Improving your wellbeing is not as simple as taking a week-long holiday at a health spa, or simply getting more exercise and improving your diet. Though all of these are important to Veterinary Wellbeing (and we’d like to justify our own annual spa retreats too), stress management and mental health care require fundamental changes to our daily lives. Remember that you deserve to nurture yourself to the same degree that you look after your patients. How do you cope when you are being pulled in so many directions, mentally as well as physically? Here are some essential first steps…
Successfully Manage Your Veterinary Student Debt In Trying Times
So you have successfully started that professional veterinary career you worked so hard to achieve. You expected it would be a tough road getting there, but you persisted and you’ve made it and you are really enjoying being a practicing Veterinary Professional – Veterinarian, Vet Tech, Veterinary Nurse, and more. What you hadn’t anticipated was a pandemic – no one does – and it’s impact on how many weeks, months, or years may be being added to your journey until you can enjoy the satisfaction of making that final student loan payment. You are not alone. Student loan debt is now the second-highest consumer debt category, the first being mortgage debt. Here are some essential tips to help you successfully manage your Veterinary student debt in these challenging times…
Level Up Your Veterinary Nurse and Veterinary Technician Career
As the world starts taking puppy and kitten and duckling steps back toward some semblance of normalcy in varying degrees around the world, for many the challenges have been a wake-up call. Veterinary nursing is a calling and the passion and care that our Veterinary Technicians and Nurses display, often the front line of veterinary care, is to be admired. No practice can exist without your compassion, commitment and knowledge. The personal rewards are to be cherished, but the reality is that we all have to live in an ever-expensive world. It’s not until you step up a few rungs that your income starts to meet your lifestyle and gives you that little bit more to build a buffer for the unexpected be it car repairs, family support or yes, a pandemic. So to help you make that next step or three in your career, we asked some of the leading Vet Nurses and Technicians around the world who have achieved personal, professional and financial success, to share their advice on accelerating your career.
How To Write (and for candidates, read between the lines of) The Perfect Veterinary Job Ad
Given the generally recognised shortage of Veterinarians, Veterinary Technician and Vet Nurses, particularly in regional areas, attracting, retaining and developing your team has never been more important. Whilst focusing on retention and development is essential, when it comes time to recruit your next team member, as an Owner, Partner or Practice Manager, today you have to pitch yourself and your practice to potential candidates. An effective job ad, or Job Campaign as we prefer to describe it, is not just a job description and a list of equipment. Today it must be a carefully crafted message aimed at reaching, attracting and engaging the best qualified candidates for your job.
Networking is the Best Medicine – 5 Ways to Boost Your Career Through Your Contacts
If the term “networking” makes you think of people in suits, all wearing “Hi, My Name Is…” labels, scanning the room for influential people to talk to, as you stand awkwardly in the corner, you are not alone. However, modern networking is actually not a painful process, and it can have significant impact on your career prospects. Here are five easy ways you can boost your veterinary career without the awkwardness of name labels!
8 Essential Tips for Travelling Relief Veterinarians
Based on our research with over 850 relief or locum veterinarians around the world, these are the three primary reasons why veterinarians are choosing relief or locum work as their preferred way to earn a living and provide genuine work-life balance…of course, there are more but essentially they want to choose when and where they work, they are looking to keep on their professional toes through experiencing different hospitals and clinics and they want the power to decide when they work, when they play and when they can take some downtime to recharge.
How Social Media is Now a Veterinary Career Booster
Today it’s not just about a paper or e-resume. Employers have the opportunity to gain a richer, deeper, three-dimensional view of candidates via Social Media. And you have the chance to really stand out for that perfect job if you apply some street-smarts and a little Social Media magic. You need to market yourself across multiple media platforms to attract the attention of the very best potential employers in this industry, and to secure that dream Veterinary career opportunity. So, having made the big decision, it’s now time to start working on your Social Media Veterinary Career Strategy…
You Know It’s Time to Find a New Veterinary Job When…
You already know that working as a Veterinary Professional is one of the most rewarding jobs there is. Of course, we also know that at times it can be the most frustrating job, and mostly we just grin and bear the down times, recognizing that the highs are always more than the low moments. But when the days start to become a grind and outnumber the good times, it can be challenging to keep your spirits up. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, it is time to move on…
Dealing with Veterinary Compassion Fatigue
As a caregiver you are rewarded in your field in special ways. The ability to heal and help is virtuous and important. You dedicate your life to this work knowing that the magnitude of your efforts and the outcomes are genuinely rewarding at the most satisfying level. But you also know that it can come with great internal costs – vulnerability, occasional helplessness and that there will inevitably be a small number of failures, even if they are often out of your control. So, if you are finding that your days are not as sparkly as they once were, that kittens don’t make you smile quite as often or that a senior dog still vigorously wagging their tail doesn’t make you feel as warm inside as it once used to, you may well have Compassion Fatigue, the emotional and physical exhaustion that often leads to a diminished sense of satisfaction in both work and life generally.
Exploring these suggestions may help you return to being vigorously passionate about your profession…