Veterinary professionals tend to have a mindset that says 'we are intelligent and therefore must always succeed.'

Setting up a practice environment for well-being

In the second management lecture at BSAVA Congress, Anne-Marie Svendsen-Aylott talked about setting up a practice environment for well-being.

Opening the lecture, Anne-Marie looked at the state of the veterinary profession and gave delegates the following facts:

• One in four people in the general population experienced mental health problems within the last year
  

• Vets are three to four times more likely to commit suicide than the people in the general population
  
  
• Almost 40 per cent of veterinary students have had thoughts of suicide
  
  
• The RCVS State of the Profession Survey showed that 9.3 per cent of vets were thinking of leaving their jobs as were 15 per cent of veterinary nurses.
  

Veterinary professionals tend to have a mindset that says 'we are intelligent and therefore must always succeed.' This means that when things do not go so well, and this is common in everyday work-in-practice in terms of terminal illness and euthanasia, the vet considers that that have failed and that they are not good enough. This mindset seriously affects mental health and well being.

Anne -Marie talked about what practices and practice managers could do to help overcome this mindset among staff and described the three key values that practices should develop for this support system.

The three values that practices need to help retain and keep happy employees are:

1. Trust - this is safety, job security, consistency and listening to staff
2. Warmth - this is engagement,taking time for people, setting examples and displaying good emotional intelligence
3. Strength - this is competence, providing an atmosphere of learning, standing up for the team, asking for feedback and good management

Providing these values will create an environment of better well being for staff but it is also important that with everything the manager does with regard to staff they should change the emphasis from outcome to journey. Showing their staff that it's not so much about who a person is - i.e. 'I have failed' but more about how 'I can change perceptions 'so that the bad can be seen not so much as failure, but as something that will inevitably happen in practice.

It is important to recognise the warning signs of depression such as, change of behaviour, sleep problems, lack of energy, expressions of hopelessness and poor diet or weight loss of gain. If you recognise any of these warning signs act today and not tomorrow.