layout: true background-image: url(../../images/slide_background.jpg) background-size: cover class: middle --- # Supporting other and younger vets ### Long Quotes --- ### Quote 1 --- ### “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 b) that feeling will pass eventually, although it doesn’t feel like that at the moment because it’s all encompassing when it happens. *(cont. ...)* --- ### 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 2 --- ### “They are paranoid (when they qualify) so there is something wrong with the teaching (in relation to ‘they are going to be sued, or prosecuted’). They are terrified from Day 1 and it takes them a while to realise they can cock up an awful lot before anyone notices anything’s gone wrong. *(cont. ..)* --- ### 70% of everything gets better off its own back so as long as you don’t do anything too harmful, things often get better in spite of what you do, not because of what you do. They are also obsessed with everything has to be perfectly diagnosed and perfectly treated. It’s unrealistic. Setting yourself up to fail.” --- ### Quote 3 --- ### “I found it very helpful with my mistakes to hear colleagues talk about their mistakes. I’ve been lucky to have some quite candid about their muck-ups and I try and make a point with vet students and new graduates – I don’t sort of lay bare all my worst mistakes but if they’ve been in a similar situation I say oh yes actually once I did this and this happened and *(cont. ...)* --- ### I’ve learned not to do it that way or I did this and this happened and it’s just one of those things don’t beat yourself up about it. So I do try and make sure that all the younger vets and students hear my mistakes - if I can put them in a bit of a humorous light – I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. I try to put a bit of a positive spin on it – at least it made a good story in the end, kind of thing. *(cont. ...)* --- ### Even if it was a bit of a disaster, it worked out in the end – I’m still here, I’m still a vet, still enjoying my job. Things happen to everyone, things do go wrong and that’s just the nature of the job. It’s not always going to go right.” --- ### Quote 4 --- ### “We tell our new graduates not to worry about it. We expect them, out of university, to know and be able to do, nothing. We do our best to support them for the first couple of years – never on duty alone, always backed up, always helped out, any flak – we’ll take it and divert it from them and sort things out. Sometimes we do that too much - there’s a balance. *(cont. ...)* --- ### They come out of college thinking that they are going to be sued – if they kill a cow, we’ll compensate the farmers – (it’s not the end of the world) – it’s actually very rare that the vets have done anything wrong. Usually down to other things – ignorant clients. We have a reputation of being fair to farmers. We push them to do CPD – partly because then they get to talk around the subject with people and realise they are on a learning curve, *(cont. ...)* --- ### that you don’t know much at the start, that experience is worth something. The other thing they’re taught at college – they have this pyramid of evidence – and at the bottom is listen to what your boss says. They also expect to be running after 6 months but it takes years.” --- ### Quote 5 --- ### “As a younger vet if there was something else I felt I could do to help the situation, I would do it but if I felt I had reached the end of what I could do I think I would give the farmer confidence by saying I’m going to call someone else out or even speak to someone else. *(cont. ..>)* --- ### And now, as a more experienced vet, it’s giving the younger vets that support. Just to get over that situation, to have someone come out and help but learn from that and have the skills to deal with a similar situation when it comes up next time.” --- ### Quote 6 --- ### “One of the problems which we’ve seen over the years is where younger colleagues either don’t get the opportunity to do things and then when an opportunity arises, they dive in as it’s the only opportunity they’ve had to grabble with that (I’m guilty of that in my younger days) and also I’ve seen where people have not felt able to seek advice before they have a go. *(cont. ...)* --- ### Usually revolves around the fact that they don’t feel that someone further up the ladder from them is sufficiently approachable that they feel that they can talk to people about where their limitations lie and dive in.” --- ### Quote 7 --- ### “the role for me as an employer is in exposing people to enough situations so that they develop their confidence so actually the greatest buzz I saw a number of my young vets get from the time I was employing them was they were successful in a difficult calving - the absolute classic and they go out there saying, “keep your phone on, because I’m going to need you….” whatever *(cont. ...)* --- ### and then they phone you to say, “I’ve done that”. So exposing them to those situations where they can do that without flattening them is a real challenge because those relationships are going to take a long, long time to come but they only build on the fact that people are out there on the farm doing the work.” --- ### Quote 8 --- ### “When you’re dealing with herd health, trying to have this collaborative relationship it’s a problem with vets – we see every single problem and we want to solve every single problem at once and you make it unachievable for your client – they get annoyed at you, *(cont. ...)* --- ### they don’t listen to you in the future so it’s important if you have someone who is incredibly enthusiastic, to direct their enthusiasm towards something that is achievable. It might even just be – we’re going to get them to dip the navels at birth to stop calves dying of scour.” --- ### Quote 9 --- ### “We think it’s essential for the young vets coming out now because … so few have farm animal experience. And also it’s a lot harder now than it was for me 40 years ago because most of the farmers still in business are very capable of doing most things so we tend to get the difficult calving, the difficult problems. *(cont. ...)* --- ### And young vets haven’t had the chance to do something relatively easy, to build up the rapport with the farmer. It’s a lot more difficult now than it was. And I think that a lot of folk have not got the basic background experience to deal with that and *(cont. ...)* --- ### in a lot of cases, not many farmers sons and daughters who are coming into the veterinary profession, so they are at a disadvantage as young and relatively inexperienced – the first couple of years.”