Tag: Stress
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What’s the worst that could happen?
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A few years ago, I noticed my family cat had a lump on her neck that seemed to be getting larger. We had it removed by the local vet who told us it was almost certainly benign, and that sending it off for testing would be overly expensive and potentially unhelpful, depending on the results.…
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Four-day working week
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As a private sector service, veterinary – despite many businesses being under corporate ownership – still varies widely from practice to practice. This includes, of course, the omnipotent “rota”. The hours a vet would be expected to work are completely dependent on the practice – and often the individual, too. With part-time work and job…
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The fallacy of prophecy
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Evolution by natural selection has provided us with some wonderful tools to make sense of and manipulate the world. All of us carry around one of the most complicated objects in the universe within our skull, and our bloated, folded brains are able create illusionary facsimiles of the world around us, and imagine what may…
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Balancing health with a busy schedule
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When it comes to a course as busy and hectic as veterinary medicine, it can be easy to let certain things slide – especially around exam time. There’s the occasional group event, the odd party and, of course, the big one – a healthy lifestyle. I know from experience that when the grind really sets…
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Christmas chocolate etiquette
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The festive season is always a whirl of extra out-of-hours shifts and complicated rotas, but I want to get on to some more serious matters for December – ones that might mean you need to start planning for next Christmas right now. Yes, I’m talking about Christmas chocolate etiquette roulette. You can choose your friends?…
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Don’t bite off more than you can chew
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All students dream of having it all – straight As, buzzing social life and maybe a small part-time job to help you afford the latter… There’s no doubt that whatever year you’re in, whatever course you’re on, you’ve probably got a lot going on. The important thing I’ve found, however (easier said than done, mind…
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Ludicrous layouts: no space for anything and everything out of place
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I’m probably going to come over all “feng shui”, but working in some different spaces recently has got me thinking about how we choose where things go in the veterinary clinic – especially in converted buildings that were never intended to be a veterinary practice. Do we really “choose” where things go, or do we…
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Striving for (im)perfection
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In our current era, it seems as if perfectionism is considered a great virtue. I see and hear a lot of people describing themselves as “a bit of perfectionist” (which always strikes me as an oxymoron) as if this is a good thing, a great virtue to be lauded. I freely admit here that I…
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Seeking clarity
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We often find ourselves overwhelmed by a complex case – or even numerous cases that are not so complex. The first step is to try to seek clarity. How do we do this? Well, we start from the beginning and go over everything again. How and why? This process happens numerous times on shift –…
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15-minute consults: a waste of time?
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Many practices still have 10-minute small animal consultations – mine included – until recently, when we made the move to 15-minute appointments. It was initially debated as to whether we could offer longer consultation times in a specified time block, reserved for “sick pets” only. However, this was decided against due to the difficulty of…