When I told people I was taking a mental health leave from practice earlier this year, I got a lot of grumpy looks and pitying glances. I don’t blame anyone. After all, I felt pretty much the same way about myself. It was a rough period for myself—along with those in my orbit. Given my emotional state at the time, I’m sure no one could have imagined it would end with me standing in the middle of a Virginia pasture discussing rotational grazing, goat genetics, soil biology and dairy business financing. (Least of all, me.) GettyImages/Germi_p Crashing and burning After more than 30 years in clinical practice, I had reached a point where continuing exactly as I had been no longer seemed possible. This wasn’t my first experience with burnout, but it was the first time I had enough perspective—and enough financial stability—to admit that pushing through wasn't working. So, I stopped. For 12 weeks. Those words still surprise me. Until this year, I’d never taken more than eight consecutive days off in my entire veterinary career. The lone exception was an unpaid stretch of maternity leave nearly three decades ago, which I remember not as a period of bonding or recovery, but as weeks of mounting financial anxiety and an almost desperate need to get back onto someone’s payroll. Looking back, that seems tragically short-sighted. Not because everyone should disappear for three months. But because most of us need time for ourselves. The trouble with time Unfortunately, most of us can’t. Student loans, children, aging parents, mortgages, employment contracts, practice staffing, and the simple reality that patients still need care make extended leave an impossible luxury for many veterinarians. I get that. I also get the guilt. Leaving my colleagues behind to shoulder my appointments was one of the hardest parts of taking leave. Almost as bad was leaving my clients and patients with no warning. It felt like an exercise in extreme irresponsibility, but there comes a point when continuing to work through it isn’t loyalty. It’s self-destruction. I expected to confront a world of boredom and self-flagellation, but like most veterinarians (who don’t do well on a sofa consuming Netflix and pizza), I couldn’t sit still long enough to wallow long (I wallowed more than my share, though). That’s how what began as a medical leave quietly turned into a sabbatical. Getting off the sofa I spent my days studying regenerative agriculture. I immersed myself in cattle production, dairy goat medicine, reproductive management, soil ecology, and pasture restoration. I wrote a business plan for the farm I recently purchased in Virginia. I visited producers. I called lenders. I sought out mentors who had already built the kind of operation I hope to create. Every week seemed to introduce another subject I knew little to nothing about—because I suddenly had time to learn. I wasn’t escaping veterinary medicine. I was expanding my role in it. For the first time in decades, I experienced the intoxicating feeling that originally drew me into this profession. That realization made me wonder why sabbaticals are so uncommon in veterinary medicine. Endurance is problematic Universities have long understood their value. Professors routinely receive sabbaticals to conduct research, write, study abroad, or simply think deeply about their discipline. Clergy have increasingly embraced structured sabbaticals as protection against burnout. Many technology companies encourage extended breaks after years of service because they recognize that creativity rarely flourishes under relentless pressure. Veterinary medicine, by contrast, often celebrates uninterrupted endurance. We congratulate ourselves for not taking a vacation or missing a single day of work in years. We pride ourselves on answering emails on holidays. We quietly assume that exhaustion is evidence of commitment and that careers are marathons rather than a series of 5Ks punctuated by periods of recovery and reflection …. but I’m no longer convinced that’s true. The role of burnout The irony is our profession has become increasingly concerned with burnout while remaining surprisingly uncomfortable discussing one of the most effective ways to interrupt it: prolonged time away from the work itself. Recent studies paint a complex picture. Burnout among U.S. veterinarians remains common, with average burnout scores remaining in the moderate range across recent AVMA surveys, while serious psychological distress remains more common among veterinarians than among employed adults generally. Researchers continue to identify workload, work-life balance, organizational culture, and individual recovery practices as major determinants of professional well-being. Which makes me wonder: Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. Asking the right questions Instead of asking, “How do we become more resilient?” Maybe we should be asking, “How often do we allow ourselves enough distance to rediscover our curiosity?” Resilience and distance are not the same thing. Distance creates perspective. Perspective creates creativity, and creativity creates opportunity. Resilience is just managing to do the same thing over and over again without needing time to recover. Finding a new professional identity During my leave, I didn’t simply recover. I developed an entirely new professional identity alongside the old one. I became a student again. I rediscovered large-animal medicine. I met people outside my usual professional circles. I found new mentors. I developed a business plan that will shape the next decade (or three) of my life. None of that would’ve happened if I’d simply taken another Thanksgiving holiday in Hawaii. Not that there’s anything wrong with Hawaii—or vacations. We all need them. But vacations are designed for rest and relaxation. Sabbaticals are designed for true recovery—space for renewed creativity and real transformation. It’s an investment The financial implications also deserve mention. Most people understandably view time away from work as an expense. There’s no doubt it is, but sometimes it’s also an investment. Here’s what you get for your investment: You’d get new knowledge for sure, and maybe a second career. You might develop leadership skills and entrepreneurial thinking. Perhaps it’ll be an investment in avoiding the far greater financial cost of leaving a profession altogether because you never found the space to reinvent yourself within it. The case for COVID COVID unintentionally gave many professionals that opportunity. Some changed industries. Others started businesses. Still others returned to school or fundamentally reconsidered how they wanted to spend the second half of their careers. We veterinarians never had that chance. Our hospitals stayed open. Our patients still needed us. While much of the world paused to reassess, we kept working. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful we did, but I’m also a little envious of those who were forced to stop long enough to ask themselves bigger questions. Back to the ‘real world’ I’m back in clinical practice now. Officially. Unofficially, though, I still feel as though I’m on sabbatical. Every conversation I have with a farmer, every textbook I open, every phone call with a dairy producer, and every business decision I make for my future farm reminds me that learning doesn’t have to stop because I’ve returned to work. Perhaps that’s the real lesson. A sabbatical isn’t an escape from your profession. Done well, it’s a return to it—with fresh eyes, renewed curiosity, and the confidence to imagine a future that looks different from your past. Veterinary medicine spends a great deal of time discussing wellness. As well we should, but we should also spend more time discussing renewal. They’re not the same thing. Wellness keeps us functioning. Renewal changes who we become, and sabbaticals can make that happen. We definitely need more of them in our profession. I just hope that fewer of us have to suffer burnout to get the chance to see ourselves in a new professional light. Patty Khuly, VMD, MBA, runs a small animal practice in Miami, Fla., and is available at drpattykhuly.com. Columnist's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Veterinary Practice News.
