Why do we do that?
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Can anyone tell me what it is about veterinarians that make us so hard on ourselves? Why in every other aspect of our lives, we accept far less than perfection, however when we show up to work, we expect nothing less than perfection? Of course there might be some of you that expect perfection in all aspects of your life and if that is you, we definitely need to talk. But the large majority of us simply do the best we can in our personal life, yet obsess over every little aspect of our professional life. Why is that?
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that animals cannot talk to us to tell us what they need, where they hurt, or how we are helping them. Perhaps it is because we see the incredible bond between animals and humans. Or maybe it’s because in veterinary medicine we are the internist, the radiologist, the pharmacist, the surgeon. Whatever the reason, I can log in my mind almost instantly the animals that I perceived I failed. But if you ask me to conjure my successes, it takes me a moment to think of them. And just like you, my successes far out number the blunders. I have even heard some of my veterinary colleagues devastated by the loss of an animal that clearly was ready to leave.
Are we setting realistic expectations of ourselves? And more importantly are we openly talking about those expectations with our clients? I listened to a wonderful talk once about how animals are our teachers and they come into our lives when we have something to learn and leave when the lesson is complete. What a magnificent notion. It resonated with me immediately as I cataloged past pets and literally was able to grasp a lesson that I learned from each of them.
How beautiful a concept to see every single patient as our teacher because regardless of the outcome, they are indeed our teachers. The lesson may have nothing to do with medicine or everything to do with medicine. And if you did make a life threatening mistake, do you think for one minute, the animal holds anything against you? They are our teachers. If they could talk and we asked them if they forgave us, I know they would reply, “Forgive what?”
In reality most of us are not making life threatening mistakes very often, if ever. Our mistakes may be that we were late to the diagnosis, or we forgot to run that one test or maybe we tried a medicine and the animal had an allergic reaction. The question should be, did we learn from this patient? And the answer is, of course. So maybe instead of lying in bed at night beating ourselves up about one or two cases, we bring up the image of those patients and we send them gratitude. Whatever it is that we are feeling about ourselves, anger or disappointment, fear or sadness, intentionally replace those feelings with gratitude for that pet. Because that animal made us a better doctor.
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With love and hope,
Dr. Erin Holder