We’ve all experienced the highly skilled jerk before. You know who I’m talking about: the person who can place a catheter with their eyes closed but speaks down to everyone and micromanages or the vet who can do awesome procedures but the clients and team members hate their presence?
Likewise, we’ve all experienced the vet pro who is awesome with things like client communication and being a team player, but they aren’t really useful when it comes do getting the work done.
Therefore, the answer to the question of “which is more important?” is that they are both equally important and should both be focused on!
If you want to create an ideal experience for the clients, pets, and the hospital team, then it is essential that you provide training opportunities for your team members if you’re a hospital leader.
Get MotiVETed PowerNote: If you’re a hospital leader, click here for a free consulting session where we listen to any challenges your hospital may be having in the clinical or non-clinical realm. We’re here to support you!
If you’re not a hospital leader, then it is essential that you train yourself to be proficient at both.
In this brief article, we are going to discuss the importance of the non-clinical training that could help you and your team members immensely.
The Cold Hard Truth:
Lack of non-clinical skills (i.e. bedside manner, emotional intelligence, communication skills, resilience, positive psychology, etc.) creates negative impact for the following:
- Client
- Patient/Pet
- Co-workers
- Practice Managers
- Hospital Owners
- Hospital Bottom Line
- The Team Member Who Lacks the Non-Clinical Skill
Lacking the non-clinical skills just makes EVERYTHING worse! It makes good days not quite as good as they could be, and it makes the bad days WAY worse!
The most important on this list is very last bullet point. Allow me to explain.
“I’ve got the clinical skills and the passion, but vet med is stressing me out!”
I know so many veterinary professionals who have amazing skill sets who are also not enjoying veterinary medicine.
In essence, they are good at what they do:
- Working up cases
- Doing surgeries
- Knowing the right diagnostics and treatments
- Sample collection/processing
- Anesthesia monitoring
- Cleaning teeth
However, they are still stressed out, and they aren’t necessarily sure why they are stressed out. This leads to frustration and exacerbates the true problem.
The True Problem
The true problem for some veterinary professionals is that they completely lack non-clinical skills.
Get MotiVETed PowerNote: (Bless the soul of the veterinary professional who lacks both clinical and non-clinical skills! Their going to have a terrible time until they fix at least one and hopefully both.)
The true problem is that some veterinary pros with great clinical skills lack the following:
- How to treat their co-workers, their clients, nor themselves!
- The ability to bring out the best in their co-workers and to empower those around them.
- How to handle failure and mistakes!
- The ability to be mindful
- How to be resilient when it comes to non-favorable case outcomes!
- How to see the good in the apparent bad!
- The ability to focus on the many positive things they’ve done in a day and in their career as opposed to the few failures, mistakes, and traumas.
- The ability to not fear things that are unlikely to happen (losing license, social media bullying, causing more harm to pets than good, etc.).
- The skill of not being overly critical and judgmental of clients, co-workers, and themselves.
- How to set and maintain boundaries.
- How to develop and exude self-belief, self-confidence, and self-esteem.
Get MotiVETed PowerNote: Anyone can learn these non-clinical skills! It’s very fun, and it will INSTANTLY change the quality of a person’s life!
Think I’m making these up? Think again! If you’ve been in the veterinary field for any number of years, then you know that I just described the status quo culture for the veterinary profession.
This list could go on and on! And while no one needs to develop every little non-clinical skill, each acquired non-clinical skill makes the veterinary experience astronomically (or at least a little bit) better!
Get MotiVETed PowerNote: I discuss 3 of the most important non-clinical skills and strategies in an awesome article titled “The Major Key to Your Veterinary Wellbeing is YOU!”
If you’re a veterinary professional and you don’t feel that you can get a ‘gold star’ on the non-clinical skills that I just mentioned, then it’s my best guess that you’ve had your fair share of stressful, irritating, and unfulfilling days in the clinic. You CAN eliminate these types of days by developing the non-clinical skills. Trust me!
Get MotiVETed PowerNote: Having poor clinical skills and being amazing at the non-clinical skills will also land you in trouble and can create a veterinary experience that is harmful to yourself and those around you. I’ll write about what that looks like and what to do about it in a future article.
Where do I go to develop the non-clinical skills?
Here are a few of my favorite tools/places to go to become a rockstar at many of the non-clinical skills.
- Audible – this is Amazon’s audiobook store. There will be tons of audiobooks where you can learn about many of the non-clinical skills. Is there a particular thing you suck at or want to improve upon? If so, I’ve probably got a book recommendation for you. Email me: quincy.hawley@getmotiveted.com or schedule a time for us to discuss it at your convenience.
- YouTube – this is a free source of so many of the clinical AND non-clinical skills. If you already know what you need to work on, just type into the search bar!
- Get MotiVETed University – This is our veterinary-specific online school for training veterinary professionals to be rock stars in the non-clinical stuff. Everything is laid out for you in video, audio, and written formats. Everything is also veterinary-specific, so we discuss the non-clinical skills so that veterinary professionals will be able to relate. Click Here to Learn More!
- 1 Giant Mind – this is a phone app that teaches you how to meditate. Priceless. Mindfulness and meditation are free tools that you can use at any time that have been scientifically and anecdotally proven to reduce stress. Why not learn it????
In summary, we need to be ensuring that we are proficient with our clinical and non-clinical skills. Being a rockstar with both skill sets will surely help you to create a veterinary experience that is awesome for both you, your team, your clients, your patients, and for the hospital organization you are a part of!
