The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

It’s very easy to get stuck in a mindset of “I’ve chosen THIS thing, so all other things are off the table, because once you choose THIS thing, then THESE are the things I HAVE to do."   But who says we have to?  Dr Tanya Stephens' career is that it’s not just one thing. Her story clearly demonstrates that you don’t HAVE to do anything in a certain way. Clinical practice doesn’t hav...

It’s been a while since we’ve released one of our clinical episodes on here, so we thought we’d create this lovely little compilation of kidney content for you. These are some of our biggest ‘AHA!’ moments from a series of episodes that we've done over on the clinical podcast over the past few months on those tricky little beans that stop us from being poisoned by our own waste products. We start...

70+ episodes into the podcast, and not a single episode with a vet nurse. Shame on us! But we're changing that with this episode through a conversation with a vet tech who is leading the charge into the future of vet nursing.   Kenichiro Yagi is Chief Veterinary Nursing Office at the Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), where his role is to help develop career pathways in veterinary nursing...

This is an episode about courage. About putting yourself in situations that are out of your comfort zone and then finding it within yourself to make it work, because self-care does not equate self-limiting, and you're probably stronger than you think.  Elizabeth Woolsey Herbert is a retired equine veterinarian and practice owner. She moved from the US to Australia as a young vet and practised...

There are so many important conversations happening at the moment about the challenges facing the vet profession and the possible solutions. We love it when we hear things like: 'We have to get better at setting boundaries. We have to stop feeling so guilty. We have to value ourselves more. We have to be more kind to ourselves.' But the big question remains: HOW?! How do we do those things when we...

How would you define an entrepreneur? Mirian-Webster says it’s someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves a new opportunity. Here’s another fact: we are at a point in time when our profession is FILLED with new opportunities. I’m sure you’re spotting them all around you. But once you spot that opportunity, how do you translate it from an idea into reality? How do you over...

What’s your knee-jerk reaction when I say the word ‘corporate practice?’ The past few decades have seen some immense changes in how our profession is structured, leaving us with some big decisions to make:  If you’re a new grad: What does a supportive practice look like? Where can I find that practice? Do I go corporate, do I go private, do I do an internship? And if you’re an owner or a mana...

If you’re a regular Vet Vaulter you’ll be well familiar by now with psychologist Rhonda Andrews from our previous episodes with her on trauma and grief. We love Rhonda, and based on your feedback YOU loved Rhonda. So we’re going to make this a regular thing. Here's what we're thinking: Rhonda will have conversations and counselling sessions with real vets facing real challenges about something tha...

How much do you dislike doing dentals? If you’re like most vets I’m guessing that the answer to that question is - “I dislike it rather a lot.”  But then there’s that small minority of vets who just love teeth. Our guest for this episode, as you’ll hear, was NOT one of them, and yet these days that is exactly what he does all day, every day. And he loves it.  Dr Aaron Forsayeth has been...

It’s happened: In late January 2022, an astute veterinarian in Mount Isa diagnosed the first locally acquired case of the tick-borne disease, ehrlichiosis, in a Queensland dog. As predicted the disease is making its way south, and we want to make sure that you, like our Mt Isa vet, are able to spot and treat ehrlichiosis when it comes knocking on your door. Which, in all likelihood - it will, rega...

"High consequence decision making in a complex environment, with imperfect data, on a budget."  The definition of GP vet practice, according to Gareth Steel! Gareth has been a mixed practice vet for 20 years with experience across the UK and beyond. When he’s not on the front lines of clinical practice you’ll find him on a different kind of front line as a member of the British Army Reserves....

Here are some facts about insulin that you are likely familiar with:  0.25-0.5 IU/kg starting dose. Do a glucose curve soon after starting insulin to assess the response.  Feed a special diabetic diet.  Give insulin at the time of feeding.  Glargine is the best insulin for cats.  Most owners wouldn’t consider injecting their pets three times a day.  Diabetes 101, righ...

Dr Rosie Booth is a wildlife veterinarian and has been one since before that was even a job description.  Rosie has 40 years of experience in conservation and wildlife work, which started with a masters degree in koala adrenal glands in 1986 and sparked a lifetime of caring for this iconic species. Since that time she has worked in many of Australia’s most prominent zoos and wildlife hospital...

Imagine a world where vets and their team members are bubbling with excitement about their job. Where they go on about how great their clients are, they talk about how good their pay is, and about how very fulfilling their careers are... Can’t do it? Don’t worry - our guest for this episode has been imagining exactly this, and if the buzz out there about VEG is anything to go by, then he and his t...

There’s something about eyes that makes vets either love treating them, or totally hate them, and in my experience, a lot of vets hate them! They tend to be at maximum grossness and highest levels of intimidating when they present as emergencies, with a popped-out eyeball probably being the most spectacular-looking emergency of all. It may be an easy diagnosis, and the fix is not technically too c...

You'll bump onto grief several times a day on an average shift at a vet clinic. But do you UNDERSTAND it?  Do you face it head-on, or does it make you uncomfortable, so you run and hide when you see it coming? Do you even see it coming? Can you recognise the stages of grief in your clients and your co-workers? What about yourself? Did you know, for example, that when that client is lashing ou...

Dr Riati Scarboroughis is a researcher at the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and a PhD fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on improving our understanding of the conscious and subconscious motivations behind suboptimal antimicrobial prescribing in Australian veterinary practices, and designing sustainable strategies to support better antimicrobial prescribing in ve...

Culture . It can be hard to put your finger on it, yet in the setting of a vet practice, it permeates the work areas, floats into reception and beyond and ricochets off the walls. You can feel it when you walk in the door. Long ago I sat in the reception area waiting for my interview at a practice where I ended up spending many years of life.  I distinctly remember sitting there and thinking:...

We chose to share this episode on mitral valve disease from our clinical podcast series ( vvn.supercast.com ) because I went into this interview thinking that, after 20 years in practice, I wasn't really going to learn many new things...I was wrong! Our guest for this series on canine heart disease is medicine specialist Dr Clint Yudelman, and in this series he talks us through so many critically...

Why does it sting so much when a client accuses us of ‘just being in it for the money”. I think it hurts because for most of us money is really quite low on the list of what drives us, so much so that we often actively avoid talking about it, especially in terms of our own earnings, like it’s a taboo subject. But the things is - it IS also about the money. For most of us, at some point in our adul...

For such a seemingly simple sample there’s a lot you can learn from a urinalysis. Many of us also have a fair amount of uncertainty around much of the 'how' of urine sample handling, analysis and interpretation. It’s also the one bit of lab work where being good at in-house testing can make a big difference to the reliability of your results.  We KNOW you’ll have had some disagreements at som...

It's the end of the academic year, and around the world, thousands of final year vet students are facing the start of their careers. It's an exciting time with a lot of optimism, but likely also a fair whack of anxiety. There are so many major decisions to make, and you've heard so many scary stories about life as a vet?!  This is why we're having this conversation with Dr Moriah McCauley. Mo...

In part two of our bonus FIP series Dr Sally Coggins - feline vet and FIP researcher - tells us about other potentially useful treatments, like mefloquine for FIP. This could be particularly useful if you are not in Australia or the UK with access to BOVA's legally compounded Remdesivir and oral GS44152. We also cover off on side effects of Remdisivir, as well as the practicalities of the treatmen...

This two-part bonus series is an update on everything FIP from our clinical podcast series. There have been some major changes in this space over the last few months, most notably around the legal access to Remdesivir for animal use and the availability of an oral formulation of GS442524 in Australia and the UK through BOVA compounding. In this episode, we go to the front lines of therapy to creat...

Robert Pope is a British veterinarian, athlete and charity fundraiser. He is an elite distance runner, with a number of successes at the marathon and ultramarathon distances, including being the Australian marathon champion in 2015. In 2016 he completed a 422-day, 15,700-mile run (that’s about 600 marathons!) comprising more than 4 complete crossings of the United States, and became the first pers...