When a new veterinarian walks through your door on day one, they have completed four years of one of the most demanding professional programs in existence, including at least a full clinical year. They have passed the NAVLE. They can work up a case. What they have, though, is a foundation, not fluency. The technical confidence from volume and repetition is still ahead of them, and so is almost everything that surrounds clinical medicine in practice. There is a useful distinction in this work between what is “lookupable” and what is not. Differential diagnoses, drug doses, surgical protocols, suture patterns—lookupable. How to talk with a client about a treatment plan they cannot fully access. How to make a confident recommendation under uncertainty. How to leave a hard day at the clinic without carrying it home. Those are not in any textbook, and they do not develop without support. This is a gap that most practices are failing to close. If your mentorship program focuses primarily on clinical milestones, you may be solving only part of the problem. What new graduates actually navigate The transition into clinical practice is demanding in ways easy to underestimate from the outside. New graduates are making independent decisions, often for the first time, while still feeling genuinely uncertain. They are building client relationships from scratch, navigating team dynamics in a workplace they have just joined, and trying to develop confidence in an environment that rarely tells them clearly how they are doing. Recent qualitative research interviewing early- to mid-career veterinarians found the “safety net” mentors provide—not just clinical backup, but the assurance of not being alone in one’s uncertainty—was one of the strongest factors in whether new graduates stayed in practice.1 Participants described leaving their first jobs specifically because of inadequate mentorship and described arriving at new practices still recovering from those early experiences. Data from the Ready, Vet, Go program cohorts reflect the same pattern. Among 63 early-career veterinarians who participated, 44 percent of open-ended responses about what mattered most named the same thing, without prompting: the experience of realizing they were not alone. Not a specific skill. Not a module. The recognition their struggles were shared.2 That finding reframes what support actually means in the first year. Practices that focus mentorship entirely on clinical guidance address real needs while leaving others completely unaddressed. (Top photo) Dr. Olivia Rieff, Ready, Vet, Go mentee, on graduation day—the foundation is in place. What comes next is everything practice actually requires. (Bottom) Dr. Reiff in the clinic performing surgery— confidence built not before the hard moments, but through them. Photos courtesy Dr. Olivia Reiff Client communication A new graduate can have solid clinical instincts and still struggle in the exam room. Communication with clients, especially in difficult moments, is a skill that takes modeling, practice, and feedback to develop. Many new graduates receive little of the three. Early in my own career, my mentor had a habit that annoyed me at the time, but I have been grateful for it ever since. He would pull me out of an exam room to personally introduce me to long-standing clients. “This is Dr. Rabwin,” he would say. “She’s new, which means she knows a lot of current information, and your pet will be in excellent hands.” With that one introduction, he built client trust, demonstrated confidence in me, and modeled the kind of warmth that puts people at ease. I did not know how to do any of that yet. I learned it by watching. He also role-played difficult conversations with me before I had them with actual clients—delivering bad news, admitting a mistake, and navigating a client who was angry or in denial. Those sessions were uncomfortable. They were also invaluable. When those moments came in real time, I was not improvising from scratch. In my own program cohort data, 59 percent of participants reported confidence in client communication at the start. By the end, that figure had risen to 91 percent.2 Participants consistently linked that shift to feeling more effective with clients and more settled in practice overall. New graduates who feel chronically underprepared in the exam room carry that weight into every appointment, and it shapes how they show up for clients, colleagues, and themselves Practicing across a spectrum of care Veterinary school trains new graduates to deliver gold standard medicine. What it rarely prepares them for is the full range of circumstances they will encounter in practice—clients with financial constraints, geographic barriers to access to specialists, varying personal values regarding care, and patients whose situations do not map neatly onto textbook recommendations. When new graduates encounter this reality, many are not equipped to navigate it. The challenges are layered. There is the emotional weight of recommending a modified plan and wondering whether it is enough. There is the communication challenge of having that conversation in a way that preserves trust and keeps the client engaged. There is the clinical judgment required to determine what is sound within the constraints at hand. Also, there is something that does not always get named directly: the fear of judgment—from colleagues, from themselves, and from the profession. New graduates worry about straying from the gold standard, about board complaints, about liability. In my work with hundreds of early-career veterinarians and veterinary students, these fears come up constantly. They are not hypothetical. They shape how new graduates approach every appointment where the textbook answer is out of reach. My own mentor practiced in a semi-rural area with a genuinely diverse clientele, and early on he taught me delivering excellent care means meeting clients where they are—that a modified plan developed with clinical rigor and honest communication is not a compromise, but a different kind of medicine that requires its own skill set. Our program data captures what happens when this is addressed directly. Before the program, 49 percent of participants reported feeling comfortable talking with clients about cost of care. After, that rose to 77 percent.2 New graduates who are not supported in developing this skill tend either to carry chronic guilt about modified care plans or to avoid the conversations altogether. Neither outcome serves the patient, the client, or the practice. (Left) Dr. Nellie Campbell, Ready, Vet, Go alum, crossing the finish line of one of the most demanding professional programs—and stepping into the gap this article is about. (Right) Dr. Campbell in practice—building the fluency that only comes from doing. Photos courtesy Dr. Nellie Campbell Team dynamics New graduates do not just join a practice. They join a team with culture, history, unspoken rules, and existing relationships. Learning to navigate that—to understand where they fit, how to build credibility with colleagues and staff, when to ask for help and when to trust their own judgment—takes time and support to develop Recent qualitative research found that mentoring style—collaborative versus sink-or-swim— was one of the most significant factors in how new graduates experienced their first positions, and in whether they stayed.1 The AAHA Stay, Please study found teamwork was the single strongest retention factor across all roles surveyed, above compensation, above flexibility, above nearly everything else.3 Mentors can play a direct role here, not by manufacturing a sense of belonging, but by actively facilitating integration. Making introductions. Helping the new graduate understand team norms. Debriefing after a difficult interaction with a colleague or staff member. Creating the conditions where the new hire feels safe to ask questions and make mistakes without social consequence—what researchers and practitioners call psychological safety. In a clinical environment defined by hierarchy and high stakes, safety does not emerge on its own. It must be built deliberately, and mentors are often the ones best positioned to build it. Confidence follows action One of the most common things I hear from new graduates is some version of “I am waiting until I feel more confident.” One of the most important things a mentor can offer is a reframe: confidence follows action. It is not a prerequisite for it. I worked with a veterinarian who was two years into her career and struggling to find the clinical skills she needed. What fear was doing to her day-to-day was more insidious than a knowledge gap. It was shaping every decision: which cases she felt she could handle, when she called for help, how she presented herself to clients. She was second-guessing herself before she even walked into the room. The turning point came when she performed her first pyometra surgery on a patient whose owner could not afford referral. She was scared. She did it anyway, with guidance. In doing it, she found not just her confidence, but her sense of purpose—the reason she had worked so hard to become a veterinarian. What made that possible was not clinical instruction alone. It was the psychological safety to attempt something uncertain—the knowledge she would not be abandoned in the hard moments, and that a mistake would be debriefed rather than held against her. That pattern shows up in program data in a way worth naming directly. In surveys of Ready, Vet, Go participants, clinical confidence increased significantly — even though the program does not teach clinical medicine. Mentorship has the potential to build confidence across the board, not just in the areas it directly addresses. The qualitative research reflects the same dynamic. Participants who described receiving consistent encouragement alongside clinical guidance-built confidence more durably than those who received only correction.1 Confidence is not something new graduates arrive with fully formed. It is something the mentorship environment either cultivates or suppresses. What this looks like in practice Expanding mentorship beyond clinical milestones does not require a dramatic overhaul. It requires broadening what mentorship conversations are expected to cover: Build in time to debrief client conversations, not just cases. Ask how the communication went, not only what the diagnosis was. Address spectrum of care explicitly and early—before a new graduate encounters it without a framework. Help them develop language and clinical thinking they can use with confidence. Facilitate team integration actively, especially in the first 90 days. It does not happen on its own. Create space for reflection on a regular basis, not just when something goes wrong. Ask what they are learning, not only whether they are hitting targets. Consider peer connection as a mentorship component, not a bonus. In-clinic mentorship cannot deliver what peers in other practices can: the recognition that struggle is shared and normal, not a sign of individual failure. Model the non-clinical skills yourself. New graduates are watching how you handle difficult clients, hard conversations, and imperfect situations. That modeling is mentorship, whether it is named that or not. The return on this investment Practices that invest in this kind of comprehensive mentorship see the difference. Veterinarians who are supported across the full range of what practice requires become more confident, more consistent, and more committed to the practice they are in. The ones who are not supported—clinically covered but otherwise on their own—tend to disengage quietly before anyone understands why. New graduates need more than a clinical skills checklist. The practices that recognize that—and build mentorship accordingly—are the ones best positioned to support early-career veterinarians through the full complexity of what practice requires. The Ready, Vet, Go program combines peer group meetings, mentor-led workshops, and on-demand modules to support early-career veterinarians through exactly the transition described in this article. Full cohort outcomes data is available in two companion white papers at readyvetgo.co/outcomes. Dani Rabwin, DVM, is the founder of Ready, Vet, Go, a structured remote mentorship program for early-career veterinarians, and editor of Mentorship in Veterinary Medicine (Wiley), released September 2026. References Standage C, Smith P, Jones A, Ritter C. Mentoring matters to early-career veterinarians’ confidence, clinical growth and career retention: A qualitative interview study. Vet Rec. 2025;e1–e12. Rabwin D. What Changes in a Year: Measured Outcomes from the Ready, Vet, Go Mentoring Programs. Ready, Vet, Go White Paper; 2026.[link to be provided to VPN shortly] American Animal Hospital Association. Stay, Please: Factors that Support Retention and Drive Attrition in the Veterinary Profession. AAHA; 2024.
