layout: true background-image: url(../../images/slide_background.jpg) background-size: cover class: middle --- # Giving and getting support in a team ### Long Quotes --- ### Quote 1 --- ### “… the main thing is having someone to talk to, and if the vet is feeling under pressure, maybe relieve that pressure by taking some of the work. Being part of a supportive good team that will step in, and help out if required, is a foundation of dealing with difficult days, weeks, years. *(cont. ...)* --- ### If people get isolated, that’s when things start to get serious, so, I think interaction is the key… Having the right team of people. When we employ someone, it’s really important that we feel they’re going to fit into the team and be that supportive and helpful person, willing to put work in when it’s required.” --- ### Quote 2 --- ### “We had a clinical club the other month, last month, we have this clinical club and we discuss surgery in bovines and I felt it was very important to open up about the experience that I had when I made a backside of operating on a cow and I wasn’t necessarily given a great amount of support on it but in terms of the younger guys that were there who probably look up to me and look at the level that I’m at just now and think, *(cont. ...)* --- ### I want to be at that level, it was probably a good thing for them to actually hear that when I was two years qualified I made this mistake and I won’t make that mistake again and none of you guys should make that mistake as well because I’ve already made that mistake.” --- ### Quote 3 --- ### “Try and talk it through with them 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. *(cont. ...)* --- ### Tell a story of how you’ve probably done far worse and you’ve come out the other side 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 that feeling will pass eventually although it doesn’t feel like that at the moment. *(cont. ...)* --- ### 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 4 --- ### “I definitely think having senior partners are very important and I think sometimes have …. some of the new graduates expect support in terms of having people, having senior vets or all the vets going round with them but they need to understand that that’s not very practical - so they need to understand that the support will be about debriefing their days or at least their week, I think that’s what they need. *(cont. ...)* --- ### For the 7 years I was in _______ we probably had a handful or half a dozen new graduates starting – some of them left, some of them are still there. A couple of them complained that they didn’t have enough support. I think they did. Perhaps they didn’t ask enough – people need to ask as well. *(cont. ...)* --- ### Communication is a two way thing, you need to communicate when you’re in trouble and need help. It’s easier said than done, I know. People with mental health issues they tend to keep it to themselves but before they get there, ideally they should be talking.” --- ### Quote 5 --- ### “Nobody would use that lightly but we always have 3 vets on call for instance so at a push, if you needed help the first port of call would be one of the other duty vets but it’s understood that you can always ring a director. It’s not often done but its accepted that if you need to you need to. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And I think that’s really important in a practice that you know that you could at a push and if somebody is making you feel that you can’t then that would be quite difficult I think because you know that you’re on your own . So even though you probably wouldn’t, psychologically it’s important to feel that the support is there.” --- ### Quote 6 --- ### “I think the main thing is having someone to talk to, and if the vet is feeling under pressure, maybe relieve that pressure by taking some of the work. Being part of a supportive good team that will step in and help out if required is a foundation of dealing with difficult days, weeks, years. *(cont. ...)* --- ### If people get isolated, that’s when things start to get serious so I think interaction is the key. Having the right team of people. When we employ someone, it’s really important that we feel they’re going to fit into the team and be that supportive and helpful person, willing to put work in when it’s required.”