Last week I highlighted a comment that was left on one of my TikTok posts by a veterinarian with 26 years in the profession. She said that in her experience, her OTJ (on the job) trained assistants beat out every LVT for performing. That credentialed technicians “understand a little more”, but are also “more likely to give their opinion” over hers. So as a clinic owner, she prefers her OTJ trained assistants.

I want you to sit with that for a second. Not because she’s a bad person. Not because her experience isn’t real. But because what she just described, out loud, in public, is something nobody warned me about before I walked into my first veterinary hospital.

A credentialed technician advocating for a patient is not giving their opinion over the doctor’s. What they are doing is exactly what their training prepared them to do. And the fact that a veterinarian with 26 years of experience reads that as a threat tells you everything you need to know about the environment a lot of credentialed technicians are walking into every single day.

I responded in the comments saying that “opinion over yours” can be perceived as overstepping OR as team based care. It depends entirely on how it’s framed and how it’s received. In my experience, technicians aren’t trying to be the doctor. They’re asking questions, advocating for patients, and looking to elevate care. I encouraged her to get curious, as I often do. To find out where they learned what they learned since we can all learn from each other. And shared my opinion that without standardization, you simply don’t know what an OTJ trained assistant knows. There’s no benchmark.

Seven people liked my response. Ten people liked her comment. The comments and the followup posts I’ve made about this comment have gone considerably “viral” (for someone who doesn’t have a viral following… viral means 10x what you normally get… so no, I didn’t get millions of views but I did receive quite a few more comments then I’m used to so …. stay with me here).

What’s interesting is the amount of people willing to share that they agree with me but 10 people still liked her comment AND so many people shared their experience both publicly and privately that they had experienced similar…. so, while many may agree that “teamwork makes the dreamwork” their experiences by and large seem to align more with that 26 year vet….

You’re going to spend your career fighting to be respected in the field you’ve given everything to. Not because of your work. Not because of your credentials. (In fact, no amount of additional schooling will matter much so, you probably should stop wasting your money.) Not because of your outcomes, the risk you’ve mitigated for your organization, your patient advocacy, or the number of times you caught something that would have been missed.

But because you don’t have DVM/VMD after your name.

And in some environments, that credential isn’t just a title. It’s a ceiling. A built in reason to discount your input, question your judgment, and reframe your competence as insubordination.

I know this because I have watched it play out across multiple organizations, within peer groups that were supposed to be meant for bringing VetMed together, and on the speaker circuit. Different ownership models. Different markets. Different leadership structures, but using the same playbook every single time.

You raise a real concern. One that’s directly aligned with the stated goals of the organization, that would actually mitigate risk if anyone engaged with it seriously. And instead of addressing the substance, the conversation shifts. Suddenly it’s about your tone, your approach, and whether you’re “aligned.” You get handed unclear objectives and told to focus on your job, and told “it will be taken care of.” Later to find out it is swept under the rug silently forgotten about until the concern you raised becomes the crisis everyone will later pretend they never saw coming.

I’ve been in that meeting and on that Zoom call more than once. In more than one organization and that’s why I want to be clear: this is not a one off.

It’s not a personality conflict. It is a pattern. I can say that with confidence because I have lived it in enough different rooms, with enough different people, under enough different organizational structures to know it is not about me.

It is about a profession that was built around one credential and has not yet figured out what to do with the people who keep it running.

It’s not the whole story.

There are veterinarians who genuinely get it. Who understand that the best patient outcomes happen when every person on the team is operating at the top of their scope. Who treat credentialed technicians, hospital managers, assistants, CSRs and every other role in the hosptial as the professionals they are.

There are companies that have already made structural commitments to this. VEG ER for Pets, Ethos, and BondVet (to name a few**) have put non-DVMs in clinical decision making seats. All three organizations have Veterinary Nursing or Veterinary Technicians in Director level or above roles specific for medical quality and nursing conversations.

(Note: there are plenty of other organizations that have veterinary technicians in Director level or above roles but what I’m talking about here are those that I know about that have these roles specific to a Veterinary Nursing position, not an operations role or something that isn’t in the medical umbrella).

That’s not a small thing. That’s an organization saying out loud that veterinary medicine is a team sport and building their infrastructure to match. Others are moving in that direction too.

It exists. It is real. And you deserve to know that before you decide whether the fight is worth it.

**I’m sure there are Independent practices who also have elevated Veterinary Nursing roles as well, I am just not aware of them

I was told once that it is nearly impossible to build real trust under untrustworthy leadership.

I did it anyway.

Across five states. In a system that was not built to support it. My team named themselves Team Amazing. And they truly were (and still are) Amazing. They drove to support each other at personal events. They held each other up across state lines, across time zones, without being asked. When we were finally all in the same room at a company event, a photographer pulled me aside to say we were the most engaged, most connected group in the building.

That wasn’t luck. It was intentional design. It was leadership inside a system that was actively working against it

What that taught me? You can build something real even when the structure around you is broken. It’s harder, for sure. It cost me a ton of sleepless nights, and as the leader of that group, I bore a lot of the weight, BUT I was determined to unite them. They deserved support and I knew from having been in their seat, that support came more from each other than anyone else. When you’re part of a large organization the best support you can have is your peers. So I built it. I created an environment where they could come together in a non-threatening way, where they could support each other. It started with me - poking with questions, encouraging them to share. And then, they started to realize they were safe with each other too. It’s pretty magical when it happens. And then, the people you build it with carry it with them long after you are gone.

I still get messages from members of that team thanking me for all I did for them. Reality is, I just led them. They did all the work.

Because someone has to keep raising their hand.

Someone has to keep naming what is actually happening so the people coming up behind us know what they are walking into and can make a clear eyed decision about whether they want to fight for it anyway.

The road is hard. I am not going to sit here and lie to you.

But I will tell you this. I’ve never once put my head on the pillow wondering if I did the right thing. Not when I flagged the risk nobody wanted to hear about. Not when I stayed in the comment section and engaged instead of walking away. Not when I left organizations that asked me to do things that went against my morals and ethical standard.

Your 80 year old self is watching every decision you make right now.

Not the decision that was easiest. Not the one that protected your title. The one you can actually live with.

If this landed somewhere in your chest, I want you to know something.

You are not too sensitive. You are not difficult. You are not the problem you have been positioned as.

You are a professional in a field that has not yet built the infrastructure to fully hold you. And that distinction matters. Because one of those things is fixable and one of those things is not about you at all.

The work you are doing is real. The advocacy you show up with every single day, the concerns you raise, the patients you fight for, the teams you hold together with whatever resources you have, that is not overstepping. It is exactly what this profession needs more of.

I know it doesn’t always feel that way. I know some days it feels like the most dangerous thing you can do is tell the truth.

I encourage you to do it anyway.

Not because it will always land the way it deserves to. Not because every room will be ready for it. But because the alternative is staying quiet until you disappear. And veterinary medicine cannot afford to lose any more people who actually give a damn.

First, if you are questioning whether any of this is still worth it, whether the fight has a point or whether you are just too deep in it to walk away, I want you to go back to your why. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why1 or Find Your Why are both worth your time if you haven’t read them. Not as a productivity exercise. As a reminder of what you were actually fighting for before the system started making you feel like the problem.

Second, write the letter. Write it to the organization, the leader, the room full of people who looked at you and saw a liability instead of an asset. Say everything you wish you could say. Be honest. Be messy. Be specific.

This is not about them. It’s about getting it out of your body so it stops living in your chest at 2am. If you need to burn it when you’re done, just be careful okay? I don’t want you to come after me and say I encouraged you to burn a letter and you accidentally burnt a hole in your rug - or worse….. (I’m not even going to write it because I refuse to put that negativity into the world but … just be careful… okay?)

Third, stop asking yourself why they won’t see it and start asking yourself what you can actually control today. Not the culture. Not the politics. Not the person who keeps reframing your integrity as insubordination. Just today. Just what is in your hands right now. Generally, the answer is going to be YOU. You can only control you - your emotions, your reactions, the way you move. Don’t try to control others, I promise you, it’s futile.

And finally, find one person outside of the situation and talk to them. Not to vent. Not to build a case. To get perspective from someone who is not inside the same walls breathing the same air. If you don’t feel like you have someone, reach out to me. I’m here. Seriously - [email protected] - it’s really me who answers my email not an AI bot or an assistant, just me!

You do not have to solve this alone. You just have to take one step.

If you’re still here, Thank you for reading all of this. I appreciate you, I see you, and I’m glad you’re here. I know this weeks was a long one… I had a lot to say. See you next week!

Suzanne

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Suzanne Thomas is a credentialed veterinary technologist (LVTg, CVTg), MBA (c), and the founder of Leading Veterinary Teams, LLC (www.LVT.vet), a leadership development platform built specifically for veterinary professionals. She is the author of ‘From Competent to Capable: Redefining Success Through Veterinary Technician Utilization and Team Empowerment’, host of the Leading Veterinary Teams On Air podcast, a speaker and consultant focused on organizational design, team leadership, and operational clarity in veterinary medicine