Greetings and good wishes to all our WSVMA colleagues. Summer has arrived and over on the Palouse where I live and work at Washington State University, the DVM Class of 2021 has left campus and the new senior veterinary students are fully engaged in their clinical rotations. If late spring ran true to form, the weather would have moved from sunny days in the upper 70’s to 45 degrees and cloudy and back again, seemingly in the blink of an eye (but we all know what actually happened.) Spring weather on the Palouse has a mind of its own.
Meanwhile, closer to many of you on the west side of the state, your WSVMA board has been fully engaged in advancing the standing and needs of our beloved profession while coping with the endless march of change. Since my last message, Washington state has opened up considerably and masks along with curbside service at veterinary hospitals is becoming increasingly optional. Clients are finding their way back into our exam rooms from their cars and some are even enjoying the comfort of our reception areas. (See the new guide to reopening here) It feels as if we are returning to a form of practice, closer to our pre-pandemic style.
As we return to business, let’s take a moment to reflect on the merits of ‘business as usual’. We should carefully assess what we learned about meeting our clients’ needs and the default medical service paradigm of our practices. Perhaps there is an opportunity to leverage our most recent experiences and reshape our approach to ‘business as usual’ in our post-pandemic future. Consider that tele-triaging with systems such as Petriage, which many of us used during the pandemic to manage client inquiries after hours, may provide an enduring way of managing telephone traffic during the peak hours of our post-pandemic workday. Perhaps we will find that systems for telephone call management such as Weave or communication platforms such as Demandforce offer us alternative ways to capture missed calls or teletext key information to our client base. I have no doubt that going forward, many practices will be far more open to taking more drop-offs and working remotely with owners. Nearly all of us developed considerable skill with that approach during the COVID 19 experience. The immediate future promises to be an exciting time for our profession and for those of us who are excited at the prospect of leveraging our native curiosity, the emerging technologies and our commitment to lifelong learning in order to advance the practice of contemporary medicine.
Your association has also been evolving during these interesting times. As we have shared in previous messages, the WSVMA Board of Directors moved forward with and has now completed, the sale of our WSVMA office property. In the end, it seemed to be not only a very prudent decision but one that was incredibly well-timed. In a relatively short period of time, the business world has come to realize that many enterprises might not require a physical office from which to conduct business. Given that our WSVMA office team had distinguished themselves in working from their home offices while we weathered the pandemic, we had little reluctance in parting with our association’s office space. Furthermore, we were extremely pleased to have a buyer in hand who made a strong offer for our property which today and with the benefit of hindsight, may have passed its value peak. As they say, timing in life is everything!
Within our membership, the Responsible Pet Ownership Task force has been laboring to create recommendations and materials that may help interested members in their efforts to educate and promote appropriate care to new pet owners. We continue to observe, gather information and provide insights to the Veterinary Board of Governors regarding our position on limiting the direct and unsupervised access of licensed Doctors of Chiropractic Medicine to veterinary patients for the purpose of performing chiropractic therapies. We believe that animals and their owners are best served when veterinarians are part of those chiropractic interactions.
We are also following and providing input on an on-going effort to develop a veterinary technician apprenticeship program, an educational/training program that is developing outside the traditional structure and guidance of the AVMA accreditation process. Veterinary technicians are an essential part of any team-based approach to the evaluation and care of veterinary patients. AVMA certified educational opportunities currently exist for technician education across the state of Washington. We have concerns that the development of an apprentice program, developed by the Washington Workforce Council and managed by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries with a curriculum focused wholly on small animal medicine, might fall short in providing a broader education necessary for licensure and a fulfilling career in clinical medicine. I personally believe the key to hiring and retaining graduates of accredited veterinary technician programs will be our willingness to operate our veterinary practices as healthcare teams where empowered veterinary technicians, supported by well-developed and broadly adopted systems and protocols, can positively impact patient care and throughput, thereby generating more medical revenue dollars and earning a more attractive compensation package from their employers. My anecdotal experience from visits to hundreds of hospitals over the years leads me to believe that many if not most technicians are under-supported, under-utilized and under-paid…a perfect recipe for employee disengagement and potentially adverse medical consequences to patient, client and veterinary practice alike. I believe that more technicians are needed and are best introduced to the profession through well developed, AVMA accredited educational programs. If we then fail to utilize trained technicians in a way that allows us to leverage their education, energy and enthusiasm for the benefit of our patients, we will lose those technicians from our practice and perhaps, from the greater ranks of the profession.
The make-up of our board membership is also experiencing some change. Dr. Lindsey Hornickel, the most recent vice-president of the WSVMA, is leaving the WSVMA Board of Directors and the Pacific Northwest to undertake a one-year appointment as an Executive Branch Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This will be a career transition for Dr. Hornickel, who will be working with other scientists to foster and support, scientifically informed, evidence-based policy. Dr. Blair de Vries has generously consented to assume Dr. Hornickel’s officer responsibilities as our vice president and Dr. Sally Thompson-Iritani has been appointed to the board to serve in Dr. Hornickel’s now vacant board member position until the fall of 2021 when elections are scheduled to be held.
I will close my updates with another piece of wisdom from the writings of Dr. Stephen Covey. In my last message, I introduced you to the habit of Win-Win, the first of the three habits of interdependence from Stephen Covey’s book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Recall that the first three habits were focused on building ourselves as individuals and enhancing our self-efficacy. The second group of habits are focused on enhancing our ability to work well with those around us, namely our teammates, colleagues and clients, as well as our family and friends and neighbors. The habit for today is Dr. Covey’s fifth habit and one that you may have heard before: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
It is nearly impossible to work well with others if we are not intentional about the quality of our communication. While we need to be precise with regard to our words as well as our paraverbal and non-verbal cues, we must also above all other skills, be intentional and active in our listening. Dr. Covey has stated that he believes this fifth habit constitutes his most succinct and impactful advice for working well with others.
How often in our busy lives do we find ourselves in a conversation, thinking about our response to the person who is speaking? Instead of listening to that person with the intent of truly understanding the deeper meaning of what their message, many of us find ourselves formulating our response. I know that throughout my career, I have been very inconsistent in my use of the fifth habit to enrich my communication efforts. When I look back on some of my client interactions that have fallen short over the years, I can see that my failure to focus and empathize as an active listener has worked against me. We do ourselves, our colleagues and our professional enterprise a great favor when we listen with the intent of understanding every nuance of the message our colleagues or clients are willing to share with us. When we engage others with empathy, we understand more clearly, the situation as seen from the other person’s eyes. Using the skill of reflective listening, we can then summarize for the other party, our understanding of what they have told us, using different words to ensure both we have a clear understanding of their message and to also demonstrate that we are listening with care and focus.
If you have two minutes to invest in your understanding of the fifth habit, there’s a wonderful video of a couple communicating in which you can observe one of the participants listening without the intent of understanding. It’s a light-hearted video but it makes clear, the importance of engaging others with empathy and listening with the intent of truly understanding them. Point your browser to https://www.franklincovey.com/habit-5/, sit back and observe the pain of not listening with the intent of understanding the concerns of others. To be a truly great practitioner and one who is not only an effective healer (because of their listening skills) but valued and appreciated by their clients for their caring, we must first be focused, engaged, active listeners. If not, we can never hope to fully appreciate the client’s perspective, regarding their pet’s health, the medical history, nor connect with the client who may be upset or distressed and in need of our more holistic and emotional support.
Active listening…it’s incredibly important and completely within your abilities to engage. No one can do it for you. I hope you will make the choice to listen with the intent of understanding. If you do, everything about your personal relationships and your practice of medicine will improve. Until next time…
By Dr. Richard DeBowes, WSVMA President
Posted July 2, 2021