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It’s very easy to get stuck in a mindset of “I’ve chosen THIS thing, so all other things are off the table, because once you choose THIS thing, then THESE are the things I HAVE to do."   But who says we have to?  Dr Tanya Stephens' career is that it’s not just one thing. Her story clearly demonstrates that you don’t HAVE to do anything in a certain way. Clinical practice doesn’t have to take up all your time and exclude other interests. Practice ownership doesn’t have to be a ball and chain. Having young kids doesn’t have to mean you can’t run a business. Research doesn’t have to be done just by 'researchers'. Dr Tanya Stephens is a small animal practice owner and practitioner who still very much enjoys practice. As a practitioner, she is particularly interested in professional ethics and promoting evidence-based medicine. She is also a wildlife researcher with original research on galactosaemia in kangaroos. Her interests lie in animal welfare, research, evidence-based medicine, professional ethics, wildlife and sustainable agriculture and she is a regular presenter and published author on these topics. She is the editor of One Welfare in Practice: the Role of the Veterinarian and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Tanya is past President of the ANZCVS Animal Welfare Chapter, past President of AVAWE, the welfare and ethics branch of the AVA, an exec member of AVCB, which is the Conservation Biology branch of the AVA, Chair of the AVA’s Animal Welfare Trust, honorary consulting veterinarian for the Children’s Medical Research Institute, veterinary member of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, Chair of the NSW Kangaroo Management Advisory Panel and member of the Kangaroo Management Taskforce plus the Chair of the NSW Greyhound Welfare Integrity Commission Animal Welfare Committee. Jump in with us to hear how Tanya followed her curiosity to create a career around what worked for her. Of course, we also talk about ethics and the line between thorough and too much, trust, and why Tanya thinks we might be losing it, the perils of defensive practice, the concept of "gold standard" and why aiming for it might not always be the best idea, how YOU play a key role in animal welfare in your consult room and beyond, and much much more. Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts, or join us live and in person in Noosa from 22-25 November for our first ever Vet Vault Live! with Prof David Church and Prof Jill Maddison. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

It’s been a while since we’ve released one of our clinical episodes on here, so we thought we’d create this lovely little compilation of kidney content for you. These are some of our biggest ‘AHA!’ moments from a series of episodes that we've done over on the clinical podcast over the past few months on those tricky little beans that stop us from being poisoned by our own waste products. We start with some wisdom from small animal medicine guru Prof Jill Maddison about making sense of azotaemia and USG. Spoiler alert - it's not as straightforward as you might think, and there are DEFINITELY a few traps to avoid that Jill outlines in this conversation. Next is Dr Rosanne Jepson, another medicine specialist and associate professor at the Royal Vet College and a leader in the field of nephrology and especially hypertension to guide us through everything blood pressure.  And tying a bow on it all is Dr Clint Yudelman from Insight Mobile Diagnostics to help us make sense of the relationship between calcium and kidneys.  And if you want MUCH more of Prof Maddison then join us live in Noosa in November when she joins forces with Prof David Church for what promises to be the most fun vet event of the year. Details are here - but don't book there - email us at vetvaultpodcast@gmail.com to tell us that you heard about the conference on here and we'll send you a listener-only discount code.   Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.  If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at vetvaultpodcast@gmail.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

70+ episodes into the podcast, and not a single episode with a vet nurse. Shame on us! But we're changing that with this episode through a conversation with a vet tech who is leading the charge into the future of vet nursing.   Kenichiro Yagi is Chief Veterinary Nursing Office at the Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), where his role is to help develop career pathways in veterinary nursing and raising nursing care standards and competency.  Ken is a Registered Veterinary Technician and Veterinary Technician Specialist in Emergency and Critical Care and Small Animal Internal Medicine with a Master’s Degree in Veterinary Sciences. He also serves as program director for the Recover Initiative, a global effort to standardise how veterinary CPR is performed around the world. He’s received a whole host of awards, including veterinary technician of the year in 2016, and he’s been pushing the standards of nursing for two decades through his teaching and training, speaking and writing.  "There's a lot more to veterinary medicine than just being a vet, and there's a lot more care that the patients need. And I've certainly created my own career out of it."  So who's this episode for? Well, we've always been a podcast primarily for vets, and that hasn't changed.  We’d love for this conversation to help open the eyes of our vets to the possibilities, the talent and the passion that is right under your nose and to give you some ideas of what that talent is capable of and how you can help steer it. But it's definitely also an episode for nurses and techs. I challenge you as a nurse to listen to this and NOT feel the desire to find new ways to extend yourself and to make even more of a difference! Ken’s story is a real eye-opener about what is possible in your nursing career in the right environment.  Also - who's joining us live in Noosa in November with Prof David Church and Prof Jill Maddison for what promises to e the most fun vet event of the year?! Details are here - but don't book there - email us at vetvaultpodcast@gmail.com to tell us that you heard about the conference on here and we'll send you a listener-only discount code.   Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.  If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts.  We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

This is an episode about courage. About putting yourself in situations that are out of your comfort zone and then finding it within yourself to make it work, because self-care does not equate self-limiting, and you're probably stronger than you think.  Elizabeth Woolsey Herbert is a retired equine veterinarian and practice owner. She moved from the US to Australia as a young vet and practised equine veterinary medicine for over 35 years. She’s also the author of a series of fictional and non-fiction books as well as a string of professional papers. She recently retired and has returned to the US, where she is now focusing on her writing career, and catching more fish. Here are a few lines about herself from our initial ‘get-to-know each other' e-mails: 1. I did the hard yards. 2. I did it often on a 24/7 basis. 3. I went through every imaginable bad thing that could happen and survived. Elizabeth’s story is filled with stuff we need to hear: It’s about a career driven by purpose and passion and a sense of responsibility. About the importance of relationships, continued growth, curiosity and creativity, using humour as a shield, and about finding joy in your work, but also fulfilment outside of work. Elizabeth also talks about turf-guarding between vets, gives some practical tips on avoiding worry, and shares what she’s learnt on how to build an amazing supportive team. We talk about the joys and challenges of rural practise, and about her creative writing career.  "Never die without chocolate in your mouth!"  But there’s also some darkness in this story, as there is in most good stories, and we're dragging that darkness into the light with the help of psychologist Duanne Smith, with Elizabeth's permission. Duanne helps to unpack aspects of Elizabeth's journey in a post-episode bonus section (at the 1 hour 17 min mark) by answering questions about where to go for help and how to ask for it (and how to accept it!) when you're hitting a rough patch, and also how to identify someone who might be in need of help, and how to respond, including how to talk about suicide.  "Speak to another human voice, because it is about attachment. One of the main protective factors around depression mental health and suicide is that you're not doing it alone." Some helpful resources if you need help:  Samaritans Emotional Support: 135 247 Black Dog Institue list of urgent support resources. Or contact us at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com if you feel like a chat with someone you know. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email,  or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

There are so many important conversations happening at the moment about the challenges facing the vet profession and the possible solutions. We love it when we hear things like: 'We have to get better at setting boundaries. We have to stop feeling so guilty. We have to value ourselves more. We have to be more kind to ourselves.' But the big question remains: HOW?! How do we do those things when we don't even understand WHY we feel guilty? Why is it that we can’t value ourselves? Why are we so weird about money conversations? Why are we so hard on ourselves? This is why we've brought you Philip McKernan: to help us do the deep work.    "I feel we have a moral obligation to do this work. If we choose to leave the couch, leave our bedroom and walk out into the world and interact with humans, we have a moral obligation to do the work on ourselves so that we can show up as better humans every single day." Philip McKernan is a speaker, author, coach, and ‘enlightened hooligan’. From working with the Canadian Olympic Team and at the Pentagon to writing 5 books, despite his dyslexia, the man has a lot to share. And share it he does in this conversation with his zero-bullshit cut-to-the-bone approach. We jump straight into the deep end with what being kind to yourself really looks like, and why we (with a particular focus on the vet profession) are so bad at it. Philip pressure tests some of our core beliefs around who we are, what we do, why we do it and who we do it for, and dismantles some myths around how we do them.   "A lot of what I hear is that 'we're serving people, and the industry demands this,'  and I go, 'yeah, I get it, but I don't get it, and I don't buy it, because at the end of the day, you still have a choice." Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

How would you define an entrepreneur? Mirian-Webster says it’s someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves a new opportunity. Here’s another fact: we are at a point in time when our profession is FILLED with new opportunities. I’m sure you’re spotting them all around you. But once you spot that opportunity, how do you translate it from an idea into reality? How do you overcome all the doubters and nay-sayers, especially when the loudest nay-sayer is probably you!? Dr Aaron Wallace is a veterinarian and a bonafide entrepreneur. He co-founded Lacuna Diagnostics, a digital cytology company, while he was still a vet student and helped to establish and grow lacuna to the point where it was recently sold to Heska. Aaron's brainchild is rolling out across the world under the new name of HeskaView Telecytology.  Happy ending right? But happy endings almost never happen without tough beginnings and good stories. In this episode, Aaron shares that story. We talk about entrepreneurship in veterinary science, where the new opportunities lie in our profession, how to bring YOUR big idea to the vet world, the traits that you’ll learn as a vet that will serve you well outside of vet, and much more.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

What’s your knee-jerk reaction when I say the word ‘corporate practice?’ The past few decades have seen some immense changes in how our profession is structured, leaving us with some big decisions to make:  If you’re a new grad: What does a supportive practice look like? Where can I find that practice? Do I go corporate, do I go private, do I do an internship? And if you’re an owner or a manager: Where are all the vets!? How do I attract them? What about the new grads - what do they want from us? How do I support them appropriately? How do we keep them?  These are exactly the questions that we tackle in this episode, and our guest is the perfect person to ask. Dr Daniel Preter was, at the time of recording this episode, the Head of Vet Development and Future Vet Recruitment for Medicare - a large group of practices in the UK, after a 25-year career in the company that started with owning one of the founding practices in the group.  Our conversation ranges from recruitment and retention, new grad support programs, the transition from single site practice to group practice, the pros and cons of corporate practice, ensuring that your personal growth keeps up with the growth of your practice, how the word 'corporate' is shedding some its negative baggage, and much much more.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp highly practical clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you think should hear this.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

If you’re a regular Vet Vaulter you’ll be well familiar by now with psychologist Rhonda Andrews from our previous episodes with her on trauma and grief. We love Rhonda, and based on your feedback YOU loved Rhonda. So we’re going to make this a regular thing. Here's what we're thinking: Rhonda will have conversations and counselling sessions with real vets facing real challenges about something that the guest is wrestling with. Rhonda will help them explore solutions and strategies to help them get unstuck and prepare them for things yet to come. We’ll then join Rhonda to unpick the conversation with additional questions and comments, and you get to listen in and apply the strategies to your own career. The aim is to do a really thorough examination of the chosen topic - like a full health check, but for the mind - hence our possibly tasteless but highly illustrative name for this series, because you KNOW that you haven’t done a proper exam until you’ve done the rectal... In this episode, Rhonda is joined by Dr Kurt Enzinger, an equine vet and practice owner with two decades in the vet game under his belt, a busy practice and a stretched team, just like vet teams around the world. Rhonda and Kurt explore that very disruptive and counter-productive thing that our minds tend to do to us at the most inconvenient times: rumination. We cover what it is, how to prevent it, spot it, and stop it.  If you don’t know her yet - Rhonda is the founder, managing director and senior psychologist at the Barrington Centre, a specialist psychological firm that works with individuals and teams to help them address complex environments. Rhonda also helped create a program specifically modified for the Vet Profession called Systems of Support, or SOS.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

How much do you dislike doing dentals? If you’re like most vets I’m guessing that the answer to that question is - “I dislike it rather a lot.”  But then there’s that small minority of vets who just love teeth. Our guest for this episode, as you’ll hear, was NOT one of them, and yet these days that is exactly what he does all day, every day. And he loves it.  Dr Aaron Forsayeth has been working in full-time dental referral practice since 2006, after starting his vet career with a decade in mixed and small animal practice. He is highly involved in the dentistry world in Australia, including a stint as the president of the Australian Veterinary Dental Society and a current role as Policy Councillor for the AVDS, the dentistry branch of the Australian Veterinary Association.  Our conversation with Aaron covers, as you'd expect, a career in dentistry: why you’d want to do it, what’s good about it, what’s not so great, and pathways to becoming a veterinary dentist, but we go way beyond that. Aaron talks about his decision not to specialise, despite an obvious passion for what he does. We talk about that very common phenomenon of the 2-5 year ‘dip’ - when many vets find themselves disillusioned with their careers and possibly looking for an exit strategy, and how getting really good at something might be what you're looking for. But first we kick off a detour on fashion... If you're feeling inspired to lift your dentistry game after listening to this then check out Aaron's dentistry videos.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

It’s happened: In late January 2022, an astute veterinarian in Mount Isa diagnosed the first locally acquired case of the tick-borne disease, ehrlichiosis, in a Queensland dog. As predicted the disease is making its way south, and we want to make sure that you, like our Mt Isa vet, are able to spot and treat ehrlichiosis when it comes knocking on your door. Which, in all likelihood - it will, regardless of where you are in the country.  This episode is a composite of two episodes that we released over the past two years on the Vet Vault Clinical podcast. Part one was released in 2021 soon after the disease first made its appearance in Western Australia in 2020. We speak to Dr Paolo Pazzi - a medicine specialist from South Africa where ehrlichiosis is an endemic disease and is commonly seen in practice. This episode covers the clinical aspects of the disease and aims to ensure that you don’t miss these cases and to give you a guide on how to manage them.  In part two we speak to Dr Katy Davis, who works in Karratha in Western Australia where the outbreak started, and Professor Peter Irwin, THE guru in all things vector-borne disease. They give us an update on the situation in Australia, and the message is clear: it’s here, it’s serious, and it’s not quite the same disease in Australia as it is in countries where the disease is endemic. We talk about what you can expect, what to do and how to test when you see your first case, and we clarify some of the confusion around disease prevention. See it as a ‘how-to’ guide for Australian vets. Thank you to Elanco Australia for supplying us with the expertise to help us clarify preventatives. Check out their tick preventative products, including the tick repellents Seresto and Advantix, as well as a new monthly chewable isoxazoline, Credelio, that will sort out you patients against tick paralysis, but as you'll hear, NOT ehrlichiosis.   Who to contact if you have a suspected case of ehrlichiosis:  Emergency Animal Disease Hotline: 1800 675 888. Western Australia Northern Territory Queensland NSW Victoria South Australia Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

"High consequence decision making in a complex environment, with imperfect data, on a budget."  The definition of GP vet practice, according to Gareth Steel! Gareth has been a mixed practice vet for 20 years with experience across the UK and beyond. When he’s not on the front lines of clinical practice you’ll find him on a different kind of front line as a member of the British Army Reserves. He’s also a total outdoors adventure fanatic, but 2022 saw him embarking on a new adventure when he become a published author with the release of his Amazon best-selling book, ‘Never Work With Animals - The unfiltered truth about life as a vet’.  We catch up to talk about some of the challenges and joys he describes in his book, like the phenomenon of “I did it tough, so you also need to suffer”, increased client expectations and how it affects how we do our work and our mindset, and what exactly constitutes an 'acceptable standard of care.' We touch on Gareth’s military career and look at the differences between a life in the military and the life of a vet, what he’s taken away from this time in the army, like learning the difference between ‘difficult and hard’. And of course, we discuss the book - why he chose to write it, who it’s for and how he hopes it will influence how the profession is perceived, both by our clients and by those within the profession.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts, or contact us at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com to ask about a practice subscription pack.  We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Here are some facts about insulin that you are likely familiar with:  0.25-0.5 IU/kg starting dose. Do a glucose curve soon after starting insulin to assess the response.  Feed a special diabetic diet.  Give insulin at the time of feeding.  Glargine is the best insulin for cats.  Most owners wouldn’t consider injecting their pets three times a day.  Diabetes 101, right? But our guest for this episode is questioning these, and many other of the foundational truths around diabetes therapy. Jump right in for a fundamental shift in how you manage your diabetic cats and dogs.  Professor David Church is an internationally recognised specialist in disorders of the endocrine system in dogs and cats based at the Royal Veterinary College in London. David’s current research interests include the underlying mechanism for the development and resolution of diabetes mellitus, the use of clinical data collected from general veterinary practices to enhance understanding and consequently improve both the health and welfare of animals, and the use of ‘big data’ from general practice for managing animal health and welfare. David is the author of over 150 scientific articles and numerous book chapters. This is episode #7 out of 10 of the conversations we’ve had to date with Prof Church about diabetes on our clinical series. From understanding the pathogenesis and pathopysiology of diabetes, to the revised basics of treatment, and all the way to a super-simple treatment protocol for the very sick DKA patient.  Go and check it out, along with another 150+ clinical episodes at vv.supercast.com, the easiest way to reboot your clinical knowledge without spending your precious time staring at screens.  The show notes for this episode with all the important bits from it lives at thevetvault.com  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Dr Rosie Booth is a wildlife veterinarian and has been one since before that was even a job description.  Rosie has 40 years of experience in conservation and wildlife work, which started with a masters degree in koala adrenal glands in 1986 and sparked a lifetime of caring for this iconic species. Since that time she has worked in many of Australia’s most prominent zoos and wildlife hospitals. Rosie spent 7 years working for the Queensland government leading a breeding program for endangered species, during which time they released 170 individuals from several endangered species back into the wild. Most recently she worked as the director of the wildlife hospital at Australia Zoo. She has written more than a hundred wildlife related publications and has trained a small army of others to contribute to this vital work. Recently retired from her full-time role at Australia Zoo she is now focussing her energy on freelance conservation projects and educating and inspiring a new generation of vets. In this episode, we talk about the challenges, the misconceptions and the implications of a career in wildlife, about staying motivated in a job where your best efforts can sometimes feel fruitless, about big problems, and big solutions.  Rosie also gives practical advice for those considering a career in wildlife, shares stories about some amazing patients, and so much more.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Imagine a world where vets and their team members are bubbling with excitement about their job. Where they go on about how great their clients are, they talk about how good their pay is, and about how very fulfilling their careers are... Can’t do it? Don’t worry - our guest for this episode has been imagining exactly this, and if the buzz out there about VEG is anything to go by, then he and his team of Veggies may well have found a way to make this a reality.  VEG, or Veterinary Emergency Group, is a US-based group of emergency-only vet hospitals and Dr David Bessler is the CEO and co-founder. He’s been a career emergency veterinarian since 2003, worked with reptiles at the Bronx Zoo, teaches “Veterinary Science” to elementary school children at the American Museum of Natural History and was even been featured on the one and only Sesame Street, and, as you’ll hear, he’s a man with a very clear vision. So who’s this episode for? We’ll, EVERYONE in the profession. Whether you’re are a vet or a Veg or a nurse or even a vegetinary student, basically,  anyone attached to a vet business - there are some things in here that you need to hear. If you are a vet business owner then this is DEFINITELY for you. Join us as we veg with Bessler on topics like why mission, vision and core values are so much more than just corporate speak, how a clinic can 'do shit for free', yet pay well AND still be profitable, why you may be on the wrong island, why the spiritual side of your job is critical for career happiness, and so much more. Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram.  And if you like what you hear then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

There’s something about eyes that makes vets either love treating them, or totally hate them, and in my experience, a lot of vets hate them! They tend to be at maximum grossness and highest levels of intimidating when they present as emergencies, with a popped-out eyeball probably being the most spectacular-looking emergency of all. It may be an easy diagnosis, and the fix is not technically too challenging, but I’ve always found the decision making around them quite hard, like: should we save this eye, or should it just come out?  Which is why we wanted to share this episode about proptosis with you. We released a series on ocular emergencies over on the clinical podcasts with ophthalmologist Dr Izak Venter. Izak was my ophthalmology lecturer back in South Africa, and probably the reason that I actually LIKE treating eyes. These days he is the brains behind Digital Veterinary Ophthalmology Services, or DVOS, which is a digital consulting service to support practising vets with those tricky eye cases, as well as an outstanding ophthalmology education platform. Check out their free content at dvos.co.za or find him on Facebook at DVOS VETS for some really cool tips and insights about those weird little bags of jelly.  In this episode, Izak tells us how to make sensible decisions for the proposed eye, and then he gives us some great tips on how to get them back in (and keeping them in!) successfully. Check out the other episodes in the series on corneal lacerations, foreign bodies and glaucoma at vvn.supercast.com on the emergency stream. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

You'll bump onto grief several times a day on an average shift at a vet clinic. But do you UNDERSTAND it?  Do you face it head-on, or does it make you uncomfortable, so you run and hide when you see it coming? Do you even see it coming? Can you recognise the stages of grief in your clients and your co-workers? What about yourself? Did you know, for example, that when that client is lashing out at you and your team, it may just be that they are stuck in one of the stages of grief, and that with the right tools, you can help guide them to a more appropriate stage? Don’t worry - neither did we, which is why we invited our friend Rhonda Andrews back to give us some guidance and strategies for dealing with grief in constructive ways.  You’ll remember Rhonda from episode 47 on Trauma and Burnout, and if you listened to that one you’ll know that she is a psychologist with almost 3 decades of experience and that she is the principal psychologist and managing director of the Barrington Centre, which provides organisational and personal psychological services to a large number of sectors both in Australia and abroad. Rhonda is also part of the team that has adapted a programme called Systems of Support, or SOS, for the vet profession. SOS is an evidence-based positive psychological health program that was designed for high-stress professions that reduces the negative psychological impacts associated with work. Also, look out for the Barrington Centre's vet-specific Employee Assist Programme launching in March of 2022.  In this episode, Rhonda teaches us about the stages of grief: what they look like, and how to respond to someone when they are transitioning through each stage. We also talk about dealing with grief in our items and in ourselves.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Dr Riati Scarboroughis is a researcher at the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and a PhD fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on improving our understanding of the conscious and subconscious motivations behind suboptimal antimicrobial prescribing in Australian veterinary practices, and designing sustainable strategies to support better antimicrobial prescribing in veterinarians. Ri is particularly interested in the use of social norms and nudges to modify behaviour.  And it's these behaviours that we discuss in this episode. Ri highlights some common areas where many vet practices could rethink their antibiotic prescribing protocols, with a great discussion on WHY it's so important.  We cover topics like Why the old antibiotic mantra 'finish the course' is giving way to 'shorter is better" Antimicrobial dosing: you can't always trust the label UTIs - choose Amoxycillin over Amoxyclav or Convenia Bacteriuria does not always require antimicrobials Catfight abscesses - antimicrobials rarely needed Surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis - get the timing right A word of warning: some of these topics might wake up an annoying little voice in the back of your head that will bother you every time you head into the dispensary for those AB's, but we think it's worth it. See it as a little nudge! Here are the resources as promised in the episode.  Thanks to the SVS Pathology Network, who our Australian listeners will know as Vetnostics in NSW, QML Vetnostics in Queensland, TML Vetnostics in Tasmania, ASAP in Victoria and Vetpath in WA, for supporting the podcast and introducing us to Ri and her work. Have a look at this video about Maldi TOF spectrometry - the technology that explains why SVS clients will now get super-fast turnaround times for their microbiology testing. Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram. And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Culture. It can be hard to put your finger on it, yet in the setting of a vet practice, it permeates the work areas, floats into reception and beyond and ricochets off the walls. You can feel it when you walk in the door. Long ago I sat in the reception area waiting for my interview at a practice where I ended up spending many years of life.  I distinctly remember sitting there and thinking: "I don’t like the feel of this place." It took me more than a decade to figure out that what I felt that day was a broken culture.  So what do we do about it? That's the question we ask of our guests for this episode. We're joined by Dr Dave Nicol - author, speaker, coach, doctor, practice owner, head vet, podcaster, and founder of VetX International and his teammate Dr Dermot McInerney. Dermot serves as the VetX International Head of Veterinary Partnerships and Research, and is the main author of the VetX research article "Leadership actions and their effects on veterinary practice culture", and it's this article and the concepts around it that we got together to discuss. Dave and Dermot answer important questions, like the current crisis that the vet profession finds itself in, the role bad culture in this crisis, what toxic workplace behaviour looks like, how leaders can help create thriving workplace cultures, and why you don't have to a 'leader' to influence culture.  Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. And if you join up for an annual all-in subscription before 18 January 2022 we'll send you a free MiniVet Guide to help you start your year in top form. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on the anchor app and hitting the record button, via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram.  And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

We chose to share this episode on mitral valve disease from our clinical podcast series (vvn.supercast.com) because I went into this interview thinking that, after 20 years in practice, I wasn't really going to learn many new things...I was wrong! Our guest for this series on canine heart disease is medicine specialist Dr Clint Yudelman, and in this series he talks us through so many critically important concepts, like differentiating the cardiac cough from the non-cardiac cough, when to start treating, which combinations of meds is best for each stage, when to escalate your treatment, HOW to escalate, what to look for on ultrasound, why many of your heart patients should probably be on Viagra, and much more. There are several potentially paradigm-shifting ideas in here, or at least there was for me, and it's too good not to share. You can contact Clint at clint@insightmvd.com.au if you are in Victoria and in need of some in-house help with your cardiac or other complicated medical cases.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message

Why does it sting so much when a client accuses us of ‘just being in it for the money”. I think it hurts because for most of us money is really quite low on the list of what drives us, so much so that we often actively avoid talking about it, especially in terms of our own earnings, like it’s a taboo subject. But the things is - it IS also about the money. For most of us, at some point in our adult life, it’s very likely that you’ll find yourself thinking: "Hey, I could really do with a little bit more money!'  So how do we earn that little bit more money? How do we get over the erroneous belief that ‘there’s just no money in vet’? Our guest for this episode is Dr Sam Burke. Sam is a practicing vet, former practice owner, investor and entrepreneur. He’s also a former colleague and a good friend, and one of the most-money wise people I know. If I have a money question a conversation with Sam is usually my first stop. So we thought we’d have one of those conversations on the air and share it with you to see if we can help change ‘money’ from a dirty word into just another word that we are comfortable talking about and comfortable generating.  Oh, and if you're curious about Sam's shoes, check it out at Tarkine.com Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show. If you want to lift your clinical game, go to vvn.supercast.com for a free 2-week trial of our short and sharp high-value clinical podcasts. We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please leave us a voice message by going to our episode page on anchor and hitting the record button, via email at thevetvaultpodcast@gmail.com, or just catch up with us on Instagram.  And if you like what you heard then please share the love by clicking on the share button wherever you’re listening and sending a link to someone who you know will enjoy listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vet-vault/message