Jo Blogs

Have you been blindsided by the motherhood or menopause confidence dip?

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 15:35:48 GMT

Please know it's normal but doesn't have to be permanent.

�� Reclaiming Your Sense of Self in the Motherhood or Menopause Years

If you're reading this, you’ve likely felt it: that unsettling sense that the competent, self-assured woman you were before children or menopause has been replaced by someone less certain, more anxious, and less capable.

Motherhood, while it can bring immense joy, is also a relentless rollercoaster that systemically erodes a woman’s confidence and sense of self-efficacy.

Losing confidence during our childbearing and menopause years isn't a personal failure; it's an inevitable consequence of navigating profound hormonal, physical, and societal challenges. I'll discuss some of these hurdles below.

The Assault on Self-Trust: When Your Experience Is Dismissed

One foundational challenge to a woman’s confidence often begins where she needs security the most: in healthcare settings.

Not Being Taken Seriously: Many women report not being taken seriously in pregnancy or birth, having their instincts and pain dismissed as 'normal' or 'over-anxious.' This experience of being invalidated by professionals is a powerful form of gaslighting that chips away at your ability to trust your own judgment and body. Many women also experience dismissal of their pain or reproductive system symptoms when dealing with conditions such as endometriosis or when navigating peri-menopause and menopause. we should not underestimate the impacts this resistance can have on our confidence.

The Weight of Trauma: Experiencing birth trauma , whether physical or emotional, can leave a mother feeling fundamentally unsafe, defeated, and disconnected from her own strengths. It's difficult to feel capable when you’re recovering from an experience that felt overwhelming and uncontrollable. Post traumatic stress around birth is rarely acknowledged or discussed. This can lead to a real feeling of isolation when societal expectations are that mothers should be feeling elated and excited following the birth of their child. Post natal depression is also a real risk and can have devastating short term and long term effects on self-esteem.

The Silence of Loss: The devastation of pregnancy loss, stillbirth or infertility often come with deep, private feelings of failure that your body 'let you down.' This disenfranchised grief leaves a corrosive scar, severely impacting self-worth and confidence in future life choices. Research backs this up and has specifically demonstrated that experiencing stillbirth or child death negatively impacts maternal self-esteem , highlighting the profound psychological consequence of reproductive loss (Wonch Hill et al., 2017).

The Specific Demands of Complex Motherhood

For Mothers whose children are born with medical conditions or additional needs , the confidence landscape is uniquely strained.

The role immediately shifts from nurturing parent to chief medical coordinator, tireless advocate, and system navigator. This relentless commitment demands incredible strength but leads to constant exhaustion. Mothers often feel perpetually under-qualified for the complex medical decisions they face, yet utterly indispensable. Their self-worth becomes heavily linked to their child’s progress, making setbacks feel like personal failures and significantly diminishing confidence in their own judgment and capabilities.

Isolation, Comparison, and Economic Insecurity

The daily environment of early motherhood is structured to deplete our confidence.

The Isolation Vacuum: Being home alone or isolated deprives the mother of intellectual stimulation and external validation. When your daily tasks, feeding, cleaning, settling, offer no professional recognition, your brain struggles to register competence.

Toxic Comparison: The urge to compare yourself to other Mums is potent. We measure our messy, unseen reality against the carefully curated public image of others, concluding that we are failing. This constant, unfair comparison undermines self-belief. Intriguingly, longitudinal studies have shown that becoming a Mother triggers a consistent decline in self-esteem that lasts for at least three years post-birth, suggesting this dip you feel is a normal yet unwelcome event (Bleidorn et al., 2017).

Loss of Earnings and Self-Worth: Stepping away from the workforce leads to loss of earnings and professional self-worth . In the UK, where value is often tied to professional output, the unpaid work of motherhood is profoundly undervalued. This can create a confidence chasm and anxiety about regaining professional relevance.

The Hormonal Rollercoaster

We must acknowledge the dramatic, confidence-altering biological shifts that underpin a woman’s journey.

From the often-overlooked mood impacts of birth control to the dramatic surges and crashes of pregnancy and postpartum, hormonal changes dictate emotional resilience. Later, the cognitive fog and anxiety associated with perimenopause and menopause can make a previously accomplished woman feel suddenly uncertain and incapable. These are not mere inconveniences, they are biological realities that must be factored into the confidence equation.

The Professional Pivot: Anxiety and the Return to Work

The return to work is rarely seamless. It is often accompanied by an immense wave of guilt or anxiety .

Mothers feel guilt over leaving their children and acute anxiety over their own competence. You walk back into the clinic feeling like an imposter, convinced that 'baby brain' has permanently eroded your professional skills. This Imposter Syndrome leads to self-doubt, reluctance to take on new challenges, and a constant habit of downplaying your abilities. All of which reinforce the very confidence loss you fear. This phenomenon is well-documented, with research highlighting that maternal postpartum work resumption stress often manifests through strong emotions like guilt and difficulties finding work-life balance (Manukure et al., forthcoming).

The Path to Reclaiming Your Confidence

Here is the fundamental truth: The loss of confidence is almost inevitable, but it doesn't need to be permanent.

The confident 'you' from the past had a different brain chemistry, sleep pattern, and experiences. Reclaiming confidence is not about regressing to who you were before it's about forging a resilient, powerful new identity based on your current reality.

Acknowledge and Validate: Accept that your experiences, trauma, loss, isolation, guilt, were real, and their impact on your confidence is justified.
Translate Your New Skills: Stop viewing your time out as a deficit. Motherhood forces mastery of crisis management, high-stakes negotiation, resource allocation, and sustained resilience. These are elite leadership competencies start naming them as such. Menopause can be an opportunity to optimise your health and self-care. Being forced to take care of yourself in a way you didn't before.
Invest in CPD: Actively investing in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) that will teach you the essential skills needed to navigate your confidence dip is the single most effective antidote to this crisis. Learning how to deal with your unhelpful thoughts, how to navigate your difficult emotions and how to harness your unique strengths can alter your path and propel you forwards into a new chapter.
Prioritise the Physical: Address the physical factors. Seek support for hormonal issues (including menopausal symptoms) and prioritise the basics of sleep, nutrition, and movement. You cannot operate at peak confidence without a solid physical foundation.

Your journey through motherhood or menopause has not diminished you; it has redefined your strength. It is time to stop measuring your worth by your past achievements and start recognising the enormous capabilities you possess right now.

References

Bleidorn, W., Zheriff, P., van Scheppingen, N., Allemand, M., Knoop, J., Arslan, R. C., ... & Back, M. D. (2017). The effect of motherhood on women's self-esteem: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .
Manukure, J., Tiemensma, L., & Spies, L. (Forthcoming). Returning to work after maternity leave: a longitudinal study exploring changes in postpartum work resumption stress and its determinants. The International Journal of Human Resource Management .
Wonch Hill, P., Cacciatore, J., Shreffler, K. M., & Pritchard, K. M. (2017). The loss of self: The effect of miscarriage, stillbirth, and child loss on maternal self-esteem. Death Studies , 41(2), 110-117.

Sarah's Story: From Surgical Dread to Confident Vet

contentedvets@gmail.com (Louise Littler) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:07:48 GMT

Hey I'm Sarah, I wanted to share my story of surgical anxiety to empower others

"It feels like a lifetime ago, yet some days it's like yesterday. I graduated from vet school 15 years ago, full of big dreams. But then, real life hit me hard.

My confidence in surgery, well, let's just say it was non-existent. I remember one case especially – a routine thing that just went completely wrong. A patient died on my table because I messed up. That moment just crushed me. From then on, a kind of constant dread settled in. Every time I had to go into theatre, my heart would pound, my hands would get sweaty, and this tight knot would form in my stomach.

The sheer worry of what might walk through the door, what tricky case might need my unsteady hands, it was a daily weight. I tried to avoid surgery whenever I could, and when I couldn't, the stress was just unbearable, like a heavy blanket suffocating me.

Then came the beautiful mess of having kids. Four years out of work, two amazing little people, and a whole new way of looking at life. Even though I was busy at home, that gap in my career, that feeling of not being good enough, it was still there like a cloud when I thought about returning to work.

I was offered a leadership role at a new practice, which was a great opportunity. But those old worries still whispered in my ear. How could I really lead, really guide, when I still felt so unsure of myself, especially when it came to operations? That constant nagging feeling really wore me down.

It was my friend, bless her heart, who noticed I was struggling. She suggested the confidence courses from Access CPD. I was a bit doubtful, to be honest, but what did I have to lose? From the very first moment I started, it was like a light just clicked on. The way they taught things, the practical tips, and knowing there were other vets feeling the same way – it genuinely changed everything for me. That heavy blanket of anxiety started to lift, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

The relief was enormous, followed by this rush of joy and a huge lightness as that old worry finally let go. My confidence didn't just grow; it absolutely exploded. I started to see my career, and even my life outside of work, with a totally new perspective.

I'm not just enjoying being a vet again; I'm actually thriving in my leadership role and even getting back into surgery with a fresh sense of purpose. And because of this new confidence, Outside of work, I've even had the confidence to go out and find new friends.

It's wild how one simple decision can completely change your path. I honestly wish I'd had this confidence all along. New grad me with this confidence would have been happier I'm sure.

I truly believe that if you're a new graduate and feeling like I did, a surgical confidence course could save you so much of that fear. And for parents like me, coming back to work after a break, a confidence course focused on return-to-work is seriously worth it. It’s not just about learning skills; it’s about understanding that it's completely normal to feel anxious, that you are not alone. It's about finding that belief in yourself again, that hope and optimism for a fresh start in your vet career.

I hope my story can help others to feel less alone, less scared, less doubtful and maybe give them a glimmer of hope that they can be the confident vet or nurse they long to be. That they can have a second chapter to their career that is more enjoyable and less of an anxiety rollercoaster, grind of a job. It only took me 15 years but I rediscovered my love for vetting. I hope others can too!"

Many thanks to Sarah for sharing her confidence Journey. If you have completed an ACCess CPD course and want to share your story please contact us hello@accesscpd.com

Alternatively if you want mor information on our surgical, graduate, return to work or general confidence course please take a look around our website: www.accesscpd.com

* Names and images may have been changed for anonymity

Graduate surgical anxiety. Is it normal to be scared?

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:52:25 GMT

For recent graduates surgery can be a scary thing.

I'll let you into a secret, surgery can be scary for more experienced vets too!

After all, you are cutting into the flesh of a living breathing creature, no wonder it can be terrifying. How many humans on the planet have to do that on a daily basis?

Anxiety before and during surgery is normal. It serves to heighten your senses, to put you on high alert, to remind you to take due care.

But it's all too easy for any small thing that goes wrong or is perceived to go wrong to make this natural level of anxiety grow into something big and consuming. A paralysing entity that causes you to feel nauseous and afraid.

Your mind starts to overthink: “Oh well, that happened last time” Or “I did that wrong last time” it will surely happen again. Our subconscious mind is primed to remember mistakes, the things we did less than perfectly, to keep us safe.

Even if something didn't actually happen, or there was a bleed and you dealt with it, your subconscious mind will still say “It's going to bleed, it’s going to bleed.” because when we imagine or witness things going wrong our sub-conscious mind believes that is what really happened and that it will definitely happen again!

Each of these little fears or mistakes add up.

That stitch that you didn't get quite straight or the mild post-op infection. The seroma, the time it took you to find that cat uterus. Your subconscious mind logs them all, and replays them, making you feel more and more like a failure or a 'bad' vet.

Vets tend to ignore the fact that many routine veterinary procedures have complication rates of up to ten per cent, regardless of the surgeon, regardless of their experience. They often fail to recognise that the majority of peri-operative complications are not solely due to surgical error. Many are due to poor patient management by owners or complicating factors such as co-morbidities, clotting issues etc. You can't blame yourself for every less than perfect outcome!

Unfortunately, it is the small fraction of surgical procedures that are less than 'perfect' that vets remember most. Most fail to remember or celebrate the 90-98 out of 100 that had a great outcome.

It's no wonder surgical anxiety can be a downward spiral.

Having a simple awareness of your mind's natural negative bias. Being aware of the complication rates of each surgery and communicating them to the owners. Seeking help and learning from mistakes rather than beating yourself up or entering into a blame game and a spiral of negative self-talk are the key to preventing a totally normal level of anxiety from spiralling into a paralysing fear of the op room.

I know that I make that sound simple. In reality these aren't skills aren't routinely taught. So, if you are a recent graduate who recognises they are developing a growing fear of surgery please reach out and ask for help by sending us an email . Or take a look at our surgical confidence course .

Next week in The Veterinary Confidence Club we will be discussing mistakes. How they happen and what we can do when they inevitably do, so come and join us to learn more.

Do you avoid certain surgeries or cases?

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 13:58:41 GMT

Avoidance. We all do it, but what is the real cost?

Have you ever avoided doing something but then felt worse afterwards?

Maybe you've made yourself busy when the bloated Great Dane call came in? Perhaps you've popped to the loo when reception were looking for someone to take a phone call with a difficult client?

Given the fact that veterinary is such a challenging profession, it's understandable that we would try our best to make our daily lives in practice that little bit easier.

The simplest and fastest way to make things 'easier', to avoid discomfort, anxiety, fear and pain of practice life is avoidance.

The instinct to avoid pain is primal, much like pulling our hands away from a hot flame. Avoidance is hardwired.

But in veterinary practice and indeed life, all too often it is this instinct to avoid short term pain that leads to missed opportunities, and in the longer term, even more pain.

Sounds a bit abstract so lets take some examples...

The girl with social anxiety who avoids parties to avoid discomfort and rejection, who is left quietly suffering from loneliness and immersed in the dreaded feeling of rejection that she sought to avoid. "I won't go to the party because people might not like me" becomes "I'm at home alone because nobody likes me".

The vet who seeks to avoid the temporary crippling anxiety of surgery by avoiding 'big' ops and is left feeling inadequate, dishonest and less experienced than they feel they should be. The "I might make a mistake" becomes, "I hate surgery, I'm a rubbish surgeon or vet. Who am I to do this job anyway?"

The nurse who feels a rising sense of panic during anaesthetics ever since they lost a rabbit under GA. The nurse then seeks to avoid monitoring any rabbit anaesthetics. They then worry daily, "what if I'm made to do one, I haven't monitored a rabbit GA in years!"

Can you see how these fears start small, but in time they grow?

The avoidance of discomfort and pain causes more even more suffering and anxiety than the situation we first sought to avoid.

This is exactly how many downward confidence spirals appear and are maintained.

Discomfort ➡️ Avoidance ➡️ Temporary Relief ➡️ Anxiety ➡️ suffering ➡️ long term consequences.

The need for self-preservation is totally primal, totally understandable, but hard to get out of without expert help.

Helping folks out of this confidence spiral is what we do at ACCess CPD.

The ACC in ACCess CPD stands for Acceptance and commitment coaching. This form of coaching is based on a proven therapeutic framework which has over 1000 randomised control trials proving it's effectiveness in decreasing anxiety, depression, performance anxiety (and more) and increasing a sense of self-worth, confidence, job satisfaction, job retention (and more).

We use it because it works. Indeed, ACC was carefully chosen as a foundation for our work with those in veterinary practice because of its simple effectiveness and its suitability to the fast moving, high pressure environment those in all walks of veterinary practice experience. From farm to equine, smallies, exotics and referral the expectation to perform is real and the stakes are often high.

Of course, what we do at ACCess CPD isn't just follow a framework. We use our qualifications in coaching, leadership and therapy and add them to our years of experience and inside knowledge of the unique pressures of the veterinary industry, to specifically help vets and nurses at key points in their careers.

Our CPD courses...

➡️Graduate confidence Online- New grads (5th year students- to 2 years)

➡️Return to work Confidence Online- (post parental leave, chronic illness or mental health crisis)

➡️Leadership Confidence Online- (Vets, nurses, managers in leadership roles)

➡️Surgical Confidence Online (New grads - 30+ years qualified)

➡️General Veterinary Confidence Online (All vets and nurses with generalised anxieties and low confidence)

All of our courses make excellent CPD (10-14hrs per course), they are self-paced with no in-person or zoom call requirement and can be accessed on all devices from iphones to desktops with an internet connection.

At ACCess CPD we believe CPD should stand for continuing PERSONAL development as well as professional. After all what good is our knowledge and skills if we don't have the confidence to use them?

If you would like to know more about how we can help you stop your downward confidence spiral, decrease your anxiety, stop the avoidance and start being the confident professional you want to be please take a look around our website.

The help is there and the great news is for those based in the UK and AUS our courses count as CPD (CE approval still pending for US), plus our receipts contain no mention of confidence as we know employer support can vary.

With 99% of course attendees stating they would recommend us to a friend and a money back guarantee, you can be assured that we are here to help.

If you have any questions please email hello@accesscpd.com

Lets make 2023 the year you became the confident veterinary professional you long to be.

Louise & Jo

What is confidence?

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 11:20:30 GMT

What is confidence anyway?

What is confidence?

Confidence, for me, is that absolute sense of knowing, a sense of sureness. That complete certainty in your own abilities, your own thoughts, your own beliefs.

That feeling that you know what you’re doing, that trust that you will know what to say or do in any given situation.

We can’t always predict all outcomes but confidence is knowing that we’ve done the right thing for ourselves regardless of the outcome, and that we are capable of dealing with whatever comes up along the way to that outcome.

All we can do is manage what’s in front of us in any given moment and, in the veterinary world, that is particularly powerful because animals can be unpredictable, colleagues can be unpredictable, workplaces can be unpredictable.

Of course, it might be that you feel supremely confident in one type of situation and not at all confident in another. So having that sense of knowing, of sureness and self belief that you can cope whatever comes your way is vitally important.

But the thing I love most about confidence is that it is not directly correlated to knowledge or ability. There are vets out there who have done all the qualifications, been practicing for twenty years and are still struggling with confidence.

There is a gap between knowing something and feeling ABLE to do something. Lots of people know lots of stuff but they don’t all feel confident about doing it.

I think it’s a common misconception that people make, as human beings we tend to equate knowledge & ability with confidence and they are not the same thing at all. There are plenty of people out there who have the knowledge and ability but zero confidence in themselves. And there are plenty of people who are literally winging it every day and have the confidence to do that.

So, from this edition of Jo Blogs we would really love you to take that new piece of knowledge away with you. Your level of confidence does not denote your ability. You can be completely able but simply not believe that you are.

And that's the confidence piece. That's the difference.

In our next post we will be talking about avoidance and the downward confidence spiral. If you have ever avoided a case, procedure or surgery, this one is for you!

Should experienced vets feel more confident?

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 10:05:27 GMT

You've been a vet or nurse for a while surely you should feel confident?

It would seem logical that confidence grows over time, but in fact, you can be experienced and still not feel confident.

Indeed, for some more experience equals greater expectation and lower confidence levels. After all you've done x procedure several times, have been qualified x years, or have a certificate in x so you should feel 100% comfortable and confident right? But each of these things create another level of expectation, heaping added pressure onto your already burdened shoulders.

It's almost universally accepted that confidence comes with experience, and it can do, but in the veterinary world you can be told “Do 10 bitch spays and you’ll feel more confident. The more you do the more confident you’ll feel.” And that’s not always the case.

Just doing something more frequently doesn’t necessarily make you more confident.

If you’ve struggled with a bitch spay previously and then someone puts another and another and another in front of you then it can actually make things worse. You might think about a mistake you made in a previous one and that mistake follows you into every subsequent spay, which can often mean we are moving further and further away from confidence and more and more into anxiety. That downward spiral of thoughts and emotions can easily usher anxiety in.

And anxiety has a really important job to do. Believe it or not, anxiety’s job is to warn you that you are in some kind of danger. Your thoughts have convinced you that you are in some kind of danger and your subconscious mind takes those thoughts at their word and produces anxious feelings in order to get you to pay attention, in order to keep you safe.

As human beings we have a thought, just one thought can start the whole spiral, we take hold of that thought and we wander off down a path into the imagined future with that thought. More thoughts join that one and more and more, as we give them more of our attention those thoughts multiply. And that imagined path into the future gets darker and more doom laden.

There are about a billion possible outcomes from that thought but we pick the one that is the most catastrophic and convince ourselves that will be what happens.

It's almost inevitable that anxiety is going to come along, because now we’ve convinced ourselves we are in some kind of danger, your subconscious mind doesn’t realise you are imagining it all, it just thinks whatever you are focusing on right now is your reality right now.

But here’s the thing, anxiety is a necessary emotion. It should only be an emergency emotion but it goes into overdrive because of our thinking.

So at ACCess CPD we don’t teach people to get rid of anxiety completely, you actually need it for your survival, we simply help you to not experience it all day every day because that is unnecessary.

We teach you how to work with your natural anxiety, what to do with those what if thoughts and how to process difficult emotions so you can start growing your confidence so that it matches your level of experience.

To find out more about how we can help your confidence grow take a look here

Do you doubt your leadership abilities?

contentedvets@gmail.com (Louise Littler) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 13:45:47 GMT

A friend of mine was recently promoted into a managerial role.

While he is delighted to have received the recognition of his hard work that comes with a promotion he is also worried that he is not cut out to be a manager.

If any of you met him you would instantly know he would be the most fantastic leader. Not only does he lead by example but he genuinely cares about the people around him.

The only thing missing from the magic formula was confidence. The only person who wasn't convinced by his ability was him!

Initially he let the self-doubt take over, to the point that it was almost all consuming. He thought about rejecting the offer of promotion and just staying in his old role. He knew this would have been a decision he would quickly regret, so he started to research what makes a great manager.

He came across this quote by Alexander den Heijer- “When I talk to managers, I get the feeling that they are important. When I talk to leaders, I get the feeling that I am important.” He then took a deep dive into articles explaining the differences between managers and leaders. This was a light bulb moment for him.

He realised he already had so much of what makes a good leader. He just didn’t ever want to be a manager.

This article by Simplilearn defines the role of management as “ to control a group or group of individuals in order to achieve a specified objective”. It was the idea of controlling his team that made my friend feel so uncomfortable. He believes that a flexible, positive environment is the way to make people happy at work.

When people are happy at work they work better and stay with the company for longer. The definition of leadership aligned much more with what he wanted to be- “Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the organisation's success”.

So, he went into his new job with one aim, to make his team feel important. And it is going great! The imposter syndrome and self-doubt haven’t disappeared completely quite yet but every day he believes just a little bit more that he can do this job well.

He told me it gets easier with practice. I think the best part of his new job is seeing his self-confidence grow as he gains experience and sees the difference he is making to his team’s confidence.

He already has other managers asking him for tips on getting a team motivated!

Being a good manager starts within oneself. It is much easier to have confidence in something if you know exactly what you believe in.

Once my friend figured out what kind of manager he wanted to be, he was better able to see himself as a leader. Taking the time to work out what being a leader meant to him, helped him realise he was already equipped with so many of the skills he needed.

All leaders have different styles and different traits and that is what makes a workplace engaging and fun. How boring would life be if we were all the same!

If you need help to figure out what you value, the type of leader you aspire to be and how to gain the confidence to step up and be that leader please take a look at our leadership confidence course or contact us

Mentoring- Be more than a tick box

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 12:18:52 GMT

Question. What do Mr Miyagi, Obi Wan Kenobi and Albus Dumbledore all have in common?

Give yourself 1 point if you answered that they are all characters from well-known films and books. But give yourself a 5-point bonus if you also identified them all as characters who acted as mentors to other characters in their respective stories (Daniel, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter, but I’m guessing you knew that already).

Thanks to the RCVS’s VetGDP initiative, ‘mentoring schemes’ are now right up there alongside ‘generous CPD allowance’ and ‘great work-life balance as staples of job ads for new grads up and down the land.

And so it should be, for access to a more senior colleague, prepared to spend focused time with you to share their experience with you, to encourage reflection and to help guide you on your way should be a tremendous benefit. But from some of the stories I have heard, the reality of practice mentoring schemes do not always live up to this ideal.

So let’s start with what a mentoring relationship shouldn’t look like. It shouldn’t be:

Tacked on to any performance/appraisal conversations or indistinguishable from them
An unplanned and rushed conversation in a public place whilst the kettle is boiling
Impossible to remember who your mentor is, let alone what you last discussed
Listening to someone who should have retired decades ago telling you how you should do things and bemoaning the fact that ‘things were better in my day’

If you recognise even a faint echo of any of the above, now may be the time to stop and reflect on the reality of the value that you and others may be getting out of your practice’s scheme.

A while back I created a list of guiding principles as part of training for would-be mentors to help them ensure that they are playing their part in establishing successful and productive relationships with their mentees. With a bit of contextual tweaking I think it also works as the basis for questions for vets, especially new grads, to judge the quality of any scheme being dangled in front of them by current or prospective practices.

Ten guiding principles for effective mentoring

A mentees interests and development are paramount and above all other considerations – including those of the mentor, or any wider organisational concerns.
It must be a relationship based on total trust and confidentiality between mentee and mentor.
Is there consideration of the physical environment. Do you have access to a space for sessions which encourages openness and honesty?
The focus and direction of mentoring sessions should be determined by the mentee and what is important to you at that moment; not what the mentor feels or believes you should be talking about.
Your mentor should encourage reflection through asking open questions; not lead through offering instruction.
Your mentor should focus on facts. Concentrating on the detail of what actually happened, rather than what the mentee thinks might have happened is often far more enlightening when reflecting on past events.
Your mentor should avoid making judgements, or bringing their own opinions or biases to bear.
Mistakes should always be viewed as a positive opportunity to develop and learn, never criticised or used as an opportunity to apportion blame.
Mentors should share their own experiences sparingly and always having first asked permission to do so. Remember: this is about you, not them! (see point 1).
Your mentor should give you their total attention during the session. They should show they are actively listening in everything they do and say.

To be honest, I’d be amazed if any scheme or mentoring relationship ticks every one of these, at least at the beginning – not least as they may be learning too. But if there appears to be little or nothing in common with the above, and no appetite for making it so, it is, perhaps, worth asking yourself whether what you are being offered is little more than an exercise in ensuring there is a tick in the right practice standards box.

Of course, mentors can also come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so don’t just let your experience of the value of mentoring be determined just by what’s on offer from your employer. Be prepared to look further afield if necessary. And if you are in any doubt as to their value in clinical life, take a few minutes to listen to surgeon Atul Gawande reflect on the value that a mentor (which he – in my view mistakenly – describes as a ‘coach’) added to his surgical practice.

So maybe now is the time to ask yourself who your Mr. Miyagi is and if you don’t have one in your life right now, where it is that you might find one.

Steve Bailey is the owner of Space Coaching Services, a company specialising in supporting individuals and teams - especially vet practices – to be the best that they can be through a range of coaching-inspired support services. To learn more, visit www.spacecoachingservices.co.uk

As a new grad vet I made a mistake. I am human. I am not alone.

contentedvets@gmail.com (Louise Littler) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 23:25:53 GMT

"Your cat spay died, you'd better phone the owner"

I was working in a busy mixed practice and had been qualified just a few months. With just one small animal op morning per week, I'd struggled to get into a groove.

I did not have a supportive boss, nor a mentor I could call on. I tried my best and had great support from a team of lovely, understanding nurses but I struggled each and every op morning.

The cat in question was one of two that had been brought in by an elderly lady to be spayed. I'd performed maybe 20 successful cat spays before and both cat spays that morning were unremarkable.

I tied my ligatures as I always had, but clearly, something went wrong.

One of the two cats struggled to recover post-op and whilst I was out TB testing some cattle later that day had become progressively pale and a colleague had been forced to re-opened the abdomen.

I wasn't told exactly which ligatures had slipped (and as I was so deep in my shame I never asked) but the cat, unfortunately, passed away later that day.

My boss called me into the office on my return and opened with "your cat spay died" followed by, "you better phone the owner".

I picked up the phone and called the 96-year-old owner expecting tears, outrage, and anger.

Her response?

"Oh don't worry dear, these things happen. Are you ok?"

To which there were silent tears my end.

This is where the moral of the story would come in. Except there is no moral.

If I had to find some learning from this incident, some wisdom to pass on, I'd say mistakes happen, surgery has risks, we are human, and almost every vet will have suffered a similar loss, a case they felt they didn't do "right", a decision that lead to a poor outcome.

All we can do is learn. Adapt. Grow.

What I should have done after I put that phone down was be compassionate with myself. I should have sought help to learn how to manage my unhelpful thoughts and difficult emotions.

I could have reviewed my ligature technique and asked colleagues about suture material choice (I'm old ish, and my bosses were even older so it was giant catgut all the way back in the day). I could have reviewed my anatomy, my landmarks and the size and position of my incision.

I did none of these things.

Instead for the next few months, I avoided cat spays, in fact, I avoided most cat surgeries and I picked up every dog surgery I could (strangely, even the spays ).

I got back to doing cat spays eventually and moved to a more supportive practice.

15 years later I wrote the CPD course I wish I'd had after that mistake.

Surgical confidence online.

If you are struggling after the loss of a patient or have that one case that keeps mentally coming back to haunt you when you think of surgery, reach out, send me an email , or consider joining The Veterinary Confidence Club

Surgery doesn't have to be scary and the scars of your past mistakes can heal with the right help and support

Louise x

Hit breaking point? Can therapy help you survive in veterinary practice?

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:56:42 GMT

Can coaching and therapy really help?

My dad passed away, very suddenly, of a stress-induced heart attack at the age of 50.

He was, quite literally, here one day and gone the next.

No warning, just gone.

I was 25.

It hit me hard. It turned my entire world upside down. It sent me to therapy, for the first time.

Before then I would have said that therapy was a load of bunkum, something that people did who didn’t have the strength to cope with whatever life threw at them. I would have said if you needed therapy then you were weak.

That therapy changed my life all over again. It didn’t put my world back up the right way, it changed it completely. And I will be eternally grateful for that.

My dad was a lovely person, he was kind and caring, he was fun, he enjoyed life.

He was also a vet. A job which he loved but which stressed him out into the bargain. He had other stresses in his life, of course he did, I’m not saying for a moment that the job was solely responsible for the stress hormones that coursed through his body but it definitely played a part.

His death set me on a course that eventually led me to doing the work I do these days.

Therapy taught me how to understand, accept and release my own stress.

It taught me how to understand, accept, move through and release the anxiety that I had lived with for most of my life.

Learning simple strategies helped me to cope on a daily basis.

Understanding how I had become stressed and anxious helped me to release them.

Learning about how my mind worked produced lightbulbs aplenty.

Understanding that I had learnt to respond and react in certain ways allowed me to learn new ways.

Benefitting from therapy led me to the decision to become a therapist myself, so that I could help other people to help themselves. I guess I am at least partly fuelled by the wish that my lovely dad could have received the same kind of help and understanding.

There is no need, in my opinion, for any of us to experience severe stress and anxiety. There are so many simple ways that we can start to change our responses and our thinking, to change our habits and ways of reacting, so that we can lower the amount of stress and anxiety that we experience on a daily basis.

So what are some of those ways?

My top 3 tips are:

1. Breathe….

Your breath is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal. It has the power to calm your nervous system and release. There is much to be said for taking a moment to breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose and then breathe out slowly and deeply through your nose or mouth. Give it a try now, close your eyes while you do it, if you can and it is safe to do so. Feels good huh?

2. Ask yourself this question:

Will any of this matter in 5 years time?

Sounds like a simple question doesn’t it? Ask it and give a true answer. Invariably the answer to that question will be “no”. Why? Because you have no idea where you will be or what you will be doing in 5 years time. And here’s the thing, if it won’t matter in 5 years time then I promise it doesn’t matter now either. It feels like it does but it really doesn’t. If the answer is no then I will refer you to tip 1, a nice slow, long, deep breath in and out will help you release the stress or frustration that you are experiencing in this moment.

3. Appreciation.

Start practicing appreciation, as often as you can, as many times a day as you can fit it in. Begin by taking a long around your world and making a list of all the things in it that you appreciate, even if that’s only 2 things. Make that list and read it numerous times a day, remind yourself of it on a regular basis, add to it as new things pop into your head. Feed yourself with appreciation.

I hope you find those tips useful.

I hope you will make the commitment to yourself to start looking after your mental and emotional wellbeing on a daily basis. It doesn’t need to take you long but it will undoubtedly pay dividends.

To your very long and prolonged good health.

Jo xx