Vet Med

If you've been in vet med long enough, you've probably experienced the sinking feeling when you discover that a pet owner requested to not see you or you receive negative feedback (even though you're a really awesome human and vet). 

Here are 7 tips for coping:

1. First, it feels good to be liked! It’s normal and okay to feel uncomfortable when someone doesn’t.❤️

Allow yourself to observe the discomfort that is part of being a human with a heart. Notice how the part of you that can observe th…

Click here to listen wherever you enjoy listening to your podcasts

In this episode, Dr. Stacey Cordivano shares her story of experiencing and recovering from burnout. As a solo ambulatory equine veterinarian and mom with two kids under the age of 3, she knew something had to change when she found herself driving to the hospital to have her appendix out after cooking Thanksgiving dinner.  Just a couple of months earlier, she had been diagnosed with Lyme disease and experienced the emotional tr…

The 5 Freedoms Revisited – An Epilogue (Part 2): Freedom From Want

By Dr. Amelia Knight Pinkston

The high burnout and suicide rate in the veterinary profession cannot be our norm, and it doesn’t have to be. Dr. Don DeForge’s article “The Veterinary 5 Freedoms” was inspired from a speech designed to rally change for “a world attainable in our own time and generation”. Change is possible starting now – today. As a profession we need to be asking, “what specifically needs to change to foster a su…

The 5 Freedoms Revisited – An Epilogue (Part 1)

The high burnout and suicide rate in the veterinary profession cannot be our norm, and it doesn’t have to be. While reading Dr. Don DeForge’s article “The Veterinary 5 Freedoms”, I appreciated his inspiration from a speech designed to rally change for “a world attainable in our own time and generation”. Change is possible starting now – today. You summit a mountain one small step at a time. As a profession we need to be asking, “what specifical…

I frequently used to wish that I could just escape from my brain.

I was exhausted - from a job that made me feel empty by the end of the day, from trying to keep up with a never-ending to-do list, from being anxious even when I didn’t know what was making me anxious which made me even more anxious, and from trying so hard and yet always feeling behind.

Yet the moment I would try to relax, my brain would get louder with thoughts like:

• "You don't have time for this"
• "Oh, you never scheduled …

Here’s a summary of why the vet profession has such a high burnout and suicide rate.

The veterinary profession selects people who are deeply empathetic. We become veterinarians because we are following our heart. If we were logical, we would go to medical school where we could make double the salary and focus on one species. Instead, we follow our hearts.

In order to get into vet school, we have to get excellent grades, do tons of extracurriculars, volunteer in animal hospitals, and general…