Culture Killers

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I have received several emails in the past month from exhausted veterinarians and nurses relaying concerns for their entire staff. They wrote that they wanted to help but didn’t know how. Clinic after clinic is facing profound fatigue and exhaustion with no sign of help on the horizon, leaving the only option – to run like hell away from the profession. The real problem is the sheer volume of employees that need help. The entire staff is overworked, underpaid and often underappreciated. So here I am, author of The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project but stuck on this question. What do I possibly have to offer these clinics? Recommend more social bonding time? Give business tips to generate more income to increase pay? Would I travel to the clinic for a weekend and speak to the group hoping to change the entire culture of the practice in just that weekend? Talk about an insurmountable task. So over dinner one night I posed the following question to my husband who was stumped. “What is the point of The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project if I cannot roll out a program for clinics to use, kind of like An Idiot’s Guide to Overcome Veterinary Compassion Fatigue?”

I went to bed that night truly conflicted about the direction of the project. And I awoke with the answer. This often happens, that my hyperactive brain takes over in the night and solves problems that seem unsolvable in the daylight. I guess I should be thankful although sometimes I wake up tired. But here is the answer. It is not about swooping in to save the clinic. It is about you. It is only about you. I am here to help the individual, the one that comes looking for the help and is ready to put in the work. I am not here to convince anyone that what I am saying should be everything to everyone. I am here just for you. And if I happen to be talking to an owner, then perhaps the entire clinic may be helped and this would be a huge bonus for me. But in order to make this project work, I have to convince you, just you, that there is a better way.

Culture comes from the top down. An exhausted owner or hospital manager is like a dense and toxic fog that pervades the hospital. You cannot hide from it because it is in every corner of every room of the entire building. It clings to everything and everyone. It settles on you like a weight on your shoulders that you have to carry the entire day. And by no means is this blaming all of our woes on the veterinary business owner and manager. I was that business owner. This is just an exploration of why so many clinics have culture problems. 

Now what about that one employee that makes everyone miserable? They could be completely self-absorbed, mean, always sick, emotionally dysregulated, or just a complete drama magnet. Did an image pop in your head immediately, or sadly more than one? Even writing those sentences exhaust me. Why, as business owners, are we so afraid to let these people go? Often we get caught up thinking our business will suffer or maybe we will have to do more work if we fire those rotten apples. While I do have compassion for them, these apples will take you down. And ultimately you are letting your staff know that the rotten apple is more important than they are. I spent so much time justifying why I should keep an employee rather than lovingly terminate them and wish them the best of luck elsewhere. Most likely I would have been doing them a great favor. Clearly it was not a good fit. But sometimes all that might be needed is a straightforward, kind conversation to a person that may not even realize they are creating such a toxic environment. This could be a valuable life changing moment for them or they could just think you’re a big meanie. If the latter, it was never going to work out anyway and they likely will quit on their own. 

There is also another employee type to watch out for – the super helpful or sometimes quiet employee that goes behind everyone’s back to inject little slivers of doubt and unhappiness in the staff. This deceitful employee is a subterfuge. Recognize this one? Massive culture disruptor. Now we have an unhappy staff that is constantly exhausting the hospital manager with small complaints. They cannot put their finger on why they are so unhappy but they are. The hospital manager is frustrated and complains to the owner, who thinks that they are doing everything possible for a wonderful culture, so feels that the team is ungrateful. These naughty employees are sneaky and divisive. Your amazing employees will be angry and not understand why. Once again, the culture issue is a top down problem. We business owners fail to recognize what is our job to recognize and handle pronto.

One employee has the ability to destroy an entire hospital no matter how large. The culture can literally be transformed overnight by the removal of that person. As owners, we are asking too much of our team in a job that is already difficult. They should never be made to work alongside the truly dysfunctional or subversive individual, whether that behavior is out in the open or on the sly. If you let those apples go, watch how your staff rebounds out of relief and happiness and I bet they will gladly absorb more work short term. The best case scenario is to learn how to hire to avoid these guys altogether. It is quite possible that I was one of the worst recruiters to ever walk the earth until finally I got so frustrated, I hired a company to help me.

Next up, the hospital manager, tasked with so many job titles needing to wear so many hats at work. Veterinary clinics notoriously hire technicians as hospital managers who have absolutely no training in human resources and management. Managers not equipped for the job, often feel powerless or sometimes too powerful. This creates utter chaos in the hospital and the culture deteriorates rapidly. But sadly, how many HR programs out there are based on love and compassion?

My words when I graduated from vet school and opened up my own business just a few short years later, were “How hard can it be?” Literally, those were my exact words. I must have felt some sense of incredulous super ability because I had taken approximately two hours of business class in vet school. I would eat those words pretty quickly once I opened my doors. Managing people is a skill that must be learned with grace and humility. Managing people must be done with love and compassion. 

I remember I would always get so anxious before I had to reprimand an employee. I was relieved when I hired a hospital manager to do it for me. However, had I learned the technique and skill of correcting an employee with love and compassion or even terminating an employee with love and compassion, my life would have been so much less exhausting. I can imagine a hospital manager that has just been moved off the floor from technician to now head of the hospital. What a difficult task to accomplish with no compassion training, HR skills and even a standard operating procedures manual. We are setting up these managers for failure and a clinic to have serious culture issues. 

Which brings me to my next point, how many of you have a hospital with clear and concise standards of operating? How many of you are referred to that manual consistently when trained? Writing that manual was the bane of my existence. I thought I was being a cool, hip owner by not having written instructions. I mean, can’t we all just get along? A few years in, I realized that was clearly an idiotic thought and so I went about writing the entire standard operating procedures manual. I had absolutely no idea that most people need these guidelines to feel secure and that this was elevating the culture of my practice. 

There are so many more culture killers in the veterinary hospital world. It seems hopeless. This is why TVCFP focuses on you. Because by completing the program and understanding yourself, then maybe you can find a new love and respect for your current position, educate others that might need help, or lovingly move on to a better culture. Or maybe I am speaking to a business owner or manager and you will join us to take action to change the culture of your practice. 

So here we are, circling around the answers to what seemed insurmountable just a few moments ago. To fully understand The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project, we must understand and accept the five bolsters of this program: love, compassion, direction, training and delegation, all designed to support and honor you. Each bolster is critical in building a healthy environment for staff and ultimately yourself. We cultivate love and compassion through training and meditation. We write directions for the staff and ourselves in a manual that is the most important book of the hospital. We look for training opportunities for our staff and ourselves BEYOND veterinary medicine. And lastly, we delegate to those that can handle it and we pay them for it. 

For my veterinarians and veterinary staff members, the above paragraph is what you need to look for in a hospital with great culture. This is what you deserve. These are the questions you ask in the interview. However, that is not the end of the story. This is also what you must contribute. A well-oiled hospital is one that has everyone invested in the health of the practice. It is a loving and compassionate place with explicit direction and ample training. But you have to take advantage of all the opportunities, cultivate your own love and compassion, and give to the hospital what you expect to get in return. 

Don’t miss my next five blogs discussing, in-depth, the bolsters of The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project – love, compassion, direction, training and delegation – and how they relate first   to ourselves but ultimately to all. 

Find me on The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project Spotify Podcast, my website, Facebook and YouTube @TVCFP. Let’s keep talking about what we face in the veterinary and animal care world and ways that we can help each other. Reach out if you have a particular topic you would love to hear about. Subscribe to hear updates on our annual restoration retreat to be launched in Spring of 2025. As always, I hope you find what you are looking for and share it with anyone who needs it. 

With love and hope, 

Dr. Erin Holder