Supporting mental wellbeing in a busy veterinary practice

This month, we’ll all be reminded to check in on friends, family and colleagues for R U OK?Day. It’s a great initiative. But supporting wellbeing should happen throughout the year too, particularly in the veterinary industry.

We know this can be an exceptionally tough profession. While we can’t remove every source of stress, we can look for the ones that don’t need to be there.

At Cenvet, independent veterinary practices have been at the heart of our business for 65 years. The people who keep them running deserve just as much attention as the practices themselves.

Between demanding workloads, long and sometimes irregular hours, emotionally difficult cases, unexpected clinical outcomes, unrealistic client expectations and financial considerations for practice owners, veterinary work comes with its fair share of pressure. Any given day can bring a combination of clinical, personal and time demands.

It’s not always one particularly difficult day that causes problems either. Full appointment books, missed breaks, emergencies and difficult conversations can take their toll when they happen frequently or continue for long periods.

Some of those demands are just part of veterinary medicine and can’t be removed. But there are other things competing for your team’s attention that absolutely can be minimised. If inefficient processes are creating unnecessary administration, or staff regularly have to chase information, stock or answers to questions, that’s valuable time being lost when people are already stretched.

Sometimes processes can seem perfectly reasonable from a management perspective, yet create headaches for the person dealing with them every day. For example, a nurse might regularly have to check whether an item has been ordered, while the person responsible for purchasing spends half their time following up on backorders or answering stock questions from everyone else. There are all sorts of little frustrations that can somehow become accepted as normal.

The best way to get useful information on what’s working and what’s costing time and sanity is to ask specific questions. Where are you spending more time than you should? Which routine jobs cause the most frustration? What could be made easier?

Make sure you ask across the practice too. Vets, nurses, reception staff and practice managers experience the working day differently, so you’re likely to get very different answers depending on who you speak to.

Try not to dismiss anything just because it seems small, either. A five-minute annoyance might not seem particularly significant. But if it’s happening several times a week, involves more than one employee or repeatedly interrupts clinical work, it’s really not five minutes at all.

Once you’ve identified the recurring roadblocks, that’s when you can start planning solutions.

Maybe you can’t solve every problem, but you can take unnecessary work out of routine tasks. Regular ordering, for example, shouldn’t require employees to constantly enter the same information, search through old records or look in several places for basic details. Saved order templates, barcode scanning and central access to order information can make the process much more efficient.

The same goes for information. If someone needs to know whether an item is available, what happened with a previous order or when a delivery is due, they shouldn’t need to track down the person who placed the order or make another phone call. Those details should be readily available at all times.

Integration between purchasing and practice management software means less work around pricing, invoicing and stock reconciliation. Technology is most useful when it takes repetitive administration off someone’s plate, rather than giving them another system to manage.

You don’t have to work through every inefficiency internally, either. Your wholesaler may be able to help you review purchasing activity, stock planning, ordering and supplier options. At Cenvet, we developed Purchase Assist to support practices with exactly this kind of review.

There’s only so much you can improve from within the practice. The businesses you rely on can have an impact on how smoothly the working day runs, too.

Reliability from the outside affects what happens inside. If an order doesn’t arrive as expected, information is incorrect or there’s uncertainty around availability, someone in the clinic has to deal with it. That might mean checking the order, sourcing an alternative, changing plans or contacting the supplier.

That’s why we want our clients to feel like they have a team they can rely on. Each of them has a dedicated account representative, a single point of contact who gets to know the clinic and how the business operates. There’s no need to explain everything from the beginning each time assistance is needed, and our wider support team is there when an issue needs more attention.

We also know that uncertainty around stock can create pressure of its own. If a product is delayed or needs to be substituted, prompt communication and suitable alternatives mean your staff aren’t left wondering what’s happening.

Efficiency and wellbeing might not seem closely connected, but the way people work can affect how they feel at work. Giving staff more time and headspace for their patients, colleagues and themselves is something every veterinary practice can benefit from.

With more than 65 years supporting independent veterinary clinics across Australia, Cenvet is here to make sure your wholesale partner is part of the support around your practice. Our suite of solutions includes CenVet Pulse, Purchase Assist, CenSational Plus and Obay.

Contact us today and discover how Cenvet can offer your clinic.