Coping with Stress as Veterinary Professionals | Episode 41 | Reviving Vet Med

Stress, an inherent part of the veterinary profession, and one of the leading concerns among surveyed veterinary teams, can manifest both as eustress, beneficial for personal growth, and distress, leading to chronic exhaustion and overwhelming emotions. Research shows that veterinary professionals who have healthy strategies for coping with stress, are much less likely to experience psychological distress, which can manifest as symptoms of depression or anxiety.  

In this episode, we differentiate eustress from distress, and share information from the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study III that uncovers the importance of having a healthy method for coping with stress. We unpack some of those methods, why they are beneficial, and offer strategies to help you incorporate those activities into your daily life.

Resources

Navigating the Stop Stressors in Veterinary Practice (Blog): https://revivingvetmed.com/navigating-the-top-stressors-in-veterinary-practice/ 

Executive Summary of the Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study III and Veterinary Support Staff Study (Journal Article): https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/260/12/javma.22.03.0134.xml  

Volunteering Fosters Mental Health and Wellbeing (Podcast): https://revivingvetmed.buzzsprout.com/2011463/10874177-volunteering-fosters-mental-health-and-wellbeing-episode-11-reviving-vet-med 

Newsletter

For more practical pointers and tangible tips related to veterinary mental health and wellbeing, subscribe to my e-newsletter: https://revivingvetmed.kartra.com/page/newsletter 

Online Programs

 To learn more about my 4- and 8-week online programs approved for CE credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE, including my popular program Building Better Boundaries, please visit: https://revivingvetmed.com/programs/.  

Questions or Suggestions 

Email podcast@revivingvetmed.com 

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med, in today’s episode, we will be discussing how to cope with stress as Veterinary Professionals. 

Specifically, how to cope in a healthy and productive way? We will touch on some of the research that has been done. Looking at psychological distress among veterinary teams and what strategies are linked with lower levels of distress and higher levels of wellbeing. Given the amount of stress we deal with in our daily work in veterinary medicine. 

This is the Reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. My mission is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of veterinary professionals around the world.

All right. So, Speaking of stress, I am feeling a little bit of stress recording this episode, as you can tell by the sound of my voice, I have a little bit of laryngitis. I went on a vacation, my first vacation in four years recently with my daughter, and we went on a cruise. And not surprisingly, as this was the beginning of October, when respiratory viruses. We're really starting to circulate. I got sick with COVID on the way home. And I had just recovered from COVID when I embarked on a couple of work trips, and I think the stress caught up with me and I ended up sick with another non COVID respiratory virus that has left me with the loss of voice and a bit of coughing, so I'm going to do.

My best to not cough in your ear and to keep my voice audible and clear and please forgive me if the sound of my voice is a little bit distracting for today's episode. I was so excited about getting back into the podcast, you know, it's been a few months since I recorded an episode. I took a lot of time off this summer to focus on writing for my book. For those of you who don't know, I'm writing a nonfiction narrative book on the veterinary profession and so that writing has been taking up a lot of my and I'm eager to share this information with you, because stress is such a pervasive issue within our profession. I think statistics show that 92% of veterinary professionals believe that stress is a huge concern, and it's important that we talk about it.

And that we don't just talk about stress, but we talk about how we can improve upon it or how we can cope with it. So by definition, stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances. So we have no shortage of demanding circumstances in veterinary medicine, but I think it's important to recognize that stress isn't always bad, nor does it always lead to psychological distress.

In fact, many people talk about youth stress, which is stress that can be beneficial because it encourages personal growth, or it motivates you to get things done. And I think many of us have put off tasks like studying for an exam or getting a medical record done until the very last minute. And that last minuteness is what really propels us through to the end. So while it might feel out of your comfort zone, for example, if you were doing a procedure that you'd never done before, or you had to have a difficult conversation with an owner you didn't know very well, this will lead you to prepare or it will cause you to learn something new. And then when you're done, if it's an incident of you stress. You feel accomplished, you feel good.

So, youth stress is typically short lived, whereas distress is often chronic, overwhelming or exhausting. So because most of the stressors we face in vet medicine are not going away anytime soon, we need to make sure that we're utilizing healthy coping strategies to mitigate our stress, because if we're not, we're going to be more prone to experiencing distress, which can culminate in symptoms of depression or anxiety. So there's no doubt that veterinary medicine is an inherently stressful profession. Stress levels of veterinarians have been shown to be higher than those of the general population in many different research studies, and there's lots of reasons for this. In my recent blog post navigating the top stressors in veterinary practice, which I'll link to in the show notes, I summarize the research. This suggests what the most stressful parts of our jobs are as veterinary professionals and just briefly, how we manage those on a day-to-day basis.

So, the reality is on a regular basis, we're dealing with sickness and death and often very distraught or financially strapped clients. Stress is always going to be associated with the work that we do in the veterinary profession. The important thing is, is that we have reliable and healthy ways to cope with it. So, I want to share with you some of the research that came out of the Merck Animal health veterinary well-being study that was conducted in 2021. And they found that among all members of the veterinary team having a healthy coping method was the strongest predictor of high wellbeing, low burnout and no serious psychological distress. And the numbers here will stay. Figuring so when they compared percentages of veterinarians with serious psychological distress to veterinarians without serious psychological distress, only 34% of veterinarians with serious distress said they had a healthy method for coping with stress compared to 81% of veterinarians who didn't have serious psychological distress.

So clearly, if you have a healthy method for coping with stress, you're going to be much less likely to experience serious psychological distress, which again, is those symptoms that are reflective of anxiety or depression. Respondents in the study without serious psychological distress were also much more likely to strongly agree that they had a healthy method for dealing with stress. So again, knowing that you have a way to cope with your stress on a regular basis and that that way is healthy. Is going to be make you much less. Only to experience serious psychological distress.

Now one of the other important things I want to highlight from this study is that there was a much smaller percentage of veterinary support team members compared to DENARIANS. That said, they had a healthy coping mechanism. So whether that's related to age, experience, finances or whatever it might be, we we certainly don't know based on this research. But it's important to note for all the veterinary technicians and nurses and assistants and client care team members who are listening that you really do need to emphasize making sure that you have a healthy coping strategy for dealing with stress.

So obviously healthy and coping mechanisms are going to differ by individual and everybody should have their own stress management plan. I've always said that what helps me to manage stress. Maybe stress inducing for somebody else. I use the example of yoga as a yoga teacher. I love practicing yoga. Yoga is a major stress reliever for me, but I've talked to individuals who say to me, you know nothing causes more stress than the thought of going to a yoga class in spandex and bending.

Myself into different positions in front of people who are going to be much more flexible than me, so I get it and that's where I encourage individuals to find something that works for you. Now, that said, it is important to recognize the difference between healthy versus unhealthy stress coping strategies. So healthy stress coping strategies are health promoting. They fill up your reserves, they support your resilience, meaning the more you do them. The more likely you're going to be to bounce back from stressful times. Unhealthy coping strategies are going to be depleting. They're going to drain your resilience overtime.

So I recognize that we all engage in unhealthy coping strategies every once in a while. This these are things like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix, having a big glass of wine, maybe going shopping and doing retail therapy. Every once in a while is OK, but when these strategies become habit, they take away from health, promoting coping strategies that are going to be more able to build your resistance over time.

Now if we go back to that murk, veterinary well-being study, they looked at specific activities amongst respondents that were associated with the biggest differences in percentages of individuals who felt distressed versus not distressed.

And some of those activities were spending time with family, exercising, hiking, walking or playing sports, reading for pleasure, spending time on a hobby, sleeping at least 8 hours a night, socializing with friends, traveling for pleasure, and volunteering.

So there was of course many other strategies that can certainly be related to stress management that were not mentioned or that did not have a large difference between distressed or non distressed respondents in the survey. And of course, the biggest ones that come to mind for me are yoga, meditation. Gratitude practices, healthy relationships and counseling or other mental health support. So I want to breakdown some of these and justice briefly give you some tips or tricks for how you can make sure that you incorporate these into your life. Now, I'm not saying you must do every single one, but I do think that you should have a handful of strategies that you practice on a daily or weekly basis. To help manage your stress and the first one is of course spending time with family. Now I'm not Going to lie? It is not always stress reducing to spend time with family. I can think of situations where spending time with my family has been stress inducing, not reducing. 

So of course, be mindful of the family that you spend time with. I'll use the example for me of spending time with my daughter. Yes, she's a toddler and she can be challenging sometimes, but overall, she reminds me of the importance of being in the moment and of having fun and in order for me to make sure that I have time to spend with my daughter, it's really important that I have healthy boundaries in my life, so making sure that I'm working while she's at daycare or when she's sleeping, and then that work time is not impinging on her family time, setting healthy boundaries also allows me when I'm spending time with her to show up as the best version of myself and not the stressed, exhausted version of myself.

Now one of the other things mentioned was exercise, which is a huge part of my daily life. I am one of those people that must exercise to manage my stress and to ensure that I remain healthy from a mental health perspective. So yes, stress is a great way to Help maintain our weight and maintain muscle mass and all of those sorts of things. But the research shows more than ever before that exercise is a major contributor to stress reduction and people often ask me, well, what's the best form of exercise? And that for me is very clear. It is the form of exercise that you enjoy doing.

Whatever activity you enjoy doing, whether it's walking, running, swimming, biking, you name it, that's what you want to do and if you are struggling to find time in your days to exercise, I urge you to begin by carving even just 10 or 15 minutes for that activity and starting with that and then building up from there, if you schedule it in your calendar, you're much more likely to do it. But it's absolutely, absolutely something that most of us can benefit from prioritizing. Uh next on their list was hiking, walking or playing sports. Now playing sports has obvious advantages, especially if it's team sports. It can feel like you're socializing with people and staying active, which I'm a big advocate for hiking or walking or activities that most of us do outside, and so we don't just have the benefit of moving our bodies, but we have the benefit of being out in nature and research shows that nature has a tremendous buffering impact on stress.

So once again, the best way that you can do this is to have accountability by going for a walk with a friend. If your friend is relying on you to go for a walk or go for a hike, you're much more likely to follow through and then of course scheduling this can be very important. There's definitely times in this summer where I will schedule weeks in advance to go for a hike. I must, of course, hope that the weather is going to be good enough for me to get outside. But if it's in my calendar and that time is protected, I'm much more likely to get it done.

Another thing that was found in the Merck survey was reading for pleasure. This is something that lots of us, lots of us, wish we had more time to do. And you know, there's so many nice things about reading, especially reading a physical book. It can feel that we are escaping, you know, out of our daily life. If it's a fiction book, we can feel like we're learning and growing. If it's a non-fiction book certainly reading for pleasure basically just means that we're reading something non veterinary related and a habit that has really helped me to make sure that I do this on a regular basis. Is to stack reading for pleasure with my bedtime routine, so it's part of my everyday bedtime routine to read even just a few pages out of a book before I go to bed.

Again, something I do every day is so much easier to do than something I do occasionally, so making it a daily habit, whether it's first thing when you get up, whether it's right before you go to bed, is going to make sure that you are more likely to do that on a regular basis. One of the other things that was mentioned in the Merck study as well was sleeping at least 8 hours per night.

Now I want to recognize that the average sleep that most individuals need to get enough rest to feel rested and alert during the day or during their night shifts is between 7:00 and 9:00 hours during the entire 24 period. So that means if you fall asleep on the couch Or you take a nap that's included within that 7 to 9 hour. For some people, you're going to be closer to 7 hours, maybe even 6. And for some people you're going to need 9 hours or even more.

So what I find to be the biggest deterrence from getting enough sleep are bed times. They get later and later and later. Whether people are working at night, whether people are watching shows at night and they're streaming from one show to the next, staying up late and then going right to bed is often a detractor. From getting enough sleep, my recommendations are to set a bedtime for your sleep, set an alarm on your phone that tells you when it's time to get ready for bed and give yourself about 30 minutes to wind down for bed. That time should not include screens. It can include reading a book. It can include stretching, brushing your teeth, doing your nighttime routine, tidying up whatever you need to do so that you can feel fully ready. And willing to go to sleep.

Another recommendation, of course, to prioritize for stress reduction is socializing with friends. So the research shows that if you know that you have friends that you can count on, that stress is buffered because when you are in challenging situations, you feel like I've got this because I've got people I can lean on. So it's so important that we socialize in person whenever possible, and if it's not possible to schedule weekly or regular visits with friends, make sure that you're staying connected with your friends via text messaging or even better voice messaging. One of the things I've started to do more often than text is to record Voice messages from my friend of course not. When my voice is sounding like this, but on a regular basis when I can record a message that gives a little bit of an update, says what I've been doing says how I've been feeling, shares what's on my mind. It just feels so much more connected and authentic.

Then firing off a text message. Another thing that was mentioned in this study is traveling for pleasure, and this had quite a large difference between those who do it and those who don't. In terms of distress and not distress and I think this really lends to the recommendation of making sure that you are scheduling your vacations ahead of time, make sure that you have trips or plans in your schedule that you can look forward. To there is something to be said about visiting a new place and immersing yourself in a new culture, not for work, not for business. They can really improve your mental health and we and wellbeing and provide that buffering effect to stress.

The last thing that was really shown to be a benefit in the Merck Animal Health study was volunteering. And there are lots of research studies looking at the benefits of volunteering on stress reduction and mental health. And I've recorded a podcast episode on this before, and I'll refer to that in the show notes. But there is no out that volunteering really helps people to feel like they are doing good. They are helping others. One of the biggest recommendations that people say when you're feeling stressed or anxious is to find a way to help someone else find a way to move forward. By focusing on someone or something that needs your help.

So there's obvious ways to do this in the veterinary space by volunteering, volunteering your skills, whether it's on committees, whether it's, you know, doing spay neuter clinics. There’re also ways to do this outside of the veterinary space, and I urge you not, of course, when you're feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and pulled in too many directions. But when you feel like you've got the time and space to do so, and something in particular is calling to you in terms of A cause to volunteer for, just know that there will be a lot of stress mitigating benefits when you're able to incorporate that into your schedule.

So ultimately, whether you cope with stress by going to a kickboxing class or taking Your dog for a walk with a friend. The important thing is that you make time to do this regularly, not just on your days off. Not just when you go on vacation and not just when you retire today, and ideally every single day.

So that's it for this episode of Reviving Vet Med. I hope that you have a better understanding now of psychological distress among Veterinary Professionals. And the ways in which we can cope in a healthy way. I urge you based on the strategies I shared to think about one thing you’re going to do right after listening to today’s episode to buffer your stress. Maybe that’s a strategy, you’re going to put in place for your own stress management or maybe you’re just going to share this episode with someone you think might benefit from this conversation. 

So, please take some time to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating or review. It really does help the podcast platforms to suggest this podcast to other people. If you are interested in the resources from today’s episode, please check out the show notes where we will include links to anything that is related and if you have any questions about today’s episode or suggestions for future topics, please email us at podcast@revivingvetmed.com. Thank you for listening I hope you’ll tune in next time. In the meantime, take care of yourself. Bye for now!