Starting your career as a vet can be daunting, exciting and a whirlwind to say the least; and it can be incredible to put all the knowledge and skills you’ve learnt over the last 4-5 years into practice in real-life scenarios – finally!
Clinically, vet school does an incredible job of preparing us for day one cases. However, there are a few things that can make you even more prepared for day one.
The sort of skills and habits I’m talking about are ones that experienced vets have learnt over the years since graduating that help them save time, deal with complicated cases better, and make their work-life just that little bit easier. If you’ve recently graduated and are about to start your first job, read on!
So, let’s get into it…
Hacks to make your life A LOT easier as a new grad:
Ask your management or reception desk to give you longer time slots for consults and procedures.
Increasingly, job adverts are now promoting longer consult times for new grads, but even if your new boss hasn’t said so initially, asking for this as a new grad is very reasonable.
Knowing you have a few more minutes for decision making, finding equipment or looking something up takes a lot of stress out of consulting and means you can feel like you’re still doing a great job for the client. All this without creating frustration in the waiting room or for your next calls by running late!
Seek help from external vets and specialists as much as you want!
Asking for help can look like – clarification on blood results, sending xrays, or even Whatsapping some photos of a wound or skin disease. Vet school can only teach you so much and getting some back up from a specialist can give you a massive confidence boost embarking on a treatment plan and can help the client trust you as well. Consulting a specialist, does not make you any less of a vet. My senior vet (30 years post-graduation) and I (4 years post-grad) still ask specialists about a huge variety of cases on an almost weekly basis.
When I graduated, I certainly did not realize how often vets call up previous colleagues or specialists they know for their ideas and opinions on cases.
Your practice should be able to give you the contact details of local referral centres they commonly use. All you need to do is phone or email and ask to be put through to someone in the specialism who might help! Alternatively, ask one of your new colleagues who they tend to go to, as they might have great contacts.
Schedule follow-up phone calls on the diary for yourself
When you send home a patient on medication or after having performed a procedure, following up is one of the most appreciated gestures by an owner as it shows you care and are making sure everything is going as planned.
If it is not going as planned, scheduling a phone call before completion of the treatment allows you to make adjustments earlier, or offer further diagnostics and therefore optimize your chances of a successful outcome.
It is also valued from a management’s perspective, as the owner is more likely to follow through with additional veterinary work if you check in and advise it if necessary.
The hardest part? Remembering all your cases from the last 2 weeks and remembering to make those calls in between your current consults, ops or ambulatory calls! So, either as soon as you’ve finished seeing that client or at the end of the workday, jump onto your computer system and book in your own little phone call reminders for 3 days’ time (or 1 week or 2 weeks’ time etc.).
This way you don’t need to try keep it all in your head, be your own PA and schedule.
Set boundaries from the start.
As a new grad you’re in a unique position. You have a clean slate; you don’t have a client-base yet and no-one knows how you work. This is a fantastic opportunity to set the record straight with your work-life boundaries. Creating boundaries is a fundamental skill and one of the key factors that is going to help prevent you burning out.
Don’t want clients texting you at 7pm? Tell them! Don’t want reception asking you to report lab results during your lunch break? Tell them! Be clear, be polite and be firm, and you will set in stone a really healthy foundation to build your career on.
Too many new grads will try to people please and take on too much, but there is a lot to be respected in a person who knows their boundaries. If clients can’t understand why you aren’t available at every waking hour, I’m not sure you want them as clients at all.
Bonus hacks for large animal new grads:
Check behind your car (i.e., for trees, small bollards or very expensive equipment!) before you get in and reverse out.
Be especially wary of anything that might be below your reversing sensor! No one wants to trash the company car on day one or even year one, but it definitely happens to a disproportionately large number of new grads.
Drive safe and be especially careful of driving tired after a night on-call. If you’re really struggling, pulling over for a quick break and being 5 mins late to a call is much better than ending up in a ditch.
Make an on-call equipment checklist
Imagine every possible out of hours scenario you might be called to (and look back at all the recent weekend and evening calls colleagues have been sent to) and type up an exhaustive list of equipment and drugs you might need for every single one. If you’re not sure – ask a more experienced colleague! Before your weekends on call, go through the checklist and stock up as needed.
It is too easy to finish a drug bottle on a busy day and forget to replace it back at the practice that evening. There is nothing worse than going to grab something from the car in an emergency and realizing you forgot to pack it or top it up.
If you know you’ve ticked off the checklist before every on-call shift, you can be confident knowing you’re totally prepared for every eventuality.
Conclusion
The more species specific you become, the list could go on forever, but hopefully these hacks might make your life as a new grad just that bit smoother. Know your boundaries, request more time if you need it, don’t try to remember all your phone calls (because you won’t!), and ask for help!
Plus, drive safely and make stocking your car easy for yourself.
I hope these hacks will make a difference to you as a new or recent grad!
ThisVetCan 