The assessment is a 15-20 minute questionnaire that each of your employees will take in order to get a holistic overview of the well-being of your entire veterinary team in order to identify specific areas where you can focus to have the greatest ROI in supporting the energy and well-being of your team (and therefore success of your hospital). 

This is the description that will be in the email you forward to your employees:

Your hospital has elected to participate in this well-being assessment in order to give you an opportunity to provide honest feedback so that they can identify opportunities to best support your energy and well-being.

As a veterinarian who has experienced and recovered from burn out, I know how critical it is to feel heard, respected, valued, and supported in your workplace. This well-being assessment was designed to give you a confidential and safe space to have your voice heard. Your privacy and well-being are my top priority.

By participating, I will be able to give your hospital an overview of the areas it is doing well and the areas with room for improvement in order to create an environment that supports your energy and physical and mental well-being.

All questions are optional - there will always be a "prefer not to answer" option. However, the more open and honest you are with your feedback, the more I can help your hospital understand how to best support your health, happiness, and success. This includes questions about your health and all aspects of life (not just work), because everything is connected. This is designed to identify root causes of decreased well-being to avoid wasting time and energy on changes that don't actually help. The information you provide is completely confidential.

The feedback you provide will also be used to collect data on how our profession is doing as a whole and to identify and guide conversations around what resources, initiatives, and programs are actually effective in supporting the well-being of veterinary professionals.

This assessment will take approximately 15-20 minutes.

If you have any questions prior to completing this survey, don't hesitate to contact me at amelia@lifeboost.today. You can read more about who I am and my qualifications at https://www.lifeboost.today/about. 

Cheers to having your voice heard and creating positive change in vet med!

Here's what you can expect with the workplace well-being assessment:

• Sign up to join the wait list. When you do this, you'll receive an email with a link to a short questionnaire to give me more information about your hospital and to establish a baseline prediction for how you think your hospital's overall well-being is doing.
• Once there's an opening, I'll reach out to you to get started with the well-being assessment for your hospital! 
  
• I'll provide you with an email that you can forward to all of your employees. It will explain what the well-being assessment is and include a link to the well-being assessment created for your hospital. 
  
• You'll carve out time for everyone to spend 15-20 minutes taking the assessment (in order to quality for this free assessment you need to make time for your employees to do this during their work day)
• Once everyone has completed the assessment, send me an email letting me know. We will schedule a time to meet (virtually or in person depending on your location) to go over the complimentary well-being assessment summary created for your hospital that will include:
  • A snapshot of the overall well-being of your hospital
  • Strengths to celebrate 
  • Areas with the most opportunity for improvement
  • A recommendation for a simple, doable place to start that will have the greatest impact on your veterinary team’s well-being and energy (and therefore the success of your practice) based on our discussion and your perspective on what you think will be well received and what feels doable and exciting for you
• You'll have the option for employees to take the assessment again after implementing a change so that you can monitor progress and see if it was truly effective
  

If you are looking to hire, you will have data supporting your claims (as long as your claims are accurate). Instead of simply saying "we prioritize the well-being of our team" you may be able to say, "15/15 of our employees agree that we qualify as a unicorn hospital."

You may find that when we look at your team's overall well-being, energy level rated the lowest. That's a huge opportunity to dramatically improve the efficiency and success of your hospital since energy is at the root of everything. I'll be able to look at the data to identify the biggest physical and mental energy drains for your team so that you have a specific plan on where to start in a way that feels doable.  

A recent assessment found that 7 out of 13 of the staff members agreed that they "struggle with people-pleasing" and 8 out of 13 agreed that they "tend to avoid difficult conversations". That means that over half of their staff are unlikely to speak up even when they're unhappy! Luckily, 12 out of 13 staff members felt comfortable giving honest feedback with this assessment, which means they have identified a way to be proactive about identifying problems early rather than reactive when huge problems arise seemingly out of the blue (like an employee quitting).  The health of a team and hospital is a function of the average time lag between identifying and discussing problems. Having this insight shows that there's a huge opportunity to provide resources/training that help staff to feel more confident speaking up for what they need and navigating challenging conversations. Those skills will have a positive impact in many aspects of life (client communication, work satisfaction, relationships outside of work, etc) so that they have a lower baseline stress level and improved energy.

You may discover that only one employee is drinking enough water during the day leading to everyone feeling like a withered flower. With that data, we'll discuss small changes that would have a big impact like getting everyone a water bottle, having pitchers of infused water in the break room like cucumber lime (hello spa vibes!), and having a fun challenge to encourage everyone to stay hydrated. Your brain is at least 75% water, so making it more convenient to stay hydrated is such a simple way to improve the energy, focus, mood, and productivity of your team.

You may identify that nearly half of your employees have high stress levels but that only a moderate amount is coming from work. With that knowledge, you know that empowering your team with anti-anxiety tools and well-being resources that address stressors in and outside of work will have the greatest impact rather than just making changes only at work. I'll point you to specific resources depending on what sounds most appealing and doable to you. 

The more information you have, the more you can remove the guesswork out of understanding how to best support your veterinary team. This is meant to be an empowering opportunity for them to have a confidential and safe space where they can have their voice heard. The foundation of the unicorn project is prioritizing safety, and if an employee does not want to participate it's likely because they are perceiving it as threatening in some way. 

In order to create an experience catered to everyone's individual comfort level, all questions are optional and have a "prefer not to answer" option. 

With that said, it is totally fine if a certain employee don't want to participate. I encourage you to get curious and to ask that employee what format helps them to feel most comfortable in giving feedback so you can understand how to best support them.

Your hospital's results will be completely confidential.

This assessment will be used to identify "unicorn hospitals". If you qualify as a unicorn hospital, you deserve recognition for leading by example! You will have the option to be added to a list of unicorn hospitals that will serve as a resource so that new grads and other veterinary professionals who are open to new opportunities can find you if you are hiring and so that pet owners who support the unicorn project can find you. I will also give shoutouts on social media (if you consent) so that the veterinary profession can see proof of what’s possible.

In addition to providing you with valuable insights about how to support the energy and well-being of your team for optimal productivity and success, the feedback your hospital provides will be used to collect data on how our profession is doing as a whole and to identify and guide conversations around what resources, initiatives, and programs are actually effective in supporting the well-being of veterinary professionals.

As I collect data, I will be able to give you additional insights on how your hospital's well-being compares to other comparable hospitals.

In short, no, but we'll actually collect data on that! 

In my experience, many members of the veterinary team are hesitant to provide honest feedback or don't give accurate feedback to their employers for a variety of reasons:

• They are afraid of negative repercussions if they're totally honest 
• They don't trust that their feedback will be anonymous even if you tell them that it is when the feedback channel is coming directly from you
• They don't have enough time to reflect on their answers before being asked how they're doing on the spot so that the information they provide may be not be accurate or the full picture   
• They have people-pleasing tendencies and reflexively say what they think you want to hear without tuning into what they actually need

Another reason your check-ins or assessments aren't working:

• They're not happening because you're too busy (even though you keep meaning to make them a priority)
• You aren't asking the right questions and your blind spots are the biggest opportunities for improvement (for example: you may be thinking about how physical health is connected to your team's mental well-being)
• You get feedback, but it's overwhelming and you're not sure where to start or what will actually help
• Well-being is complex and multifactorial, which is why I've developed this holistic assessment to look at all aspects of life - personal and professional and physical and mental health - in order to identify root issues and opportunities to create the greatest positive impact. The assessment was created based on the unique knowledge and perspectives I’ve gained from my diverse experiences as a veterinarian who has overcome burnout and worked in 30+ different hospitals (general practice associate, urgent care, and relief) and as an integrative health and life coach. 

My goal is to make your life easier! My approach, resources, and programs consistently help stressed and exhausted veterinary professionals to unleash their most confident, energized, and healthy self in a way that feels like a breath of fresh air. This assessment addresses key data to help to orchestrate that change at the hospital level and to prevent you from wasting time, energy, and money on things that don't work.

Hi! I'm Dr. Amelia. I'm a veterinarian and integrative health and life coach passionate about creating a new narrative around what true health and success look like - they should add pleasure, energy, and fulfillment to your life rather than drain them. 

Since earning my VMD and VBMA certificate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, I have worked in small animal general practice, urgent care, and locum which has provided the opportunity to work in over 30 different hospitals including corporate, privately owned, mobile, high and low income, and both toxic and thriving cultures. That experience combined with my extensive and holistic training and personal journey recovering from burnout has given me a unique perspective and fuels my passion to create positive change in vet med (and beyond).

While recovering from burn out, I founded Life Boost with Amelia in 2020. I know what it takes to fall back in love with the veterinary profession and I also know what it takes to follow your heart and try something new. My approach combines an evidence-based understanding of how the body and brain work - including the unconscious mind - with a holistic approach that honors what your heart needs to create real sustainable change that feels like a breath of fresh air.