Healing from Burnout with IndeVets
Burned Out, Not Broken
A year ago, I was completely burned out from my job as a veterinarian. Not golden brown and delicious – more like that black char forever stuck to the bottom of the oven. I was unhappy, fatigued, and disengaged. I thought I’d made a grave mistake choosing veterinary medicine as my career. IndeVets changed all that.
The Burnout Cycle in Vet Med
As much as I love this new way of being a veterinarian with IndeVets, I know I’m not immune to repeating the burnout cycle. Veterinary medicine is hard, even at its best: it’s intellectual work interlaced with emotional labor and topped off with physical demands. Its very nature as a “calling” means we define our identity by this work, trying to live up to the impossible standard set by the legend of James Herriot.
We juggle our core values of compassion and caretaking with over-packed schedules, unrealistic client expectations, and often mediocre staff morale. We perform this magic act with limited resources—money, equipment, people, time—our hands repeatedly tied by circumstances outside our control. We lose beloved patients, even when we’ve done everything right. And I haven’t even touched on the ever-present imposter syndrome and fear of making mistakes. It’s a lot.
A Different Kind of Support
When IndeVets offered a burnout recovery course shortly after I joined the company, I jumped at the chance to be part of the inaugural cohort. IndeVets invites new employees to take the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a tool that measures workplace burnout across various dimensions, identifying drivers like workload, control, and fairness.
My scores confirmed my suspicion that what I had been feeling and experiencing before joining IndeVets was burnout. But after nine years in veterinary medicine (and finally starting to enjoy it again), I feared that finding the right place to work wouldn’t be enough. This class seemed more than worth a try.
What the Burnout Recovery Course Was (and Wasn’t)
The burnout recovery course is a 12-week, RACE-certified class facilitated by IndeVets’ own Veterinary Social Worker (and retired LVT), Dave Shuey. It’s a combination of weekly group discussions, reading/viewing material, journaling, and self-assessments.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I worried that the course content would espouse the toxic positivity typical of the self-help zeitgeist, but I decided that it was best to approach with an open mind.
Suffice it to say, the course was anything but typical. Yes, it addressed well-established mental health basics like sleep hygiene and eating habits, but there was no prescriptive “right way” to live. The self-paced course material was wide-ranging—from peer-reviewed articles to blog posts to YouTube academic lectures—offering background science and thought exploration.
Learning to Cope on My Terms
We delved into the physiology of chronic stress, learning how the brain physically changes in response to stress. We then explored a wide variety of approaches to self-care, giving us each a chance to find our own way—from emotional regulation to distress tolerance, from setting boundaries to accepting help—there were tools to help any personality and suit any situation.
The real “work” was a reflection journal: a collection of poignant and thought-provoking questions about the week’s material, a place to privately consider how the concepts affected me or how I might use a new stress-reduction tool in my daily life.
The Power of Shared Experience
As a person who always liked school, following a syllabus was a welcome task. But I quickly learned that all the wonderful course materials and dedicated reflection journal were not the heart of the course. These were just tools—useful bits of information, ways to contemplate my stresses and emotions, strategies to both accept and adjust to my challenges. Valuable, but not the most important piece.
The core, the essence, of this course was the weekly group discussion.
To attend the weekly meeting, we just had to show up and be open. That’s it. Of course, it was helpful to have done the reading and reflecting, but life is busy, so admittedly, some weeks I was better prepared than others.
We were a group of 11 IndeVets, veterinarians representing as many states. Our veterinary experience ranged from 3-15 years, and our tenure with the company spanned from newbie to more than 2 years.
Our common bond was that we’d all been burned out by veterinary medicine but had motivation to recover and build resilience.
Each week, our facilitator, Dave Shuey, not only guided us through the journal questions but also held space to share our lives and just be together.
A Safe Space for Veterinarians to Heal
I am still in awe of how quickly we bonded over a video-call. Dave created a safe space to share our struggles, our insecurities, and our traumas. There was no one-upmanship, no unsolicited advice. We responded to each other with compassion and support, and sometimes, when words were insufficient, we simply shared silence.
I learned from these new friends that each burnout experience is unique, and therefore, each recovery is unique.
We each shared what worked (and didn’t); diverging thoughts and ideas were met with curiosity, never judgment. Each week, I was grateful for the vulnerability and strength of each person, and they were integral to helping me heal.
Burnout Recovery Doesn’t End with the Course
By the time you’re reading this, the second cohort has finished the Burnout Recovery course, and the third will start soon. But our journey doesn’t end there.
As graduates, we continue to gather together virtually through video calls and online chats, holding space to share and support. After all, recovery is neither linear nor complete.
To pay it forward, we act as peer supporters in various forms, from helping to refine the class to responding to fellow IndeVets. Perhaps most importantly, we take our individual burnout recovery stories into the clinics where we work, reaching a broader veterinary community where many still suffer.
Our mere presence gives fellow veterinarians a chance to take time for family, health, and self-care. A hectic day may afford us the opportunity to both practice and share a recovery skill with a frustrated receptionist or exhausted technician. Whether or not we express the details, we each share our story through our words and actions, demonstrating for others that while burnout is real, recovery is possible.