You've heard of Halstead's first principles, no doubt. But these are, it turns out, incomplete. Here are some tough lessons—experienced, observed, or shared from the operating theatres of veterinary medicine - which ought to be included in the next edition of Fossum. Feel free to forward this to the editor. Make big flaps.  The little skinny things tend to go wrong. As a vet dentist, I was thinking of the oral cavity as I wrote this, but it’s a reasonable enough thing to say

F@%k! I could cry. It’s not so much the physical pain - that’s a one out of ten. It’s the emotional pain of seeing three years of near-daily work undone in a twist of gristle. But I better tell you what’s going on before I lose you completely. On Monday, with much frowning from my coach Mike Porteous , I attended my first track session of the year. Track, if you’ve not been near one since a sadistic teacher drove you around it in gym class, is where you go to run fast. And, i

While in a vet hospital, never, ever say, “Gosh, it’s quiet today.”  This may just be a casual observation uttered as bored small talk, but it’s also a grave sin. You are not just quietly mocking the veterinary gods—you are having a full-on rave in their bedroom on a Tuesday morning. Nothing is more certain to happen next than three heinous emergencies arriving simultaneously, five minutes after the early shift has left the building. Let the shitshow commence. You have no one

We often talk about the enormous costs of veterinary hiring mistakes in the Leaders community. A story from a practice owner recently highlighted just how much of an impact the wrong people can have. The trouble is you often don’t know about it until the problem has been removed. To learn more about veterinary hiring mistakes, read on. Veterinary Hiring Mistakes: A Practice Owners Story The practice owner hired a junior nurse about 12 months ago. The hire seemed nice and was

“I’m dead against it. Not going to go there, nope. No way! Why should I change? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Except it is  broken. Completely broken. And it needs to change. You won’t be shocked to hear I’m talking about the professional response of many to the rise of AI. Ironic, right? The same folks who say vet med sucks because it’s too busy, there aren’t enough people, young people suck, COVID dogs suck, and clients suck… are often the ones scoffing at what is clear

Practice number two will be your hardest challenge to date. The first one is relatively easy because the team is small, and you are a constant presence in it. The second location will change both of those factors. New location. New sub-culture. More people. New people. You are not one of them if you stay in your first vet hospital. You are less of them if you decide to split yourself in two. Or you leave your firstborn to fend for itself if you decide to take the start-up cha

Being in charge is great… until things start to go wrong. And things can go very wrong in a veterinary practice. Whether it’s unruly clients, cases going awry, or ‘challenging’ employees, when things go south, the responsibility falls on managers and owners to get the ship back in shape. In this article, we break down the nine most common vet practice management problems, helping you approach them like a management pro. The Top Veterinary Management Problems & How to Fix The