .
You are gone.
What do I mean by that?
You lose access to information, to processes, to treatment protocols, to the very next step you were about to take. It’s all gone.
I often liken this phenomenon to the experience of being in an argument, and then, 30 minutes later, remembering what you really wanted to say.
In these high-stress moments, adrenaline shuts down access to information. It short circuits your ability to think clearly.
So, how do you calm yourself and regain access to the information you need to treat the patient in front of you?
Freezing Up During Veterinary Surgical Procedures
Pressure escalates in a surgical room. All eyes are on the patient, and no one wants to be the one to make a mistake.
But then, what happens if you accidentally break sterility, causing a do-over before the procedure can continue?
Worse yet, what happens when you make a mistake?
The same thing happens here as in the exam room. Adrenaline floods your system and chokes off access to the knowledge you need.
It’s not uncommon for a veterinarian, nurse, or tech to freeze in the surgical room. The anxiety and adrenaline leave them unable to see the next step in correcting what’s gone wrong.
And the situation is amplified by your reaction to the people around you. What are the other techs thinking? What is the nurse thinking who’s performing anesthesia? Though we don’t like to admit it, it is very human for us to lose focus on the patient and find our mind flooded with thoughts of how others in the room are judging us. We wonder if we will lose respect. We wonder if we will feel looked down on by our co-workers.
How do we reframe the moment and refocus our attention on the patient?
Lashing Out at Colleagues in High Pressure Situations
With this one, we’ll be brief, as you likely know this scenario all too well. Not all reactions turn us inward. Sometimes we lash out, and I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard (and how many I wrote through my own actions) of veterinary professionals saying or doing things they later regret.
This always makes them feel ashamed, and they spend far too much time beating themselves up and making themselves feel worse than they did before.
In many ways, this is the ultimate form of losing focus as one harsh moment can ripple out and affect everyone else. Aggression pours salt in the wounds of a stressful day at work for everyone involved.
So, how do you reclaim your focus and composure before these moments occur?
Why Is It So Hard to Maintain Focus in the High Pressure Atmosphere of the Veterinary Clinic?
There’s a three-step process at play during your shift at the clinic which keeps repeating itself.
Events – You are surrounded by stressful, often unpredictable Events in the clinic caused by owners, animals, staff, and personal error or oversight.
Triggers – Every Event sets off a specific Trigger. Triggers are automatic, subconscious responses that lead to thoughts like “That person’s not playing by the rules,” “I can’t believe I’m failing at this,” or “What will other people think?”
Reactions - Your amygdala fires and sets off a powerful emotional and physical reaction. Adrenaline kicks in. Anxiety, anger, fear, and frustration take over. Your body gets tense, and your mind starts to race and get fuzzy, making it hard to perform or even remember basic treatments and protocols.
As we mentioned above, this journey is much like a roller coaster. The Event starts your climb up the hill, and the Trigger tips you over the edge, sending you plummeting into a stressful, adrenaline-filled Reaction.
The process keeps repeating itself and leaves you feeling poorly during the day and exhausted by the end of it. This is why we call our technique for managing the stress of veterinary practice The Power of Pacing®. Without a way to process your reactions, your mind and body keep speeding up throughout the day. You can’t find rest or release.
You need a way to take back control and pace your way through the day.
How The Power of Pacing® Technique Restores Focus in the High Pressure Moments of Veterinary Practice
Once you understand the Events around you, your unique Triggers, and the ways you React, you start to reclaim control of your day. You open the door to a simple, repeatable technique you can use to pace yourself through any high pressure day.
The Power of Pacing® technique teaches you to:
Recognize what’s happening to you and why.
Redirect your reaction into a controlled response.
Replace the mental script running in your mind with one that restores calm.
Repair the physical effects of the event you just experienced.
Refocus on the task ahead of you, or the next exam room on the schedule, with a clear mind.
This isn’t therapy. It’s a simple, repeatable technique used to reframe stressful moments and take back your day.
We’ve also worked hard to make the process of learning this technique affordable and manageable on a busy schedule. It’s a small investment in a learned technique that could make all the difference in both the longevity and enjoyment of your career in veterinary medicine.
You’ll find more details about how the process works here.
And the best thing to do is to schedule a brief introductory call with me to ask any questions you have and learn more about The Power of Pacing® technique.
Veterinary school taught you how to treat patients, but no one taught you how to slow down when it feels like the day is racing out of control.
And yet, how wonderful would it be to feel in control and on top of your game when all hell is breaking loose in the exam room? How different would it feel to maintain a steady pace throughout your day and reclaim the joy that brought you to veterinary medicine to begin with?
I think all of us in veterinary medicine want to get back to a place where we can access the deep love we have for animals. We want to see past all of the hardships we didn’t expect in this career and reclaim our passion for the work.
It’s possible. I waited far too long in my career to make it happen for myself and learn to teach others to do the same. I hope you don’t wait as long as I did.
I’ll be here to talk when you’re ready.
“Dr R”
William Rogatz DVM, DABVP - Canine & Feline Specialty
Lead Performance Consultant - The Power of Pacing®