Staying Positive

This week I sent a puppy back home with her owners. Happy and boisterous, there was no sign of the virus which had ripped through her body and left her on deaths door less than a week before. The smile on her owners face was only slightly less enthusiastic than the wagging tail and tugging on the lead as I walked her to the front of the clinic. It was a great experience to have a happy ending after the hard work I’d put into nursing and caring for her over the previous days. Quite simply, it made my day.

The same day I checked the messages sent to me on my tumblr and got one from a biology major asking me if vet school was worth the stress. It’s a good question, vet school is tough, anybody who has done any searching online knows that. There’s no shortage of blogs and posts on social media about the sleepless nights, tough classes, and emotional challenges. I’ve posted my fair share. The question made me think about the perception that people looking in to veterinary medicine as a career have about being a vet, and the message we are putting out about our profession.

Articles about the high rates of suicide, burnout, and compassion fatigue are important, engaging, and fiercely relatable for veterinarians. It’s a reality of the profession that there are serious lows. It’s important that we talk about those things and establish a healthy dialogue so that we can support each other. But for each of those deep dark lows, there are also cloud-tipped highs.

In my capacity as the student president of the Australian Veterinary Association, the mental health of Australian vet students is something I think about often. I see mental illness when it’s in my friends and peers, but people also come to me concerned about issues ranging from burnout to suicide in their circles. It’s a reality that needs to be addressed, and fortunately it is. I get to work with student associations across the vet schools to support initiatives to boost mental wellness, and with support from vet faculties as well as sponsors we are bringing a dialogue forward. How that dialogue goes is just as important as having it in the first place.

Put simply, I love studying to become a vet, it’s my passion, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It’s challenging, but that’s a part of what makes it fulfilling. And it’s not just me – I went to PanPac this year, a once-every-five year-conference bringing together the AVA, NZVA, and vets from all over both Australia and New Zealand. There were hundreds of vets there who love what they do. After decades of practice, they are just as excited and determined as they were on their first day of vet school, if not more. It was inspiring to see their sustained energy, and to see that they were as satisfied with their choice of profession as I hope to be one day.

Allan’s reaction when I asked for a photo was great: “I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want a photo of me”

One of the roles of students at the conference is to help make sure everybody gets to the right lecture at the right time – a service I wish was employed in the first term of university. While I was guiding delegates to the breakfast session early one morning I met Allan Wells, a retired veterinarian who was full of passion, and as anybody with experience, plenty of great advice. As I listened to stories about his time in practice I had to ask him what he still loved about it all, and he told me that the best thing about being a vet is the relationships which you form with your peers. We are privileged to have a profession that looks out for each other and shares the same weird fascinations. Who else but another vet will understand your excitement at doing your first solo caesarean? Who else will enthusiastically ask for more detail about the exact consistency and smell of the abscess you lanced over dinner? Some of us are blessed with supportive partners who begrudge us the brief slips in etiquette, but it’s never quite the same as a colleague who has shared your initial repulsion in first-year anatomy, and grew past it with you.

Credit for this, and many other hilarious vet-related comics: http://funnyvet.com/index.php

Our peers are also the ones on the end of the phone when we have a bad day, or a bad night. They’re the ones who send us messages of congratulations when they see our name attached to a journal article or award announcement. There’s a reason the #vetstudentsunited campaign was such a success. It’s because we all look out for each other already.

The unity and shared enthusiasm of vets is one of the things I appreciate the most about our profession, and I think it goes a long way to overcome the hard parts. What makes you excited to be a vet? What are the best parts?