If you love your pet, you should love your vet - let's share this message to our clients.
We are a profession facing a mental health crisis. It is important to constantly discuss the issues facing us, and share any resources that may help. Two such resources are below. These look at fostering empathy in the workplace and what you can do if you are worried about someone's safety. There are a lot of people that care if the veterinary profession is OK. Many of our clients care as well, and are often surprised that we have 4x the suicide rate of the general population. We work in an overwhelming, exhausting, draining, amazing, rewarding, challenging, fun and engaging profession. We are hard on ourselves and our expectations are unrelenting, We feel guilty for charging clients for what we want to do for free (we shouldn’t). We have to witness death. The most difficult moment of my career was when an old man came to say goodbye to his dog. He said to me simply that, ‘I just came to say goodbye’. Then he looked directly into pet's eyes and said ‘You have been my best friend since my wife died. I wanted to say thank you for this, and for being the best friend I could ever hope for’. With one hand I injected the lethobarb, with the other I held his shaking one. At the time, it broke my heart, and I thought it was the worst job ever. Now I wonder if I was privileged to have been able to have put his friend out of their misery, or him out of his financial distress over it. I challenge veterinarians to ask one colleague if they are OK, and I challenge veterinary clients to ask their vet if they are OK today. If you love your pet, you should love your vet. https://www.ruok.org.au/worried-about-someones-safety https://www.ruok.org.au/fostering-empathy-in-the-workplace Thank you @dr_peta_lilley, clinical psychologist for the QLD Bar association.