What's Happening to My Veterinary Staff? The Missing Piece in Supporting Your Staff’s Well-Being
As the owner of a 24/7/365 general, referral and emergency veterinary hospital, one of the most painful and frustrating things I observed over the years were early-career veterinarians who simply could not cope with the clinical environment.
On paper, they had every qualification needed to thrive, but before long the cracks would start to show and evolve into full-blown fissures. If you are the owner or manager of a veterinary hospital, I am sure you've observed the same things.
They stop interacting well with management and teammates. (Which might be an understatement.)
Their casework suffers, and they are not making the proper recommendations for treatment.
They stop showing up on time, and other unprofessional behavior soon follows.
In the clinic I owned, we had very clear expectations for performance, and the ones who could not meet those expectations quickly stuck out.
The problem was, there were so many who stuck out. There was so much dysfunction from veterinary school graduates who had the information they needed to perform but were unprepared for the realities of practice. I just kept thinking over and over, “It shouldn't be this hard. What has happened?” From my perspective, the problem began to accelerate and worsen around the year 2000 and the crisis has only deepened its roots year after year.
We are all familiar with the current conversation around mental health and well-being in the veterinary field and the crisis facing the industry as a whole. So much good work is being done to address this urgent issue, but I would argue that in many cases, something very important is being missed.
What Have We Missed that Could Help Our Veterinarians Thrive?
When I think about the early career veterinarians on my team who could not meet expectations, I am rarely thinking of anyone who was average academically. The cases who stand out in my mind were at the top of their class. They might even have been a valedictorian, or they were personally recommended by instructors at top schools as the best they had seen in years.
The people who burned out the fastest were the ones we had vetted for excellence. They nailed the interview. Every metric we could use to measure their readiness showed nothing but potential, but it became very clear that there were vital tools they were missing. They were utterly unprepared for the stressful realities of practice.
Facing upset owners
Handling aggressive patients
Explaining the costs of treatment
Owners not accepting their recommendations
Delivering bad news to owners and families
Dealing with other team members' mistakes
Dealing with their own mistakes
Catching up when they’re behind schedule
Now, in my experience, HR consultants will step in to moments where team members underperform and try to examine the moment itself. They will ask what happened in the interaction between a veterinarian and technician that caused an altercation. They will try to understand how the wrong recommendation was made in the exam room or why an owner feels they were treated poorly by staff. The search goes on and on for what happened in the moment. It is a helpful endeavor - and important - but it is missing something painfully simple.
Not enough people are asking what happened in the moments before the incident.
What happened earlier in the exam?
What happened in the previous exam room?
What happened earlier in the day?
The truth is, 9 times out of 10, your veterinary staff was primed for an altercation or mistake long before it ever happened.
Speed Is Tearing Your Staff to Pieces.
We call our technique for managing stress in veterinary practice The Power of Pacing® for a reason. Without intervention, the stressful moments your staff face throughout the day are speeding them up in destructive ways, and they need to learn to pace themselves.
It looks like this. There’s a three-step process at play which repeats itself over and over throughout the day.
Events – Veterinarians face stressful, often unpredictable events in the clinic caused by owners, animals, staff, or their own personal errors.
Triggers – Every one of these events set off a specific trigger. Triggers are automatic, subconscious responses unique to each person. They manifest as thoughts like “I can’t believe I’m failing at this,” or “What will other people think?”
Reactions - The amygdala fires and sets off a powerful emotional and physical reaction. Adrenaline kicks in. Anxiety, anger, fear, and frustration take over. The body gets tense, and the mind starts to race. This is why it's hard for your veterinarians to perform or even remember basic treatments and protocols.
And this happens all day long. Your team members are constantly being forced to speed up, which makes them feel lousy, behave poorly, and lose access to their thoughts, processes, and plans.
Maybe they make it through several of these cycles without incident, but make no mistake, they are suffering, and they are primed to make mistakes long before they occur.
Earlier in the day, your veterinarian had a stressful encounter with an owner who questioned his/her integrity. They made it through that one, but their body and mind have begun the race.
Two exams later, an owner is visibly and audibly upset at the costs of treatment. They nervously fumble their way through the interaction and exit the room. Speed increases.
In the next exam room, they lose focus and make a mistake, and they know it. Inwardly, they panic and cannot recall basic protocols or how to turn things around. They are hyper-focused on what others in the room might be thinking, and they feel embarrassed and humiliated.
Meanwhile, they are behind schedule. It's on to the next exam room without time to course-correct or reflect.
Just reading this is stressful. I am sure you can feel it, and this is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Many of your staff are barely in control of their behavior, and by the end of the day, they are completely spent and exhausted.
When this cycle is unbroken, it continues at home. It affects relationships, causes people to lose sleep, and often leads to substance abuse and other related issues.
Speed up. Collapse. Wake up the next day and start all over. It just keeps going, and it takes its toll quickly on veterinary school graduates who never saw it coming.
Once this pattern was clear to me, I knew I had to find a way to break it.
The Power of Pacing Technique Fills in the Missing Piece in Supporting Staff Well-Being and Performance.
I spent more than 10 years developing The Power of PacingⓇ technique. We needed a mentoring solution, some way to help early career veterinarians acquire the tools they were not given in veterinary school so they could thrive in their work.
The key was in giving them a way to, in broad terms, hit the reset button in the midst of any stressful event throughout the day and pace themselves physically and emotionally.
Briefly, this is how it works. I call these “the 5 R’s.” Veterinarians learn to work through these steps during any stressful event, such as abusive behavior by an owner or the fallout from their own oversight or mistake. They are taught to . . .
Recognize what’s happening physically, emotionally, and mentally - and why.
Redirect their reaction into a controlled response.
Replace the mental script running in their mind with one that restores calm.
Repair the physical effects of the event they just experienced.
Refocus on the task in front of them or the next exam with a clear mind.
This isn’t therapy. It’s a simple, repeatable technique used to reframe stressful moments. It can be a key component of a staff mentoring program and can serve as an excellent companion to any professional counseling they pursue.
It is also achievable to learn on a busy schedule. This private coaching process only requires a handful of sessions to complete. It is an 18-month journey which includes 4 months of monthly sessions followed by quarterly sessions for the remaining 14 months. I know how pressed early career veterinarians are for time, and this program is designed with that concern in mind.
Most importantly, I have seen this technique restore wellness, high levels of performance, and hope in early career veterinarians. These words from one of my clients always stay with me.
Stepping into a high-volume practice, I felt like I was expected to know all the answers. It was like a tidal wave. Not only was I dealing with the struggle to know and come up with all of the scientific veterinary knowledge, I was also struggling with the embarrassment of not instantly knowing the answer.
Going into my first overnight shift, I was about 4 months into practicing this process. Driving into the parking lot at the start of my shift, there was nothing I could do in order to slow down my intense nerves.
Then, halfway into my first night, with an ER full of patients, the night was smooth sailing. I was able to click right into this process when it mattered most and handled the room with more confidence and experience than I thought I had. This process truly shaped the doctor I am today, and I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to learn this method at such a critical stage of my life.
Schedule a brief introductory call with me to ask any questions you have and discuss how to incorporate training on The Power of Pacing® into your onboarding and mentoring programs. I understand the struggles your staff is facing, and I can help.
“Dr. R”
William Rogatz DVM, DABVP - Canine & Feline Specialty
Lead Performance Consultant - The Power of Pacing®