atDove Blog | Veterinary Training Blog

DoveLewis is a nonprofit emergency animal hospital that has been serving the Portland, Oregon community for over 50 years. The hospital is staffed by highly skilled veterinarians and support staff dedicated to providing the best possible care to animals in need.

DoveLewis is a nonprofit emergency animal hospital that has been serving the Portland, Oregon community for over 50 years. The hospital is staffed by highly skilled veterinarians and support staff dedicated to providing the best possible care to animals in need.

Lobby Wranglers, Client Confidants, The Front Line - We Got You.

When you visit a veterinary clinic, the friendly faces you meet first are the Client Service Representatives. They are the backbone of the clinic's daily operations and make sure everything runs smoothly. They must be able to handle difficult situations with grace and professionalism, ensuring that clients feel heard and understood. They must also have a deep understanding of the clinic's policies and procedures to provide accurate information to clients.

As my college graduation was nearing, I knew I needed to look for a job. At the time, I was considering graduate school to pursue a career in human medicine, but I didn’t feel ready to go to more school. I decided to take a year to figure out what I wanted to do. Most of my family works in the medical field, so I always assumed I would end up working in healthcare too. While I was searching for jobs during my last few months of classes, I found out that DoveLewis was hiring Client Service Representatives. I did my research and decided that my prior job experience in customer service and human medicine would apply well in the veterinary field. I previously worked as a Resident Assistant, then at a medical office, and became a registered Emergency Medical Technician in college. My work experience - working with people + reception + emergency medicine combined - would lend well to the CSR role.

Veterinary clinics respond to hundreds of client requests each day. In this interview with Client Experience Training Specialist Breanna Gordon and Director of Client Care & Patient Access Erin Erck, we’ll share how DoveLewis handles client requests through effective and clear communication.

Birdie: Hi, my name is Birdie and I'm the Training Specialist for the Client Experience Team here at DoveLewis.

My internship is coming to an end at DoveLewis Emergency and Specialty Animal Hospital, and reflecting on the past year I can see significant growth in myself as a clinician. I came to DoveLewis with the hope to build on my fledgling knowledge base and learn from amazing veterinarians to practice the best medicine possible. I remember recognizing that Dove was unique before I even started. It is one of the only non-academic non-profit hospitals and deals a lot with serving the limited resource community while still being a high-level referral hospital with an emphasis on emergency and critical care. You get a dichotomy of both the gold standard and the limited resource approach to medicine daily. While interviewing for my internship, I appreciated the collective experience and clinical knowledge of the veterinarians I would be working with. DoveLewis was my top choice of internship because this was a place I felt could advance my medicine to the highest level.

Sometimes practicing self-care can feel the least accessible when we need it the most. When we’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it can be hard for us to engage in problem-solving or planning. A written self-care plan can be a helpful tool when you need a reminder of some of the practices that serve you.

Self-care can be so fiddly. I was introduced to the concept of self-care in my social work program, and beginning there, my relationship with it has been multifaceted.

Five years ago, just shy of completing my first year working as a CVT, I would have told you that veterinary medicine was not for me and that resilience wasn’t possible in this field. I was working in a general practice (my first job out of tech school) and I was on the verge of leaving the field completely. Never-ending days, an ever-changing schedule, and feeling like I wasn’t being utilized to the best of my technical abilities had left me feeling as though I needed to explore other career options. But, on the advice of a very wise tech school mentor who encouraged me not to let my first clinical experience make or break my career as a technician, I submitted one last job application.

To any well-established veterinarian, it’s no surprise the high rates of compassion fatigue, burnout, and feelings of overwork in this field. The pressure and intensity within veterinary medicine were only further accelerated due to COVID and the ramifications of clinic overload, staffing, and the financial burden of increasing veterinary costs. Regardless of years in the field, it’s easy to see how the state of mental health is fast dwindling. As a result, the need to restructure how we approach training on the floor is profoundly important and necessary to foster resiliency in new doctors.