When I was initially asked to talk at The British Cattle Veterinary Association's Congress 2019 as part of the wellbeing and diversity presentations, I gratefully accepted, and it was not until much nearer the time, when I sat down to write my talk, that I realised how challenging it would be.
When writing my talk one evening, I was chatting to a then colleague, and mentioned the fact that to present on something so important when I was not an expert, and had no further qualifications in the area, would be challenging. However, as I said at BCVA, being reminded that ‘wellbeing is inherently personal’ was what led me to deliver a talk about my own lived experiences, including for the first time, talking about some of the very real lows I had had before and during my veterinary school journey, alongside the steps I took, and the advice I sought to help overcome those lows, and improve my wellbeing by realising what my wellbeing needs were.
I spoke at BCVA Congress about not being predicted the grades to go to veterinary school, about being injured in the early years, and about feeling very distanced in terms of background experiences from a lot of my peers on the course. I initially studied biological studies at the University of Birmingham, but left after 2 years securing unconditional offers to vet school, deferring the offers for a year to work to be able to fund the first year. I had to work throughout my vet degree in cocktail bars and then house sitting in later years when bar work couldn't fit around rotations and clinical extra mural studies (EMS). I spoke about the negative impact all of this had on me, and about ways I found to overcome it.
I also touched on how important it was that EMS providers (both clinical and pre-clinical) took a chance on students of all backgrounds who were willing to learn, and gave them the opportunities to develop skills in areas in which they had no prior background, such as farm work. I also went on to discuss how these experiences provided the means for me to stay away from home to undertake EMS with a true mixed practice, and farm vets, to gain the exposure and build my confidence that working in this field of our profession was achievable to those who did not have the ‘traditional’ background.
It gave me the opportunity to discuss factors such as being a mature student, someone who had already been to university, and a student who had to work alongside the veterinary degree. Some days these were huge weights on my shoulders, but it was the realisation that I could in fact ‘play to my strengths’ and view these as things that set me apart from other applicants, life experience which brought with it a wealth of communication skills, knowledge of how I studied best and financial knowledge, which would all make the transition to practice easier and help alleviate some of the stressors of starting out in practice.
Wellbeing in the first months
As a graduate it is important to be challenged and be taken outside of your comfort zone. After all, a great many things you will be faced with are new, and a mentor on EMS once put it to me that as a new graduate you are likely to have more ‘firsts’ in your first 6 months in practice than you will in the next 6 years!
Being taken out of your comfort zone and pushed is really important, to ensure you progress and develop as a veterinary surgeon. I think practices now are more aware of the fact that the day one new graduate is not the finished product, and that support, mentorship and motivation are all key roles of the new graduate employer. However, it is how you are taken out of your comfort zone that can really impact your wellbeing in practice, and shapes your veterinary career for years to come (and most likely impacts on how long you stay in practice too).
In the early months key things in the practice will have a huge impact on your satisfaction, progression and mental state. To pick a few I would consider:
- The levels of support offered, and how that actually works in practice (e.g. does having ‘back up’ mean having somebody on the end of the phone, or is it having somebody who will come down if you need them).
- Mentorship and encouragement to develop your own areas of interest. The right kind of mentor for me was the one who would talk through a problem with you so that next time you knew how to approach or fix it, rather than the one who would just come down and tell you you had messed up and take over without helping you learn and progress. Nobody likes being made to feel like a failure and a terrible vet, and if we get this wrong with new graduates at the start they will suffer real crises of confidence, and may well leave the profession. Sometimes the right mentor is the one who can have an open conversation with you and accept things may not be working for you, but that with the right support you can thrive in our profession; they need to be able to detach ego from education.
- The team, these are the people you will spend so much of your week with, if you are not happy and do not feel like part of the team, it becomes significantly harder to enjoy your job and, your wellbeing both in and out of work will take a real hit.
In fact, the above were all things I looked for in my veterinary jobs, and things potential employers and I have discussed at job interviews. Most veterinary graduates now are employed on very similar salaries, which means that to final year students, and veterinary surgeons in their first few years in practice, these other factors are so much more important and may well be the difference between accepting one role and the next.
I really liked the fact that in the interview for my current role I was asked questions about what I did outside of work, how I coped with difficult days at work, and my views on what support I needed from them at my current career stage. A huge positive sign the practice cares about the wellbeing of their team members, and also that they take an interest in the wider interests of people who may join their close knit team.
Doing what is right for you
Since that talk, a lot of things changed in both my personal and professional life, and this all came to a head around the start of the new year. For me it was touching base with my networks (Charles, 2020), and the support of people both in, and out of, our profession, that helped me re-assess my path. It was talking to peers at a similar career stage, family and members of our profession further into their career journeys, that allowed me to take a step back and evaluate where I was and, more importantly, where I wanted to be going.
All of this meant that I worked to ensure that the next step was not just the first thing that came along, but the next right step for me. A sentiment that the team at VetFit (a company run by two vets aimed at promoting and improving the mental and physical wellbeing of the profession — https://www.getvetfit.co.uk/) sum up well in their talks and literature, with one of the founders stating ‘During these periods its important to be able to take a step back and recognise that it is time to try to make a change to get you back on the right path to a better wellbeing (Mays, 2019)’.
At the end of April, I relocated and started a new role in a large animal only practice. Starting a new role, in a different part of the country during the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, has meant working from temporary accommodation, not seeing many members of the team in person, and only going into the practice to restock my car. There were days before I started my new role where I was anxious about how this would go, and concerned I would feel quite isolated and at times out of my depth. Thankfully, the team I joined all rose to the challenge of bringing me into the fold, and giving me the advice and support I need to keep developing clinically.
No matter what stage of your career you are at, it is easy at times for veterinary work to become all consuming, and it can be hard to properly switch off or take time away from thinking about work. While I speak from limited experience, I would hypothesise that this is most likely when you first start out as a new graduate, when you change jobs or when you relocate to a new area.
Lately, I had the chance to write about this for final year veterinary students. I laid out a few points and interventions I had taken in my own life to help protect my wellbeing and avoid being overwhelmed as I started out (Charles, 2020):
- When I've left the practice for the day, I've left work — this means the work mobile phone gets switched off and I do not log in to the practice management system or emails while at home (obviously, this advice is not for on-call nights)
- I make sure I speak to two people from either of my ‘home’ or ‘new grad’ networks a week — either for a call or a Facetime — and, importantly, I limit the ‘vet chat’ to a maximum of half the conversation
- I keep active every day. In my first month I started small — ensuring I did something like go for a walk at lunch, or take a wander up to the shops when I got home. After my first month, I increased this to attending my squash club once a week, or going out on the bicycle once a week. As you get to grips with your job, it becomes easier to free up time in the evenings and weekends to do the things you enjoy, and that help maintain that essential work-life balance.
Remote working
We talk a lot about how being a farm vet can be quite a lonely role and how it is possible to feel quite isolated (Sawran, 2019), spending a lot of the day in the car or on visits alone, in comparison to our small animal colleagues who work as part of a dynamic team in a practice that is bustling with all members of the veterinary-lead team. When doing small animal work as a new graduate, there was always an experienced nurse, or a friendly receptionist on hand to handle many of my queries, or provide advice if another veterinary surgeon was not on hand. Contrast this to living alone and working from home in my farm animal role, and this change could have been really detrimental to my wellbeing.
However, my colleagues have gone out of their way to check in regularly with how I am doing, not just in terms of my clinical cases where they have provided some excellent mentorship and feedback to help me progress clinically, but also in terms of adapting to the new area and the challenges of working from home, when I don't necessarily know all the practice products or protocols yet.
I remember at my interview for this role, a number of the veterinary surgeons, and clients, talking about how well the team got on and that practice pub nights, pub quizes etc were regular mainstays of the work calendars. While these have had to move digitally for now, it has been that sort of social contact and support from the team that has helped make the transition between jobs easier, and allowed me to still feel welcomed into the team, even if I haven't met everybody face to face yet!
Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the RCVS Royal College Day, and as a newly qualified veterinary surgeon with long-term aims to enter large animal practice, I was particularly interested to hear about Dr Stephen being awarded the inaugural Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant to lead a research team at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) to look into ‘identifying how to better promote job satisfaction and to break the cycle of negative thoughts and poor mental wellbeing identified amongst farm vets’ (RCVS, 2019). I think as a profession we all look forward to hearing the outputs and findings of this when Dr Stephen and her team present at the Mind Matters Initiative Research Symposium in 2021.
Some final words
I am aware that for (probably the majority of) this journal's readers, your new graduate days are behind you. However, I would argue that considering factors that may be important to your colleagues' wellbeing can really benefit the mentor–mentee or intra-colleague dynamic. Furthermore, a great many of these things will really help any large animal vet's wellbeing, and if considered properly can help you find the right team, and practice, to thrive in.
It seems only right to finish this article with the same sentiments with which I closed my talk at BCVA Congress 2019:
- First, as vets (no matter how we use our MRCVS), in my eyes, we have a duty to make students believe they deserve their place at vet school as much as anybody else and that you do not have to come from a certain background to be able to be in any field of our profession, we must pay it forwards. If people hadn't done this for me, I likely would not have qualified, and furthermore, I definitely would not have become a large animal practitioner.
- And second, we have to acknowledge we are not all the same, and different people will need different things to succeed and, more importantly, to enjoy what they do (Charles, 2019).
KEY POINTS
- Putting some initiatives in place at the start of your career can help protect your wellbeing for years to come.
- We all have a duty to pay it forwards by helping inspire and motivate future vets and vet students.
- It's okay if what you need to enhance your wellbeing is different to someone else's wellbeing needs.