How to Navigate Negative Client Interactions in a Veterinary Practice: What They Didn’t Teach in Veterinary School.
Nothing in veterinary school fully prepares you for the pressure of clinical practice. Every exam room door you open has the potential to usher you into a uniquely stressful situation:
Anxious owners whose stressful behavior creates tension in the room.
Owners who get upset over the costs of treatment.
Abusive owners who lose their temper and yell at you.
Owners who seem to look down on you because of your young age.
Aggressive patient behavior, especially from large dogs.
Owners who are facing the reality of euthanizing their beloved pet.
In response to these negative interactions, something awful happens. (It certainly feels awful, at least.)
You freeze.
In the face of confrontation or negative, tense situations, the 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.
Sound familiar?
In other words, all of the training and education you fought so hard to master in veterinary school can’t be accessed. It’s a terrifying moment where you feel exposed, vulnerable, and incompetent in front of patients and owners who need your help.
Meanwhile, after any one of these events, you only have a few seconds to shake it off as you cross the hallway to the next exam room. You carry your own tension and stress from appointment to appointment, and the pressure becomes unbearable.
But here’s the good news. It doesn’t have to be this way.
After veterinary school, learning how to manage your physical and mental state during client interactions is the most important thing you can do.
The pressure isn’t going away, but you can control how you react to it. You can actually learn to thrive within it.
Below are some of the things I learned during my career as the owner of a 24/7/365 general, referral, and emergency veterinary hospital that employed up to 15 Veterinarians and 35 support staff. My passion became finding ways to help them navigate the pressure cooker, and here are a few insights that will help you.
Stop Blaming Yourself for Negative Client Interactions.
Veterinary professionals tend to blame themselves after a negative client interaction. They will ask,
“Is there something different I could have done?”
And while it is important to be self-reflective and look for ways to improve, the truth is that often, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.
You have no idea what happened before the client arrived. They’re already concerned about their pet, but did they get a traffic ticket on the way in? Did they have to take off time from work in the middle of a stressful day? Did they lose their wallet today? Are things stressful at home? You just don’t know.
And let’s not forget, nearly everyone who comes in is stressed about the costs of treatment. By and large, people don’t plan for the expense of veterinary care, and they are scared about how much this visit will cost.
Add to that, how are they feeling about their role as pet owners? Pet owners can be hard on themselves, asking questions like, “Why didn’t I bring my pet in sooner?”
Or . . .
“Is there something different I could have done?”
A little empathy goes a long way in realizing that your clients aren’t that much different from you. They are stressed and worried about their animal and the costs of treatment, and all of that stress can easily cause them to react in a negative way to the situation.
The truth is, owners are usually reacting to the situation, not you, and there is probably little you could have done to prevent their reaction.
So, where does that leave you?
Again, you can control your own reaction to the situation. You have control over you, and there are techniques you can learn to help with this. More on that in a moment.
Resist the Urge to Make Your Clients “Like You”
We all want to be liked.
When a veterinary client gets upset with us or seems to lose faith in us, it typically triggers a deep reaction. It challenges our sense of self-worth and lights a fire to want to regain their approval.
This perfectly natural, human reaction can have dire consequences in the exam room because you will be tempted to adjust your treatment protocols and recommendations to please the client.
You’ll be tempted to hold back on recommending a certain treatment because it is too expensive.
You’ll be tempted to soft-sell a serious situation.
You’ll be tempted to put more focus on the owner than the patient merely to appease their emotional state.
In the aftermath of a negative client interaction, it’s critical (but not always easy) to remember that your first allegiance is to the patient.
Again, this doesn’t make you a bad veterinarian. It is very human to struggle with this. After all, the owners can do things the animals can’t. They can talk. They can communicate their displeasure in much clearer terms than the patient, and their energy easily dominates the room.
This is hard to overcome, and knowing the patient needs to come first isn’t always enough. You also need a technique and tools to manage your own anxiety and adrenaline in the moment and keep your focus where it needs to be.
This brings us to the final point.
Learn a Technique for Managing the Stress of the Veterinary Clinical Environment.
One way or another, the most important training you need after veterinary school is to acquire a technique that helps you remain focused and calm in the middle of the stressful conditions of clinical practice.
As humans, we are wired to respond to stressful moments in ways that cause us to short-circuit. Training and technique is the remedy. You need to reach a place where it becomes automatic to respond in a different way to negative interactions.
This is why I spent 10 years researching, testing, and developing The Power of Pacing® technique. I knew I needed a better way to respond, and I was tired of seeing my staff struggle as well. I wanted to find a solution that could work for everyone who works in a veterinary clinical environment.
As I mentioned above, stressful client interactions cause your body and mind to speed up, often to a point where it is hard if not outright impossible to do your job. Without a coping mechanism, you simply continue to speed up all day long. It’s why so many who work in veterinary medicine feel awful during the day and exhausted and spent at the end of it. It’s part of why so many struggle with mental health and eventually burn out and leave the field.
In the midst of negative client interactions, the Power of Pacing® technique teaches you to . . .
Recognize what’s happening to you physically, emotionally, and mentally - 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. You’ll find more details about how the process works here.
Then, you can schedule a brief introductory call with me to ask any questions you have before getting started.
Learn to separate an owner’s reaction from your own. Learn how to not worry about what other people might be thinking of you and keep your focus on the patient. Believe it or not, it is possible, truly possible, to thrive in this work.
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®