Elevate Your Leadership: Empowering Teams, Challenging Expectations, Impact of Caring for Ill Patients, Increasing Retention

How Leaders Can Create Confident, Empowered Teams

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Wendy Hauser, DVM is the founder of Peak Veterinary Consulting and has practiced for 30+ years as an associate, practice owner and relief veterinarian. She has worked in the animal health industry as a pet health insurance executive and as a technical services veterinarian.  Dr. Hauser, passionate about education and innovation, consults with both industry partners and individual veterinary hospitals, in addition to writing and speaking.

Session Description: The pandemic and its aftermath have changed the landscape of the workplace forever, for employees and well as for clients. Humans are emotional creatures, and fear driven responses have led to shorter tempers and more outbursts in the workplace. These behaviors often clash with hospital leaders’ expectations of professional demeanor and threaten cohesiveness critical for effective team functioning and patient care. Leadership styles must adapt to help both their teams and veterinary hospitals thrive. Leaders need to expand their skill sets to create favorable practice conditions, where employees are empowered, and leaders successfully manage themselves by understanding how their actions (or lack of actions) impacts their followers. This session will equip hospital leadership with tools that catalyze positive changes, creating stronger, more vibrant workplaces.

Challenging Expectations: Skill Analysis and Development

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Danielle is an esteemed veterinary professional excelling in oncology and education. She has been a licensed veterinary technician for over 10 years and obtained her VTS in oncology in 2018. As the Director of Clinical Services Education at MedVet, Danielle shapes the future of veterinary technicians, overseeing learning initiatives and training programs. She is the current Director-at-Large for Oncology in AIMVT and lectures nationally on various topics, including chemotherapy, well-being, training, and leadership.

Session Description: How do we know this veterinary technician has the skills they say they do? How can I tell who on my team has what skills? What do I do if they don’t? Skill analysis has long been on the fly in veterinary medicine and is often not actually performed. New hires are quickly shown what is expected of them and left to figure it out or constantly ask questions of their new teammates. We must do skill analysis to set them up for success and assist with assimilation into the team and environment. This does not only apply to new hires. How often do you hear that a particular technician cannot train because they don’t do something the right way? Creating the structure takes time and effort, but don’t let that be the reason not to start. There are ten steps to building a program that goes beyond training and dives into the individual competencies: define the skill, identify the steps and components, gather resources, observe or review performance, evaluate competency, provide feedback, develop an improvement plan, implement practice and training, reassess competency, and record keeping. In this lecture, we will dive into each of those and come out able to build up the skills and confidence of our teams.

What the Impact is on Veterinary Teams Caring for Seriously Ill Patients

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: After graduating from the University of Glasgow Dr Robertson undertook specialized training in anesthesia and pain management. She is board certified in anesthesia and in animal welfare by the respective American and European Colleges and holds a certificate in small animal acupuncture. She is also a certified Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine Palliative and End-of-Life practitioner. She is the senior medical director of Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice, a large network of veterinarians dedicated to end-of-life care. Dr Robertson is also a courtesy Professor in the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

Session Description: Compassion stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout are frequently discussed in veterinary medicine. These terms are different and should not be used interchangeably. All have a negative impact on our professions' wellness, however another factor to consider is moral distress. Ethics are rules of conduct determined by a group and morals are individualistic and are consistently consistent. Moral stress is thought to be linked to compassion fatigue. Moral stress can be defined as “when a person is aware of what ethical principles are at stake, but external factors prevent them from doing what they think is morally the right thing.” It is important to understand that not everyone on the veterinary team makes decisions about a pet’s treatment. Veterinary technician, nursing staff and support services may have a conflicting view with the primary clinician. These team members may spend a lot more time with the animal and develop deep bonds yet feel that the treatment plan is futile, and that false hope has been given to the owner. In human medicine one survey reported that 80% of critical care nurses felt powerless and voiceless resulting in them leaving their positions. In contrast the pet owner may be demanding every possible treatment against the clinician’s advice and recent studies show that most veterinarians have been asked to provide futile care and have provided it. Open lines of communication, empowerment of all staff and team meetings to discuss these issues is vital to everyone’s mental health and maintaining a sustainable work environment.

Keeping the Good Ones: A Framework for Increasing Retention

Recording Duration: 50 minutes
Interactive Course Duration: Approximately 75-90 minutes

Speaker Intro: Maura Stevenson joined MedVet as Chief Human Resources Officer in 2017. Maura oversees all aspects of the Employee Experience, including talent management, compensation and benefits, leadership and employee development, and organizational development. Prior to joining MedVet, Maura served as Vice President of Talent Management at The Wendy’s Company, Vice President of Human Resources at Starbucks, and held positions of increasing complexity with Merrill Lynch and The Hartford. 

She holds a BA from Amherst College and an MA/PhD from The Ohio State University in organizational psychology. Maura also serves as an affiliated research scientist at USC Marshall School's Center for Effective Organizations and is on the board of Ablelight, a healthcare organization serving individuals with disabilities. 

Session Description: We know it's harder to find and to keep the team members we need to provide great care in our hospitals. How to we ensure we're doing everything we can as practice and people leaders to retrain our best team members? This interactive session focuses on the three key reasons caregivers leave and provides practical, actionable steps you can take immediately to ensure you keep talent team members with your organization. You'll learn how to keep caregivers feeling connected, feeling appreciated, and knowing they are growing in their careers.