The 2 Key Ingredients For Preventing Burnout In Veterinary Medicine

 Burnout gets talked about a lot in vet med. But if we really want this profession to be truly sustainable, we need to get clear on what actually prevents it.

And here’s the thing:
It’s not complicated.
It’s just not the norm... yet.

As a veterinarian, I thought I was being proactive in preventing burnout. 

I knew that the profession struggled with a high burnout and suicide rate, so I prioritized healthy habits and even listened to stress management and positive-mindset books and podcasts on my drives into work.

But 5 years in, I dreaded going to work. I felt stuck, exhausted, and regretted chasing after my childhood dream.

Since that time I’ve spent a lot of time exploring why I experienced burnout despite following all of the typical well-being and burnout advice. 

What I’ve learned is this:

⚠️ Burnout is a nervous system stuck in the shut down state.

Shut down is like the nervous system’s plan B if fight or flight doesn’t help you to escape a perceived threat.
It's your body’s last resort attempt to protect you when you’ve been operating in survival mode for too long.

This perspective is huge, because it shifts burnout from being a nebulous danger that could strike you at any moment to something clear that you can see coming from a mile away and avoid.

These are the two key ingredients required to prevent burnout:

1️⃣ You need to be able to recognize signs of a stress response in yourself and know how to use that to protect your energy and sanity (instead of staying stuck in it).

2️⃣ You need to be in an environment where it’s safe to share how you’re feeling—and where your boundaries are respected.

Let's dive into each...

1️⃣ Know how to recognize when you’re in a stress response—and how to use that information to protect your energy and sanity.

This is the single most important thing to learn if you want to thrive...not just in vet med, but in life.

While that may sound like a bold claim, the reality is that our nervous system controls everything that we do.

Looking back, I knew I was stressed leading up to burnout, but I didn’t think I was that stressed.
I had been living in survival mode for so long, it had become my norm.

Even on my days off, or while spending time with people I loved, my nervous system was stuck in survival mode: perceiving threats, influencing my choices, and draining my energy — without me realizing it. 

I didn’t know I was in survival mode, so I couldn’t shift out of it.

And that’s where so many of us get stuck.
Because we live in a world, and a profession, that has normalized survival mode.

We’re conditioned by hustle culture to believe in the no pain, no gain mindset.
We’re surrounded by messages that make it seem normal to cope with or numb stress through alcohol, comfort food, screens, or medications just to get through the week.
We’re expected to be machines who keep producing and keep pushing without feeling.

But the thing is…
You’re not a machine.

🧠 Your capacity changes from day to day.

Some days, you walk into work:

🌟 Well-rested
🌟 Nourished from a real breakfast
🌟 Confident because your cases this week have gone well and clients have been kind

You feel calm, grounded, capable.
🔋 Your battery is full.

And other days, it’s the opposite:

☕️ You tossed and turned all night
💔 You're dealing with relationship challenges
😫 You were rushed and skipped breakfast
🚗 Someone cut you off in traffic and nearly caused an accident

Before you’ve even walked through the clinic doors, your nervous system is already on high alert.
🪫 You’re starting the day drained, reactive, and in survival mode.

This is why we can't just rely on external boundaries and guidelines (like a fixed number of walk-ins accepted every day) to create a sustainable workplace. 

Sure, those are helpful but there are going to be days when even a “reasonable” schedule feels like too much and it’s important to understand why in order for vet med to be sustainable.

On the day you go into work with a full tank, you may be perfectly happy and capable of taking on multiple extra appointments or having an afternoon full of complicated cases. 

But on the day you're already walking in feeling drained and in a stressed state, one extra case may be what pushes you past your capacity into a panic attack or cursing management or feeling like you can't think clearly.

🧠 Your nervous system is constantly giving you feedback about how you’re really doing—you just have to know what signs to look for and to be willing to listen. 

Listening to your body is crucial, because:

• A) it makes it easier to feel comfortable speaking up for the boundaries you need
• B) it gives you an opportunity to be proactive in making a change long before you reach burnout because you recognize the warning signs and can course correct 

Here's what I mean...

A) It makes it easier to stick up for boundaries, because it's not just for your benefit - it benefits the entire veterinary ecosystem (veterinary team, pet, and pet owner).  

In a stressed state, you’re more likely to: 

⚠️ Forget things
⚠️ Lose patience with a client
⚠️ Rush and make a mistake
⚠️ Feel overwhelmed and indecisive
⚠️ End the day exhausted, snappy, or questioning why you went into this profession

None of those things are in the best interest of you, your patients, clients, colleagues, or the long-term success of your practice. 

That doesn’t mean you can never be stressed. The stress response in and of itself isn’t a problem — it’s a normal, useful part of being human. A typical day in vet med includes stressful events. That’s okay. 

But the stress response was designed to be temporary. It’s for survival, not thriving.
And so in order for vet med to be sustainable and fulfilling, our baseline stress level should be low so that we have the capacity to tolerate the stressors we’re going to inevitably encounter.

When you use signs of a stress response as your guide for when you’re nearing your limit, sticking up for boundaries becomes easier because speaking up for what you need in order to not stay stuck in an overwhelmed state isn’t a sign of weakness - it’s a sign of emotional intelligence and prioritizing what is in the best interest of not just you but also your patients and practice. 

For example, if you notice yourself suddenly feeling tense and irritated by everything (your fight response kicking in) and the front desk asks if you can see the walk-in that just arrived...

Saying something like, “I need to take my lunch break to reset before I can give this next patient the attention they deserve,” isn’t selfish. It’s wise.

You’re recognizing your limits and making a choice that supports patient care, your well-being, and your team.

Can you see how this approach not only benefits you, it also supports the long-term success of your practice?

B) Listening to your body gives you an opportunity to be proactive in making a change long before you reach burnout because you recognize the warning signs and can course correct — before it hijacks your whole day or leads to burnout. 

Burnout doesn’t happen after just one hard day. It happens when you are ending every shift feeling stressed and drained and you don’t have enough time to recover in between.

By observing when you’re in a stress response, you can avoid that.

On days when you are ending the day feeling irritable, anxious, or totally drained and defeated, pause and reflect back:

• What were the specific things in your day that drained your energy and added stress?
• What needs to change so that you don’t keep feeling that way? 
• Think about the physical, mental, and emotional factors (in and outside of work) that contributed. 

If you look back to the example earlier, there were many factors that drained energy and added stress before even arriving at work (lack of sleep, relationship challenges, skipping a breakfast, traffic). Each of those becomes an opportunity to get curious about why that happened and what could change to better support your energy and sanity the next day.

When you recognize signs of a stress response throughout the day, every moment becomes an opportunity to course correct and to identify what you need in order to shift into a more grounded state.

If you haven’t checked out the anti-anxiety tools taught in the free RACE-approved Beat The Burnout series, that’s a great place to start for releasing and letting go of stress throughout the day. 

⚠️Vet med has a lot of room for improvement here! Instead of recognizing these signs, we’ve been selected and rewarded for our willingness to push through and ignore the red flags 🚩until it’s too much. 

When you choose to adopt this approach, you are helping to lead by example in creating a new more sustainable norm in vet med.

However, there is another crucial piece. So let’s dive into that…

2️⃣ Be in a workplace where it’s safe to speak up—and where your boundaries are respected.

Taking care of your own nervous system is essential.

But it’s only half the equation.

It doesn’t matter how well you manage your own stress if you’re in an environment where your safety and well-being aren’t prioritized.

In a healthy workplace, saying something like,
"Hey, I’m nearing my limit right now"
should be encouraged and respected, not judged, tested, or ignored.

That kind of psychological safety only exists when there’s trust and a shared understanding of nervous system states. 

When every member of the team (including the leaders) knows how to recognize their own limits and stress responses, something powerful happens:

➡️ You start co-creating an environment that feels safe, supportive, and collaborative.
➡️ You create a sustainable space where it’s okay to be human—instead of feeling like you have to be a perfect machine.
➡️ You strengthen the team and foster a healthy give-and-take dynamic, instead of certain members becoming resentful and overextended because they always feel like they have to pick up the slack.

Supporting your team’s nervous systems leads to:

✅ Fewer mistakes
✅ More effective collaboration
✅ Happier clients
✅ Lower turnover
✅ Greater job satisfaction
✅ Better patient care
✅ A stronger, more successful business

This is not a kum-bah-yah extra. It is an absolutely critical foundation for sustainable success in a practice. 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re running on fumes...
If you’ve started questioning your decision to go into vet med...
Or if you love vet med but you’re worried about the high burnout rate...

This is your starting point.

Your nervous system controls everything—whether you like it or not.

When you learn to work with it, it becomes the foundation for sustainable health, fulfillment, and success—in vet med and in life.

✨ Ready to learn how to recognize the signs of a stress response—and what to do about it?

Start with this free talk: 

🎧 From Hopeless to Hopeful: A Fresh Perspective on Burnout

Jump to minute 16 if you want a quick overview of the signs you're stuck in survival mode.

You'll walk away with:
🔹 A clear understanding of why burnout happens—and how to prevent or recover from it
🔹 The ability to recognize signs you're in a stress response
🔹 Nervous system tools to help you shift into a more grounded state
🔹 A new sense of hope and clarity that sustainable success is possible in vet med

👉 Click here to watch the talk — and start feeling better today.