It’s no secret that working in the veterinary field is often stressful and demanding — and that can take a toll on mental health. For Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re looking at tools and resources you can use to help create a culture of hope and support in your practice.
Prevention isn’t just for parasites
Just as vet teams everywhere understand that prevention is vital to prevent unnecessary suffering in patients, so too is community vital to preventing or ameliorating depression.
As any mental health expert will tell you, feeling isolated and like you don’t have a support system plays a large role in depression. Unfortunately, depression tends to cause self-isolating behavior, and feeling the need to “tough it out” often leads to burnout.
In 2020, the founders of the Veterinary Hope Foundation saw the gap in support for veterinary professionals and stepped in to start filling it. The nonprofit offers customized online support groups led by mental health professionals, decreasing isolation and increasing community through shared experiences. They also offer webinars and other tools to help reduce burnout and support wellbeing in the veterinary community.
Creating a more supportive workplace
With staffing shortages and long shifts, it may seem like there’s simply not enough time in the day to focus on your team’s mental health — but taking even a few minutes each day can make a difference. By offering resources and support, you can reduce burnout and feelings of isolation, increasing retention and job satisfaction.
Here are some practical, low-lift ideas to create an environment where teams feel connected and supported.
Checking in, not just checking off
- Host a team “Hope Lunch” where the team discusses wellness goals and the challenges they face to achieve them. Seeing areas of shared experience and providing opportunities to support one another helps teams feel more connected.
- Start having 5-minute huddles so teams have an opportunity to check in. Take advantage of resources like huddle cards that provide sample questions that go beyond “how are you doing.” For example, to gauge energy levels and offer immediate support: “On a scale of 1-5, what is your ‘battery’ at today? How can we as a team support those at a 1 or 2?”
- Talk to the Veterinary Hope Foundation about hosting a support webinar for your team. The interactive webinars are designed to give teams the tools to “enhance well-being, reduce burnout, and build more sustainable careers.”
Recognition as a buffer for burnout
Burnout isn’t just about feeling overworked and needing rest — you can’t fix burnout with more rest or a long vacation. Instead, burnout is about chronic stress, feeling unseen or unappreciated, and overextension. The veterinary field in particular has created an environment where long hours and exhaustion are normalized, making burnout a systemic issue, not an individual one.
The good news is you can change that at your practice. From simple recognition to providing more opportunities for career growth, you can be part of the culture shift that prioritizes wellness.
- Make shout outs part of practice culture. Provide a space (during meetings, on a whiteboard, online) where team members can recognize a colleague for something they did great on the job or non-clinical (such as “Thanks for keeping us laughing during that tough surgery” or “Great job handling that difficult client phone call” or “Nice work handling that spicy cat so we all get to keep our limbs.”).
- Tip: Vetsource customers can download and print a free shout out template in the Practice Toolkit.
- Providing a path for learning and career growth is a form of mental health support, helping avoid the stagnation that can lead to burnout. Check in one-on-one with team members regularly about their goals and aspirations. Where possible, provide opportunities for training or exploring other aspects of veterinary care.
