layout: true background-image: url(../../images/slide_background.jpg) background-size: cover class: middle --- # Acceptance and Moving On ### Long Quotes --- ### Quote 1 --- ### “What I would do very often after something went wrong, is think through was there anything that I did that I would have done differently, knowing what I know now. And if I came to the conclusion that, you know, very often you’re dealing with odds, isn’t it so you’ve got 40% chance this will go wrong and 60% it will go right, but you have to make a decision and if you make a decision that goes with the 60% but it goes wrong… *(cont. ...)* --- ### so, would you have done it differently? No. You would have still made the same decision, it’s just you were unlucky this time. I would normally think through what I did. Did I do the right decision or not and if yes, if I’ve done the right decision, I would not beat myself ... If I’d done the wrong decision, then I’d probably learn from it.” --- ### Quote 2 --- ### “Try and talk it through with them (vets who are worried they have made a mistake) and work out what did or didn’t go well. Come up with some positives – there will be some, and a lot of the time you didn’t do a lot wrong - it was communication, or perception that went wrong. And try and work out so you can learn from it and ensure that history doesn’t repeat. And try and reassure, discuss how you’ve all been there probably - gallows humour. Tell a story of how you’ve probably done far worse and you’ve come out the other side. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And just also try and reassure that a) it’s OK to care – we all care and we wouldn’t be getting up at 3.00 o’clock in the morning to try and help these people if we didn’t care and b) that feeling will pass eventually although it doesn’t feel like that at the moment because it’s all encompassing when it happens. But we’ve all been there, we’ve all felt it and we’ve come out the other side. You can’t make it go away but try and rationalise it a bit, and not normalise it, but acknowledge that it’s a genuine feeling. But it will pass.” --- ### Quote 3 --- ### “… it would be a case of speaking with someone with more experience in the practice, talking about what I’d done and if they’d do the same or something better and then seeing if there was something I could have done to address it, e.g. actually, I should have given this cow and injection of X. Then phoning the farmer back up and asking how the cow is, and offering to go back to the farm and do it – acknowledging that I could go back and do something more. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And if there was something that I’d felt was the best at the time but realised later I had made a mistake it would then be a case of getting back on the farm fairly quickly, not being scared to go back, and not leave it hanging over me as a “farm I couldn’t go back to because I had an issue”. --- ### Quote 4 --- ### “When it goes great you’re on top of the world. And when it doesn’t, the reality bites and you lick your wounds a little bit. But I know that when I stand back and think about it logically, is there anything I would have done different; anything I could have done – could the farmer have done anything different? *(cont. ...)* --- ### If my answer is ‘no’ in all those cases … and even if the answer is ‘yes’, all I can do is say, “I’ll have to learn from it”. And, unfortunately, that might be at the expense of the animal. But I think that is something that experience has taught me.” --- ### Quote 5 --- ### “Some farmers really see the benefit in forward planning – doing the herd or flock health stuff - then others just want you on and off as quick as you can, then they’ll just call you in for the bad calving or whatever. And it’s just one of those where it’s a real balance on those farms, because there is only so much you can do when someone just doesn’t want to hear. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And that’s definitely frustrating, from a veterinary point of view because you know there’s more you could do or more you could give. But I was very lucky at my old practice because we didn’t have very many farmers like that and the ones that we did, you book marked them down as “oh well, it is what it is”, rather that get worked up about the fact that you couldn’t do anything.” --- ### Quote 6 --- ### “(Lack of sleep) It makes you more emotional, more quick-tempered, snappy. It also makes you less likely to be as good a vet as you could be. If you’ve been awake for 24 hours, then you’re not going to be making the clinical judgements you should be. It does take its toll emotionally. *(cont. ...)* --- ### I mean physically as well – I lost 5 kg in 3 months and one of my bosses turned around and said (name) you’re losing weight you need to eat more. And we talked about it, and it was fine – it was because I was stressed. The hours can take their toll and it’s important to get a bit of a balance and that’s why I’m no longer in that job. But I loved it.” --- ### Quote 7 --- ### “I think you can be a better vet if you’re better rested and feel that your own time is your own. Even if you have got long hours, or if you have to start at 4.00 am, if you know that by the time it gets to 2.00 in the afternoon, no-one at work is going to call you, no-one at work is going to book you in to a 10 to 2.00 appointment – you will leave if you come in early. *(cont. ...)* --- ### I think it’s a culture that we just don’t have, and I think it’s quite a toxic culture – that expectancy that you’ll always be there, as a vet, that you’ll always be accessible by phone – can be quite damaging. Then it’s frowned upon if you don’t answer your phone and you just think- every other job, lots of people don’t go home on time. --- ### Quote 8 --- ### “If I’ve done my best, and the farmers done his best, you can’t do anything more and you have to accept that sometimes. No matter how good you are, no matter how experienced you are, things do not work out the way you want them. And at the end of the day, if you start out with a live calf, it just has to kick its back legs, break its navel cord inside the cow and its dead in two minutes - *(cont. ...)* --- ### so the chances of something going wrong are pretty high in the situations in which we’re working. So you have to accept, yes, sometimes the outcomes isn’t going to be what you hoped for. You have to accept that, shake your head and say, “I know I’m not perfect, I know that everything isn’t going to go right every time”. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And you have to accept that sometimes it’s going to be not the right outcome. But if you can look yourself in the mirror and say, “well, I did everything that I could have in that situation”, then you’ve not right to feel down, feel depressed or that it’s your fault.”