Saturday night we had (at the same time) a blocked bladder 2y old Dalmatian, a blocked bladder 1y old cat and a 10m old cat with high suspicion of intussusception.
On top of that we had several critical patients, some transfers from other busy clinics that hadn't even had time to send us the history so we were basically blind as towards what they were coming to us for.
With only me and one nurse on for the next 13 hours of the night, we had to make some tough decisions. And this is what I want to try to get across here: A lot in veterinary medicine consists of decisions that are hard to make.
But just like with euthanasias, just because a decision is HARD, it doesn't mean we're doing anything WRONG. And I think our brain and nervous system often confuse these two concepts.
Euthanising a 15y old labrador that is the emotional support dog for an neurodiverse young person who has just lost their parent is HARD. But it's still the RIGHT thing to do. The awful feeling that comes up when we see the owners suffer, doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong as vets, it's just our empathy and compassion showing up, pushing us to help this person feel better in some way.
So when I stand with 3 distressed animals that all are going to urgently need procedures under full sedation/GA, I have to make a decision that's going to be HARD, because I risk the other two animal's lives by prioritising one. It doesn't mean it's WRONG; I have no other choice than to choose(especially in this case where none of them were insured and there weren't funds to refer them to a speciality hospital, and the other OOH hospitals like ours were also overrun).
Spoiler alert: We managed to get them all done quick enough that the 3 of them made it (just so I don't add to your anxiety if you've already got enough of it 😂).
This is acceptance. Accepting that this is hard, and I might not make choices that will save everyone, but we'll do our best and that is good enough. If I had started spinning in "this is not fair" and "I don't know which one to start with, what if I choose wrong", and put that extra pressure on myself, I would have frozen and been unable to move quickly.
Imposter syndrome and perfectionism are not only detrimental to our mental and emotional welfare as vets, grinding away at our self worth, confidence, trust in ourselves and joy for the profession, they also stop us from doing our job in the best way possible for the animals in our care.
I want you to understand that it is not selfish and a sign of weakness, of "not being able to cope", or "being too sensitive" to look around for support to overcoming these patterns that come so naturally to us as high achieving vets.
Actively working on your metacognition (your ability to be aware of your thought processes and patterns) is EVERYTHING in order to be able to work to your full capacity and fulfilment in the veterinary profession. When you have poor metacognition, situations like the one described above will throw you out of your comfort zone into the zone of terror and you won't be able to find your way back because you'll be caught inside your own brain spin and what if's and how can you ever do this.