atDove Blog | Veterinary Training Blog

Pursuing an internship can be a complex decision that requires a variety of considerations. While four years in vet school is a highly intense, overloading experience when it comes to education, training, and exposure, the true experience gathered during a clinical year pales in comparison to the type of skill and understanding of the profession when in your first years of practice. With the limited exposure to certain specialties, lack of consistency amongst training of fourth years in vet school, and over-exposure to highly unusual tertiary referral cases at a university-based hospital over standard illnesses treated on a day-to-day basis, it is easy to see how one is still seemingly unprepared to hit the floor running when first hired at a practice.

Our Technician Training team, along with Debrah Lee, our Veterinary Well-being Program Director, and Monica Maxwell, our Chief Administrative Officer, have been working on a new kind of veterinary education. Traditionally, our educational efforts at DoveLewis have been focused on increasing our medical knowledge. It can be easy to simply focus on the hard skills of our jobs. As technicians, we perform medical math and critical blood transfusions with such keen repetitiveness that we can overlook other aspects of our profession- like personal and professional development.  However, our well-being and success as an industry are significantly impacted by our emotional intelligence, resiliency, and how we respond to conflict.  This led us to create a different kind of educational video series: B.A.R. on the Floor.

There is a lot that we are trying to contend with. For many of us, there’s an underlying sense of urgency and helplessness as we try to find something to control in this surreal, and often uncomfortable, new landscape. There are many different reactions we may be experiencing as a result of this including those mentioned in our previous well-being article:

We may be beginning to feel like we have more questions than answers. It is not unusual to experience a wide range of thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Some of these reactions may include:

Being a veterinarian is exhausting, isn't it? We need to care about so many things!

Veterinary technicians are essential in any veterinary clinic but they can come in many forms. Having grown up as a gamer, I can most easily define these forms as technician levels:

Any of us who took a basic economics class in college know the simple fact is that interviews for open DVM positions have suddenly become mini rose ceremonies ala The Bachelor – only with everyone wearing clothes and doing far less crying. This can also be a similar experience for other sought-after veterinary jobs.

I’ve been a veterinary technician for over 25 years. I call myself the, “longest continually employed veterinary technician” in the history of veterinary medicine. So far, I have not met anyone with more longevity in the profession. A lot has changed in the world of veterinary medicine over the last decade. Where do I start?

In this field, it’s not uncommon to feel the toll of burnout. I would feel mine come and go, having a hard day or entire week where I wasn’t coping as well as usual, making me wonder, is this burnout? But then over the next few days feeling the complete opposite, like I’m where I’m supposed to be. That’s the tricky thing about burnout and compassion fatigue, it doesn’t always present itself clearly and defined. It can ebb and flow, creating a feeling of constant displacement. When I started to feel like I would have more weeks of hardship than feelings of success, I decided to make a change.