layout: true background-image: url(../../images/slide_background.jpg) background-size: cover class: middle --- # Acceptance and Moving On ### Medium Quotes --- ### “Just move on to the next case, you’ve done your job, hopefully he’ll pay you! You can’t change everybody – usually the phone’s ringing and you’re thinking about the next job – I wouldn’t dwell on it. I wouldn’t worry about that too much.” --- ### “I suppose it was trying to remember that there was nothing that you can do differently and adding five minutes is not going to change that and trying to do either breathing (exercises) or trying to remain in a positive mind-frame.” --- ### “… one thing that was really helpful was, just trying to remember was, when you’re right in there, your brain gets right into the moment - try to think of yourself out of that and ‘look down’ and not be completely consumed by those feelings. Look at it from someone else’s perspective. And that helped me to think, this is just an on-call situation and I’m dealing with this call and I can do it - rather than just thinking about the worst case scenario.” --- ### “I think I’d had enough successes behind me by that point so that if somebody said to me well that’s your advice but I disagree with it, I’m not going to do it, to be able to say well, water off a ducks back really. If you do, it’ll improve your farm / your lot, but if you don’t, you won’t.” --- ### “It’s OK to care. It sucks. It’s not helpful to pretend that it doesn’t and say, “it’s OK, It’s Ok”, because it’s not. You’re in the moment and it’s all encompassing and its shit. But for me it’s a case of ‘its ok to care’. You will get through to the other side of it. You will get better at dealing with it and it won’t last as long. And you will get better at understanding that, yes, it’s bad but actually tomorrow is another day, tomorrow brings new cases.” --- ### “My phone was always switched on – messages left for me – which could be really negative if left by someone who was really frustrated. So I’ve learnt now, when I’m off, I’m off. I do feel bad that I can’t help someone when I’m not working but I need my work / life balance to be right.” --- ### “It does help to see the bigger picture when you’ve feeling demotivated. You know, no-one wants to do a job that involves getting up at two in the morning and driving to a dark farm and do a stressful operation on a cow. But the bigger picture is that you’re an important part of the rural community, providing a vital service that people really value and they look up to the people who provide that service.” --- ### “We’re always getting unpredictable stuff thrown at us when we’re not expecting it and we all learn to deal with that in different ways with various degrees of success but you have to accept that it’s part of the job. Do your swearing then just accept it and do it.” --- ### “Farmers used to call me Dr Death but still wanted me on the farm so I suppose whenever I had positive experiences, even if it didn’t work out the way I’d have liked it to, knowing I’d done my best contributed to my positive feelings. If I had done my best both for the animal and in terms of communicating with the farmer, I’d go away with satisfaction even if things could be better another time.” --- ### “I’ve worked with younger vets, talking to them a lot, talking about cases that they’ve seen. Going out with them if they’ve asked for support. But making sure that they have the opportunity to do things for themselves, so they gain confidence. Talking about failures but also talking about successes as well to remind yourself you can do things.” --- ### “I think the more you work, the more you build up your skills and the less work you take back home with you. The more time goes on, the more confident I feel, and the less stress builds up, and the less I think of it in my free time.” --- ### “It’s frustrating and it can be a hard pill to swallow but that can be the same in any medical field where people just don’t want to take the advice – it’s an inevitable part of the job that you can’t avoid. I learnt quickly not to take it personally.” --- ### “I’m two and a half years out now and I have definitely become accustomed to the fact that you can’t change everyone’s mind, you can’t influence everyone. I think that’s important – just to have that balance – I think a lot of people do take it to heart and it’s not healthy to blame yourself.” --- ### “I’ve had times when it’s happened to me. When you’re an over-achiever and you get out there and things don’t go right, that’s when you’re more likely to fall into a hole or leave the profession. You get hardened to it and you get to realise what matters the most (family). You need to be fairly mature to be able to cope.” --- ### “I’ve had students in the car with me for the last 2 days. I always take great care to tell them that when they are new graduates, they need to make sure that, whilst it’s an all-encompassing job, they need to make sure they can take their minds somewhere else. It’s extremely important - when you have time off, take your mind somewhere else.” --- ### “I’m getting better at disassociating myself from it and I do wonder am I disassociating myself too much and I won’t care anymore but then you find yourself getting really, really upset about something inconsequential. I am trying to make an effort to step back, look at it as an outsider and think, right that wasn’t ideal, what will I do next time.” --- ### “Nowadays I tend towards just shrugging my shoulders and thinking, “well not everybody is going to listen to you”. There are some farmers who just want to use you for the drugs and the emergency services and they’re not interested in proactive planning and they never will be.” --- ### “I have mixed feelings about springtime. I find a lot of aspects quite satisfying. No-one like to get out of bed at 2.00 am but I’ve accepted that it is what it is, and I justify it as it’s just for 3 or 4 months for the year.” --- ### “Well I think, “Nobody’s perfect. Most of the time I get it right. Now and again I get it wrong. I’m allowed to get it wrong and as long as I don’t make the same mistake again”. I learn from it, if I make the same mistake, I’d be very disappointed in myself. So, learn from the mistake and the experience.” --- ### “I just know that I’ll feel bad about it, then I’ll go to bed and know that I’ll feel better. I’m not good at being in a bad mood for a long period of time. I just know within myself, you just need to feel that way for a bit then get a good night’s sleep and you’ll feel better in the morning.”