Create an employee wellness plan for the winAugust 23, 2018The mental health of veterinary professionals is the topic at all of our professional meetings and in all the publications. I'm so thankful that it has transitioned from a taboo topic to a mainstream one. While attending the July 2018 AVMA and VetPartners meetings in Denver, I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from several esteemed people who are teaching and coaching on the topic. As a practice management consultant, I am always looking for ways to help my clients improve their practices. So, in evaluating all that I learned about this topic, I began to wonder… all of this talk is fantastic, but what are clinics doing to turn these conversations into action? Veterinary practice leaders need help creating and executing a wellness plan that fits their practice and and their team. Daily practice is hard and busy, and despite your best intentions, the demands of patients and clients fill your days, leaving bigger projects such as an employee wellness plan on the back burner. I turned to certified compassion fatigue coach Julie Squires for guidance. Julie is with Rekindle (rekindlesolutions.com) and is known nationwide …
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Four steps to improved veterinary client complianceJuly 6, 2018Approaching veterinary client compliance is a multipronged process that includes determining who your client is, assessing your team, assessing the practice, and more. As a veterinary practice management consultant, I regularly meet veterinary professionals who struggle with client compliance. Why won't they accept our recommendations? Why don't they get it? How can I make them understand? They just don't want to pay. These are all common problems I am asked to help solve. Determine who your client is Before you attempt to increase client compliance, you have to figure out who your clients are. What does your target audience look like? What demographic are you serving? How does that compare to the mission and goal of the practice? If there is a disconnect between the type of pet owner coming in to your practice and what your practice is trying to deliver, success is going to be harder to achieve. Assess your team The second part of increasing client compliance is having a team that is well trained in interpersonal skills, communication styles, and fostering relationships with clients, pets, and each other. Creating a supportive culture and fostering comradery are the first two steps to having team members who …
Enter Veterinary Practice News' 2018 They Ate What?! X-ray ContestJune 1, 2018Pets eat the most puzzling things that land them in the vet's office: shoes, coins, socks, teddy bears, watches, rubber ducks, rocks, lightbulbs, kitchen utensils, pendants, golf balls, and more. If the rads weren't there to prove this stuff actually happens, the tales would be hard to believe. That's why Veterinary Practice News is asking the veterinary community to submit radiographs to the 2018 They Ate What?! X-ray contest that show how truth is often stranger than fiction when it comes to the contents of some pets' stomachs. The winner, selected by a panel of veterinarians and Veterinary Practice News editors, will receive $500 and a one-year subscription to Web PACS, a Picture Archiving Communications System valued at $2,400, from contest prize sponsor, IDEXX Laboratories Inc. How to enter: Go to VeterinaryPracticeNews.com/xraycontest and log in or register to enter. Upload high-resolution images—large files reproduce best—and fill in your name, clinic name and address, telephone number, and a short explanation of the case, including the outcome. If available, include images of the patient and the recovered item(s). The submission deadline is July 23. The winner and honorable mentions will be unveiled in the …
Why practice owners should copy hotels for inspirationApril 4, 2018You've probably had the experience of eating out at a restaurant where the food was great but the overall experience was terrible. You were seated 30 minutes after your reservation time, the server was aloof and, at times, rude, and the kitchen got your original order wrong—and then stuck it on the bill before you pointed out the error. It doesn't matter that the steak you ended up eating—the offering you actually paid for—was cooked and seasoned to perfection, tender to the bone, and delicious; at the end of the meal, you walked away feeling like you'd had an extremely negative experience and, chances are, you thought twice about ever returning to that restaurant again. The veterinary service you provide your patients is, in many ways, no different from the service you get when you eat at a restaurant—at least when it comes to customer experience. While your patients come to you for a specific service (veterinary care), just like you went to that restaurant for a steak, their overall judgment of the value of that service will be determined just as much by their overall experience and the way they were treated as by the quality of care they …
The future of veterinary inventory managementMarch 23, 2018Running a veterinary hospital is no easy task—managing staff, client experience, finances, and marketing, not to mention delivering quality medical care to patients, are top of mind. In general, inventory management gets pushed aside. Having managed veterinary hospitals large and small, I certainly understand how inventory can be neglected. During my career, the priority in managing inventory was to keep the hospital stocked, with little regard to controlling costs. If we ran out of a medication or a product, I would get an earful. Over the past five years, veterinary medicine has changed. The cost of goods, overhead expenses, and, especially, wages are increasing at an unstainable rate. Minimum wage laws and "living wage" campaigns across the county are touching every aspect of veterinary medicine. These costs will continue to rise. Human healthcare went through a similar transition two decades ago. The answer to reducing costs was process improvement. Today most large healthcare systems have invested in Lean, Six Sigma, or some other form of Kaizen (continuous improvement) programs. The veterinary industry would be wise to follow this lead. Although change is difficult, the good news is human healthcare has already started this journey. Most of the methods, processes, …
Are you missing pet health communication opportunities with your clients?March 19, 2018Pet owners don't always get the full message that veterinary teams think they're communicating, according to a Partners for Healthy Pets (PHP) study presented during an American Animal Hospital Association session at VMX Veterinary Meeting & Expo in Orlando, Fla. The study compiled responses from surveys of 1,193 practice staff members, 833 dog owners, and 527 cat owners from April 2012 through June 2017. Practices have an opportunity to better communicate not only what is being done during a preventive examination but also how the examination benefits the pet, according to the study. Among the findings About 45 percent of dog owners and 30 percent of cat owners believed that a pain assessment was discussed or performed at their pet's most recent checkup When staff members were asked whether a pain assessment is typically performed at every examination during a visit for preventive care, 73 percent said yes for dogs, and 68 percent said yes for cats About 95 percent of staff members indicated that a dental exam is typically performed at every preventive care visit About 77 percent of dog owners and 78 percent of cat owners believed a dental examination was discussed …
AVMA, AAVMC summit to examine well-being strategies for veterinariansMarch 16, 2018The AVMA has teamed with the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges and Zoetis to host the 2018 Veterinary Wellbeing Summit profession-wide meeting to join experts from inside and outside of the veterinary community to address vital well-being strategies for the profession. The summit is scheduled for April 15-17 outside Chicago. The summit will cover a range of topics including the link between culture and well-being, the importance of boundary setting, addressing the perfectionism code, and the business case for well-being. Many of the sessions will offer a look at real-life scenarios, such as examples of successful well-being programs in various work environments, personal obstacles and success stories, and lessons learned. The goal of the summit is to provide practical resources and strategies to enable participants ranging from academicians, students, and practitioners to establish a culture of well-being in their workplace and throughout the profession. Presenters will share healthy tips and strategies that can be implemented at a personal or professional level, by anyone at any time, no matter the organization size or career stage. The summit also offers attendees: An introduction to the nine dimensions of well-being and how professionals can influence each one 100 healthy tips to implement …
Make Facebook social media work for your veterinary clinicMarch 15, 2018Social media is an important tool for any business today, including veterinary medicine. According to Statista, more than 81 percent of the U.S. population has at least one social media account. Importantly, 68 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook, and of that group, 74 percent of them access Facebook daily. When Americans access their Facebook accounts, they spend nearly 20 minutes per session on the platform. Facebook continues to dominate the social media space. Here are the numbers of users on popular social media platform as reported by Statista: Facebook: 2.1 billion YouTube: 1.5 billion Instagram: 800 million Twitter: 330 million LinkedIn: 260 million SnapChat: 255 million Pinterest: 200 million Approximately 90 percent of the people who use many of these other social media platforms also use Facebook. As most veterinary practices have limited time and resources to devote to their communications and marketing efforts, Facebook should be their social media platform of choice. Communications/marketing plans To be most effective, Facebook and other social media activities should be just one part of a comprehensive communications and marketing plan. Other tools should include electronic newsletters, brochures, community activities, an engaging website, and more. All of these …
MightyVet launches veterinary career, well-being support platformMarch 5, 2018 MightyVet today rolled out the first phase of its initiative to promote the education and support of veterinarians, students, vet techs, and other veterinary professionals about the challenges and opportunities faced by those in the veterinary profession. According to the first mental health survey of U.S. veterinarians, one in six veterinarians have considered suicide. Further, study found that the profession has seen a growing trend in the level of veterinary burnout, compassion fatigue, ethics exhaustion, and decreased career satisfaction. To address these trends, the company has gathered resources and experience of passionate veterinarians from frontline practice, specialty and ER, universities, and pet health organizations to provide a resource for real-time sustainable change, according to Steve Weinrauch, BVMS, MRCVS, founder of MightyVet and chief veterinary officer at Trupanion. "MightyVet is an industry-wide movement that offers access to information not otherwise taught as universal core curriculum in veterinary school," said Dr. Weinrauch. "Our profession can be physically and emotionally demanding, and despite the best efforts of so many, nothing has ever truly made a sustained and comprehensive difference. From veterinarian or tech student to retiree, these issues remain and are closer to us than most realize." One …
Veterinarians are mentally well but experience poor well-beingFebruary 17, 2018Veterinarians as a group don't experience psychological distress at significantly higher rates than the general population, according to a new mental health and well-being study by Brakke Consulting and Merck Animal Health. The Merck Animal Health Wellbeing Study, designed to definitively quantify the prevalence of mental illness and stress in the veterinary profession, compared findings to previous studies and to the U.S. population in general. The survey, which polled 3,540 American Veterinary Medical Association members (from a random sample of 20,000), is the first to measure well-being of such a large veterinary sample using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, which is widely used in assessing psychological distress among general and clinical populations. "This survey is unique in that, for the first time, a nationally representative sample of veterinarians in the U.S. were asked about their well-being, which is a broader measure of happiness and life satisfaction than mental health alone," said study investigator Linda Lord, Ph.D., DVM, academic and allied industry liaison lead for Merck Animal Health. One big takeaway is that 5 percent, or 1 in 20, of veterinarians struggle with serious psychological distress (roughly that of the employed general population). "The …
