{ UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY VETERINARY MEDICINE }
PASSION FOR THE PROFESSION
D
r. Pam Nichols’ goals for her informal lunchtime talk to veterinary medicine students at Utah State this fall were clear: Share passion for veterinary medicine and do it “before the world poisons you into believing that vet medicine is terrible, it’s too hard, and that it's going to suck you dry.” Dr. Pam—her preferred title—is the immediate past president of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), chair of the Utah Veterinary Licensing Board, and the founder and CEO of Animal Care Daybreak in South Jordan, Utah, the fifth private practice she has launched since the start of her medical career in 1996. Some takeaways from her talk.
Why vet med?
“I went into veterinary medicine to change lives and do amazing things every day. To change clients’ lives, pets’ lives. To make a difference.” “If in five years, you call me and tell me that work exhausts you, I’ll say, ‘Wait, wait. Tell me about your patients. Who did you fix today? Whose life did you change today?’ Every single patient, every single day, every single client that you interact with, you have the ability to change lives.”
On private practice
“Who has heard terrible things about owning a private practice? Here’s what people won’t tell you: You can own a practice and still achieve a great work-life balance. In fact, practice owners report higher happiness levels than associates in the most recent studies!” At the first AAHA conference she attend-
ed, a speaker’s philosophy stuck with her: “Someday there will only be what you have in your head and what you have in your heart, and that is what you’re selling to a client, a patient, an employer. Your knowledge is valuable.”
Creating magic
“Nothing magical happens when you do what is expected. You can be compassionate, intelligent, quick to the diagnosis, quick to win over an angry dog, or quick to connect with a client, but that's not magic. That’s being really good at your job. What makes magic? Doing a little extra. Doing something unexpected… It takes some time to create magic but it’s not hard. I built my practices by doing the unexpected—like calling to check in on a pet over a weekend. I teach my associates to take a list of post op patients or sick ones to call on their way home. It’s not a huge imposition to my associates but to clients it means the world. Just acknowledging that a procedure may have been scary for them is magic. And the next day, they tell 20 of their friends that you called to ask how their dog was doing.”
No compassion without passion
“It’s not that hard to keep stoking your passion for patients. Pouring your heart and soul into being great vets will help you develop resilience. Being passionate won’t detract from your work-life balance, it will feed it. You’ve heard the term ‘compassion fatigue,’ right? Okay, can we just have a pinky promise swear that we're never going to use that term again? Compassion does not have to be
exhausting. Yes, there are important things like clinical depression and that is different. But I want us talking about passion and how passion fuels our compassion.”
Office culture is not a motivational poster
“Lest you believe that you are victims of whatever practice culture you walk into, I need you to know that culture is one very simple thing: It is a set of BEHAVIORS that we agree to adhere to. It's not about motivational posters on the walls. It is simply knowing what behaviors we will accept and what we won’t. If you don’t like the "culture" of a practice, change your (and their) behaviors. Set expectations, rather than boundaries and I think your life will go much better.”
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By: Lynnette Harris
2022 Winter
15
