Research indicates that over 25% of workers report experiencing high levels of burnout as a result of their jobs. And the field of veterinary medicine is not immune to this trend. Vet Nurses, in particular, are subject to burnout as a result of the daily stressors you face. Failure to address burnout head on can lead to serious problems such as depression, stroke, and other serious health complication, and is a primary cause of veterinary professionals leaving the profession that they love. Fortunately, there are some straightforward measures that you, your work mates and your hospital or clinic can take to recognize, prevent or manage the symptoms of burnout in the nursing team. Here are nine tips that we can all implement to prevent or overcome burnout…

So you have successfully started that professional veterinary career you worked so hard to achieve. You expected it would be a tough road getting there, but you persisted and you’ve made it and you are really enjoying being a practicing Veterinary Professional – Vet, Vet Tech, Veterinary Nurse and more. What you hadn’t anticipated was a pandemic – no one does – and it’s impact on how many weeks, months or years may be being added to your journey until you can enjoy the satisfaction of making that final student loan payment. You are not alone. Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category, the first being mortgage debt. Here are some essential tips to help you successfully manage your Veterinary student debt in these challenging times…

Given the generally recognised shortage of Veterinarians, Veterinary Technician and Vet Nurses, particularly in regional areas, attracting, retaining and developing your team has never been more important. Whilst focusing on retention and development is essential, when it comes time to recruit your next team member, as an Owner, Partner or Practice Manager, today you have to pitch yourself and your practice to potential candidates. An effective job ad, or Job Campaign as we prefer to describe it, is not just a job description and a list of equipment. Today it must be a carefully crafted message aimed at reaching, attracting and engaging the best qualified candidates for your job.

Sometimes changing jobs is inevitable. There are a myriad of reasons – your partner may have secured an opportunity of a lifetime elsewhere, you may need to move a little closer to family as they need extra care in these trying times or you decide that now is the time to step up, move ahead in your career and changing jobs is the most viable option. So, having made the big decision, it’s now time to start working on your Social Media Veterinary Career Strategy…

As the world starts taking puppy and kitten and duckling steps back toward some semblance of normalcy in varying degrees around the world, for many the challenges have been a wake-up call. Veterinary nursing is a calling and the passion and care that our Veterinary Technicians and Nurses display, often the front line of veterinary care, is to be admired. No practice can exist without your compassion, commitment and knowledge. The personal rewards are to be cherished, but the reality is that we all have to live in an ever-expensive world. It’s not until you step up a few rungs that your income starts to meet your lifestyle and gives you that little bit more to build a buffer for the unexpected be it car repairs, family support or yes, a pandemic. So to help you make that next step or three in your career, we asked some of the leading Vet Nurses and Technicians around the world who have achieved personal, professional and financial success, to share their advice on accelerating your career.

As a caregiver you are rewarded in your field in special ways. The ability to heal and help is virtuous and important. You dedicate your life to this work knowing that the magnitude of your efforts and the outcomes are genuinely rewarding at the most satisfying level. But you also know that it can come with great internal costs – vulnerability, occasional helplessness and that there will inevitably be a small number of failures, even if they are often out of your control. So, if you are finding that your days are not as sparkly as they once were, that kittens don’t make you smile quite as often or that a senior dog still vigorously wagging their tail doesn’t make you feel as warm inside as it once used to, you may well have Compassion Fatigue, the emotional and physical exhaustion that often leads to a diminished sense of satisfaction in both work and life generally.
Exploring these suggestions may help you return to being vigorously passionate about your profession…

We asked our worldwide network of over 220,000 Veterinary Professionals a simple open-ended question “If you were fortunate enough to have two job offers where the salary, benefits and location were similar, what other things would influence your choice?” and as you can imagine the answers were wonderfully diverse. For some it was cookies at morning tea, others could be persuaded by team massages and one very creative one had to do with the artwork in the practice. However, when we started to assemble the data we quickly began to identify five streams that stood out above snacks, kneading fingers and paint brushes…in this order of priority…