How Finding Meaning Improves Wellbeing | Episode 9 | Reviving Vet Med

Recent veterinary wellness studies have tended to focus on the negative aspects of veterinary work, with little mention of the positive components. 

Eudaimonic wellbeing is having fulfilling work that contributes to the greater good and can promote career satisfaction among veterinary professionals. 

During this episode, I review the research around job characteristics that contribute to eudaimonia (meaning) including actualizing self, helping others (animals or people), and a sense of belonging (to team or profession). Practical strategies for nurturing meaningful work are also shared. 

Video Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9DoGPS11Gw&list=PLSg17Xf-rT1-e4zMj5UhYf_ecmYdqO4k7&index=9

Resources
Finding the Balance: Uncovering Resilience in the Veterinary Literature: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28206... Merck (AVMA) Veterinary 

Wellbeing Study: https://www.merck-animal-health-usa.c...

Meaning of work and personal protective factors among palliative care professionals: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30841...

Meaningful work and well-being: a study of the positive side of veterinary work: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31563...

Veterinary technicians and occupational burnout: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/...

Recommended Reading: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Online Programs

To learn more about our 4- and 8-week online programs approved for CE credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE, please visit:
https://revivingvetmed.com/programs/

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med. Today's episode is called Finding Meaning in Veterinary Medicine. And in today's episode, we get into the topic of meaning and how that supports well-being. So specifically, we will go through some human psychology models of well-being and discuss meaning in a little bit more detail in terms of how it contributes to well-being.

I will also review some literature from human healthcare professionals, specifically palliative care providers, and how meaning helps buffer stress in the work that they do. And then I will also review some research out of the University of Calgary looking at how meaning improves well-being amongst veterinarians. And then of course I always like to round out these episodes with some practical tools, so I will be sharing at the end five strategies for cultivating a sense of meaning to help boost well-being in the work that you do as a veterinary care provider. So, before we get started, please note that this video was recorded live, so the audio may contain some background noise and some distraction. And as well, if you do prefer to watch the video of this recording, you are welcome to do so on my YouTube channel.

You can find my YouTube channel by visiting marieholowaychuk.com/youtube. And if you do go there, please subscribe. With that said, I'm really excited to get into today's information with you, so let's go ahead and get into the episode. This is the Reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk.

My mission is to improve the mental health and well-being of veterinary professionals around the world. So, let's go ahead and get started into this topic for today. So, you know, for anybody who keeps their tab on, keeps tabs on what is happening in the news, in the realm of veterinary medicine, you'll notice that there's been a lot of headlines, recently. These are just headlines pulled from the last month or so, related to the suicide rate in our profession, related to the shortage of veterinarians in practice, and a lot of talk as well recently regarding, clients and how we're treated. So, lots of negativity and, you know, it's really caused me to sort of take a step back and look at the content that I'm offering and what I'm talking about and what's out there to see, you know, can we really take a more positive spin on things?

What is it, you know, are we focusing on the negative or is this just really, you know, our perception? Of course, we all have a negativity bias, so we're all we all have a tendency towards thinking about the negative. That's been a survival mechanism that's allowed us to survive. But what's out there in the realm of veterinary medicine and in general? So, you know, you might be interested to know that study analyzing work related studies, just general studies looking at work related factors, had a negative to positive ratio of the content of 15 to one.

So just in general, out there in the literature, when we talk about work related studies, there's a much bigger tendency towards focusing on the negative. So, it's not just veterinary medicine, but in the veterinary literature, there was actually a study published in 2017 in the journal of veterinary medical education that looked at, the, the literature pertaining to wellness amongst veterinary professionals and veterinary students. And what they found is that problem oriented mental health or mental illness terms, such as stress, suicide, or depression, were twice as common in the literature to show up in their search compared to well-being-oriented terms such as resilience or well-being. So there definitely is a bias towards those negative articles as well in the literature. And it's not that we don't need the information on suicide and mental illness and so on, but we also want to and mental illness and so on, but we also want to balance that, you know, with the positive.

So, you know, it's really led me to sort of consider a couple of questions. You know, first of all, are we demonizing that medicine? You know, what sort of, portrayal are we putting out there for, prospective students and veterinarians and technicians and others who might be wanting to join the industry? And the other thing to consider is this focus on the negative and, you know, mental illness and struggle, is this perpetuating a cycle of burnout and mental health problems? You know, if we're bombarded with this information that, you know, the work is hard, suicide rates are high, psychological distress is high, etcetera.

Are we going to be then tending more towards those problems? So, it's interesting when you think of the psychology of it, and these are important things to consider, especially for those of us who are doing research and who are writing a lot about this area to really be mindful about what we're putting out there and, what we might be promoting. So, you might also, in light of all of this, be really surprised to know that veterinarians and physicians actually experience similar levels of work life satisfaction. So, when veterinarians and physicians in The United States have been surveyed previously, most recently in the AVMA well-being survey to look at their work life satisfaction, veterinarians actually have good work life satisfaction especially in the context of other hardworking medical professionals. But despite that, it is interesting, you know, to see then that we have this tendency towards burnout.

And I I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I mean, I don't want to talk about the negatives. But despite veterinarians and physicians having, similar work life satisfaction, veterinarians do have a higher, tendency towards burnout compared to physicians. So that is interesting. The reason I put this graphic up here is to show that when we look at well-being amongst veterinarians in The United States, this is again is out of the Merck veterinary well-being study back in 2020, we're actually doing pretty well.

So, we look at this and, yes, among the younger, demographics, there is a higher tendency towards, those who are suffering with their well-being or those who are just getting by. The orange is the flourishing. And so, there are fewer numbers, fewer percentage of veterinarians in the younger demographic who are flourishing. But when we look at and of course, that's compared to the total, the average. But as we go up in age, there is actually quite a significant number of veterinarians who are flourishing.

And even if we take the age out of it, when we look in general, based on the 2019 survey, fifty six percent of veterinarians say that they are flourishing when it comes to their well-being. And that means that they are living a life that is everything that they had envisioned or that they had dreamed of. So, you know, this this is good news. This is this is really, really important news. So, you might say to yourself, well, I don't know who these veterinarians are that are thriving, but they're not me.

And, yes, indeed, there are different, demographics that are more likely to be thriving. And that goes for men, that goes for food animal practitioners, for practice owners. Again, for those older demographics, so those 45 years of age and older who are practicing vet medicine, and then those who are married or in a relationship. And I've we can get into the weeds of, you know, the whys and the how’s of what might be leading to these differences in demographics in terms of thriving. I've talked about this before.

I've talked about some of these, you know, gender differences and other differences in my blogs. So, I'm gonna leave that for another day, but I do want you to recognize, and I want us not to forget that there are a lot of veterinarians who are actually doing very well, in terms of work life satisfaction and well-being. So, this really, you know, this topic really got me to think about and to explore this these ideas of well-being. And what does it mean to thrive? And what does well-being look like?

And, you know, I came across this term recently, which was new to me. It might be new to some of you, but it was this idea of eudaimonia. So eudaimonia is well-being experienced when living a life that is deeply satisfying or full of purpose. So, this sounds amazing. I mean, even just the word eudaimonia sounds amazing.

It's like, I want that. I wanna experience that. And so how do we experience that? How do we live that life that is deeply satisfying and full of purpose? Well, there's different models for this if we look in the realm of psychology.

One of the models that that sort of describes the different factors that contribute to this eudaimonic, state of well-being. This is the PERMA model. And so, PERMA is an acronym that stands for positive emotions. So typically, we think of happiness, pride, joy, pleasure. Interestingly, there aren't a lot of studies looking at these emotions among veterinarians.

There's actually very few studies really out there, only some very recent ones looking at, you know, how do we derive pleasure in the field of medicine. So, we definitely need more research in terms of positive emotions. E stands for engagement. So, this is this is being really engaged and enthralled by the work that we are doing, using our skills, learning new things, you know, deepening our, you know, capacity as veterinary professionals. R stands for relationships.

And in the context of veterinary professionals, this would be relationships with our clients, relationships with the animals, relationships with the people we work with. And then meaning is the m. This is that sense of purpose. Why am I doing this work that I'm doing? Why have I chosen this profession?

Why do I love this profession? Why have I chosen to stay in this profession? And then a is for accomplishments, meaning, you know, we have a successful surgery, we save a patient, you know, we talk a client through a really difficult situation, that would be a sense of accomplishment. So, for the purposes of this presentation, I'm going to focus on meaning. And when I first started really thinking about meaning, it probably came about when I read the book by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

Now if you have not read this book, I highly recommend it. It is a tremendous book. Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who, was, one of the people who was captured and was in the concentration camps during the Nazi regime. And he was one of the few individuals, of course, who lived and survived through the concentration camps. And he observed a lot when he was in the concentration camps.

And the first part of the book talks about that. It talks about his experience. It talks about what he went through. It's not the focus of the book, so I don't want that to dissuade you from reading it if that sort of content is very triggering or upsetting for you. He writes about it quite beautifully actually.

It is, you know, obviously very distressing, but what comes to his realization as he is in these concentration camps and he sees some people dying and some people continuing to live, is that those who had a sense of purpose, those who were living to see their family another day or living to get back to the work that they were doing before they entered the concentration camps, those were the individuals who tended to live. And so, a quote by Viktor Frankl is that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. And, you know, the second half of the book or it’s more like two thirds of the book, he really focuses on the psychology around this. Like, what does this mean when we have this search for meaning? You know, he really dissects what was his sense of purpose when he was in the concentration camps and what allowed him to continue to thrive.

So, let's talk about meaningful work then in the context of health care professionals, in human health care. So really, this is defined as recognizing the importance of work changes. Pardon me. So, what they say in in this recent study that came out is that recognizing the importance of work really changes how stressful situations are interpreted. So, what they've noticed when they've looked at meaning among healthcare professionals is that exposure to pay patient distress results in less stress in healthcare professionals who find greater meaning in those events.

So, for example, you know, yes, these patients are suffering, but my role is to alleviate the suffering and so I that's my purpose in this situation and I'm going to help this person through this difficult situation or help this family, you know, through this situation or whatever it might be. So, recognizing the importance of the work changes how we respond in these stressful situations or how we interpret the events of these stressful situations. So, there's also been some research looking at meaningful work among human palliative care professionals. And what they found is that meaningful work directly contributes to life satisfaction, but it also indirectly contributes to life satisfaction by enhancing personal growth. So meaningful work not only, allows us to really, you know, grow and change and develop, in the work sense, which then contributes to our life satisfaction, but it also directly contributes to life satisfaction.

What they've also found in this research looking at meaningful work among palliative care professionals is that meaningful work has a buffering effect on stress and its impact on life satisfaction. So, the more that we experience this meaningful work, when we are in stressful situations, they don't tend to impact our life satisfaction as greatly, which is a wonderful place for all of us to be. So, I pulled a quote from this paper that I thought really summed it up perfectly. And it says, those who experience work with a high degree of commitment and meaning despite high levels of stress tend to see their professional activity not as a burden but as a challenge. So, it's not like, oh, you know, great.

Now I'm having to deal with yet another patient or oh, this person is so hard to deal with. But it's like, okay. You know what? This is a challenge. I'm able to overcome it, and this is part of the work that I do.

And the work that I do is really important, and so I'm gonna keep going with this. So really interesting, sort of mindset shift when we think about that and when we really cultivate that well-being. And I think, you know, I go back to this quote that I came across by Viktor Frankl where he says, life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose. So this was something that really came to fruition for him in the concentration camps, but in the context of everyday life and certainly the like life that we live as veterinary professionals, we have to remember that it's not the circumstances that that create, you know, the difficulty in the work that we do, but it's whether or not we find meaning and purpose within those circumstances. So recently there's been some work that has come out in the veterinary field with regards to meaning as well.

And so, Dr. Wallace is a professor here actually at the University of Calgary. And, she published a paper called meaningful work and well-being, a study of the positive side of veterinary work. And what she stroked to do in this paper was to look at the job characteristics that are associated with meaningful work and how they contribute directly or indirectly to well-being. And so, what she found is that helping animals, helping people, and a sense of belonging to the profession increase the sense of having meaningful work, which then increases well-being. She also found that actualizing self.

So, this was basically this work engagement piece. So, engaging in work that was interesting, variable, allowed us to learn new things, allowed us to use skills and abilities to do different things. That directly increased well-being, but also indirectly increased well-being because it increased the sense of meaningful work. So, lots of things that we do can contribute to that sense of the work being meaningful, which then either directly or indirectly enhances our well-being. Now in the course of her work looking at these job factors, there are some that reduce the sense of meaning in the work that we do.

So financial concerns, especially for those who are concerned about the clinic's success or the practice's success had reduced the meaning of the work. Again, probably because, you know, when I'm thinking about the finances and keeping my practice afloat, that's kind of detracting from, you know, finding meaning in the work that I'm doing. And then client interactions as well. So difficult communications with clients, clients having unrealistic expectations, or conflict between a client's interests and what was in the best interest of the animal, all reduced meaningful work. And that in turn decreased well-being indirectly.

So again, I think we can all, you know, attest to this or identify with this where if we have a difficult shift where we are dealing with a really difficult client interaction, we sort of come away. We can come away from those days feeling like, ugh, you know what? Like, I don't know why I'm doing this. And so again, coming back to that, finding the why, finding the purpose, finding the meaning can really help buffer these situations and their impact on our well-being. So, I wanna leave you today, you know, as I do with every wellness Wednesday, which some strategies for you to take away, for the purposes of boosting your well-being.

And so today, we're going to be sharing five strategies to nurture meaningful work, thereby improving your well-being. So, the first strategy is to positively reframe the work that you do. So, think about the little things that you do every day and try and get a bigger picture in terms of the far-reaching implications that those things have for others or even society or even the planet. Right? So maybe you are a food animal veterinarian, and you can think about, you know what?

I am making sure that there is safe food on the tables of people, you know, across the country. You know, for those who are doing vaccinations, you know, you are giving a vaccine to a pet, but that's not all you're doing. You are actually, you know, keeping the public health. Keep keeping people safe in terms of rabies control, and so on and so forth. You know, for me as a criticalist, when I save a patient, I am, you know, fostering that human animal bond for that family which I know is, you know, linked to mental health and well-being for human beings.

So again, it's not just the little things that we're doing, there are very big implications for those if we really sit and think about that and remind ourselves of that. So, I think about a situation, you know, when I was in practice where I was, helping a service dog. And again, it was just a really big reminder that, wow, you know, for me to be saving the service dog who's gonna go back into service and is gonna help the lives of you know so many individuals with the work that this dog is doing. You know these are really incredible positions for us to be in and really just reminding us that the work that we do as veterinary professionals has very far-reaching implications. So, the second strategy is to adjust your work tasks.

So, I think one of the biggest things that's really impacting us right now from a well-being and meaningful work perspective is that we're spending so much time at our computer, you know, writing notes, writing records, doing things that are not directly helping a person or directly helping an animal. So if you can adjust your work schedule or your work, situation, your job description, you know, finding different ways of getting help so that you are not just sitting on the phone and writing notes and typing in the computer, but that you are actually boots on the ground, hands on the animals, talking to the clients, you know, face to face and so on. So, you know, I wanna give a shout out and a kudos to the veterinary emergency group, VEG, who I think is taking this to the next level. So, VEG is a is a group of veterinary emergency, small animal practices and they have scribes. They hire scribes to work alongside their emergency doctors and to write their medical records.

There's this great video on YouTube that basically explains what the scribes do. But these are individuals, they might be, you know, people trying to get into vet school or tech school, you know, trying to get more, experience in the veterinary industry or maybe this is a job that they want to have. And basically, they work alongside the vets, and they do all of the medical record keeping. And then of course, the vets can come through and look things over and make sure it's okay. But this really frees up time and energy and space for the veterinarians to focus on the work that is meaningful, which is the actual hands-on patient and client care.

Strategy number three is to cultivate meaningful relationships. So, relationships are a big part of, meaning and well-being in the work that we do. And again, this is where we try to work alongside or connect with people who inspire us, who, you know, help us to learn and to grow and to challenge us in wonderful ways. We want to align ourselves with them as often as possible. So, you know, even for me and the work that I do in the veterinary well-being space, I make sure that I connect with others who are doing similar work to the work that I'm doing, but they inspire me.

They're doing new things. Things. We talk about that. They urge me to try different things. We collaborate on things.

You know, I make time and space to have meetings with these individuals on a regular basis to say to stay inspired and to remind myself, this is why I do the work that I do. Is because of individuals like this and because I see a difference in the work that all of us are doing. Strategy number four is to acquire new skills and to use them. So, to consider what opportunities could you do to gain new skills, and can you make those a priority? So maybe you wanna do a certification, or maybe you want to get accredited in something, or, you know, there's so many different ways that we can advance our careers.

You can do endoscopy courses, ultrasound courses, TPLO courses. I mean, there's so many different things that we can do. Find something that really interests you. Maybe it's acupuncture, maybe it's physiotherapy, and then get dig into it. How do I make this happen?

You know, how do I get this done? And, you know, shout out to all the veterinary technicians who may be watching. You know, for you especially, there was a survey that was recently published, of more than 1,600 vet techs mostly in The US and Canada. And what they found hands down in reducing technician burnout was that techs need to have the opportunity to use their technical skills or to have opportunities for learning and growth. These both help to lower symptoms of burnout and helped to retain technicians in our industry.

So again, not just important for our, overall well-being and sense of meaning, but in reducing burn out, which inevitably keeps us in the profession for longer. And then strategy number five is to discern your love of vet medicine. So, you know, if you had to choose this profession over again, number one, I hope that you would. But if you're hesitating, could you find a reason why you would if you had to do it all over again? Why did you choose this profession in the first place?

Why do you wanna stay in this profession? Is it because, you know, you love, you know, fostering the bond that you see with families, you know, and their pets? Or if you're like me, you love working in a team. I mean, emergency and critical care for me was that I couldn't have chosen a better specialty because we are nothing without our team. You know, I work with multiple different technicians, animal care tenants.

I've got the front desk team helping me. I've got triage people helping me. If I'm fortunate enough to have residents and interns working with me, that's another bonus. You know, that's why I love the work that I do because working together as a team, you know, after years in my life of working in doing competitive team sports, this is just so ingrained in with me. It's just so much so very fulfilling and meaningful when we can come together, work together to save patients’ lives.

So, you know, that's my big why in veterinary medicine. So key takeaways from today's presentation, first and foremost, you know what? It's not all bad in vet medicine. Many veterinarians are thriving. Many of us who aren't thriving right now can thrive if we make some changes in our lives.

And so, let's focus on the positive. And we know among human health care professionals that meaningful work has a buffering effect on stress and improves life satisfaction. So, we know this to be true in other health-giving professions. And finding meaning in the work that we do as vet professionals also helps to directly cultivate well-being. So, thinking about reframing our work, adjusting our work tasks, cultivating meaningful relationships, acquiring and using new skills, and defining why you love veterinary medicine can all help foster a sense of well-being.

So those are my big key takeaways for you today. Well, that's it for this episode of Reviving Vet Med. I hope that you took away some practical strategies for cultivating a sense of meaning in the work that you do as a veterinary care provider. And even more importantly, I hope that you'll remember how meaning can have a beneficial effect on buffering stress and cultivating a sense of well-being in our lives. As always, I urge you to think about one thing that you're going to do right away after listening to this episode.

Maybe you are going to look into a CE opportunity or reach out to connect with someone who inspires you in this profession. And if you did enjoy today's episode, I urge you to take the time to subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating and review, or share the podcast with someone else who you think will benefit. We really appreciate it. If you're interested in the resources from today's episode, please check out the show notes. There's links to all of the studies that were discussed, episode, and most of all I'd like to thank you for listening.

I hope you'll tune in episode, and most of all, I'd like to thank you for listening. I hope you'll tune in again next time, and in the meantime, take care of yourself. Bye now.