Recently, we arranged a training day for the whole team about how to maintain resilience in the face of what, as you might imagine, can be a very emotionally demanding job.
The lovely Torphichen Inn hosted us for the workshop and kept us well fed and watered throughout the day. The session was set up and run by the brilliant Veterinary Defence Society Training team. This is how they describe the training:
“This workshop explores the influences, techniques and approaches that help individuals develop and sustain personal control and resilience at work. The emphasis is on coping with pressure, prevention of stress and individuals taking responsibility for themselves to approach challenge in a resilient, proactive and sustainable way.”
Mental health problems such as chronic stress and anxiety are high within the veterinary environment. It also sadly has the highest suicide rate of any profession. As a practice, we believe in looking after the mental health of the whole team, supporting each other and preventing problems before they arise.
The resilience day was a great success. Everyone really got stuck in, talking about ways we can build our personal resilience and ensure we are supporting our colleagues as they do the same. We all left at the end of the day with some very important tips to remember when it comes to looking after our mental health. One of the most important (which it is easy to forget on busy days) is that, to provide the best care for our patients, we also need to take care of ourselves!
As part of the workshop, we also had psychometric profiling to find out what kind of a communicator we are and how we tend to approach tasks and challenges. This gave us all insight into how we react to situations. Seeing how colleagues’ communication styles differed from our own was also invaluable; we learned how we can best relate to people of different styles and thus how we can work most efficiently together, as well as recognise if a colleague is struggling.
Here at Westport, we truly believe that looking after ourselves and encouraging open communication between colleagues both keeps us healthy and allows us to provide the highest standard of care to your beloved pets.