I came home after speaking at GVSCon, a local veterinary conference held by Guardian Veterinary Specialist in New York, over this past weekend and my brain would not stop.

Not about my talk and not about the few sessions that I sat in on, but about the conversations I had in the hallway and in the conference hall.

Every conversation that started with someone noticing my sweatshirt - “Leading Veterinary Teams” - and ended with them saying some version of “this is really great! Vet Med really needs this! Keep doing what you’re doing!”

Then, when I got home and opened my phone, I saw more of the same posts I’ve been seeing for weeks (maybe even years now) where the profession continues to light itself on fire in the comment sections, yet again.

…

I sat with this for a few days before I could even really write anything because to be honest, my first reaction was not a coherent thought. It was just noise. Confused, frustrated, exhausted noise.

But underneath all of that noise, something has been becoming really clear.

That’s the thing about comment threads. When the temperature in the room goes up, everyone gets louder and closer to the thing they’re already sure about.

I tend to do the opposite. When I feel the heat rising, it’s usually a signal to me that something much bigger is at play. That we’re not actually fighting about the thing we think we’re fighting about.

And watching these threads, that’s become really apparent really fast.

Credentialed technicians are exhausted and angry that their education doesn’t seem to change anything about their actual day.

Assistants are frustrated that their experience is being dismissed like it means nothing.

Doctors cite license liability like a shield.

Leaders insist they support their teams.

Teams constantly confused about why support doesn’t feel like anything.

Advocacy organizations are getting dragged through the mud as new ones are emerging to fix problems people see from the existing ones. People are looking for somewhere to put their hope and their frustration at the same time.

And everyone, every single person in those threads, is reading it through their own lens. Their own experience. Their own pain point. And I don’t blame them. It makes complete sense, that’s what people do. And also it makes it almost impossible to solve anything.

Because nobody is looking at how it all connects.

We are medicine people. Most of us anyway.

When a doctor is working up a patient, they’re not looking at one thing in isolation. They’re not saying “this patient has diabetes and that’s the whole story.” They know diabetes can be complicated by other conditions. They know a patient with a cardiac issue who also has a renal issue isn’t just a cardiac patient. They are trained to look at systems. To understand that what’s happening in one place often affects everything else.

And yet when we look at our hospitals, our teams, our profession as a whole, we look at everything in a silo.

Utilization is a utilization problem.

Credentialing is a credentialing problem.

Advocacy is an advocacy problem.

Leadership is a leadership problem.

When actually, all of it is connected. All of it is the same system, just breaking down at different points.

That’s what I keep thinking while I sit with the comment sections. Not “who is right.” But: why are we diagnosing each organ separately when this patient clearly has a systemic condition?

I want to be honest about something.

Some of what I read in those comments made me sad in a way that the frustration and exhaustion didn’t.

There were doctors in those threads who have gotten to a place where they don’t care enough anymore to keep their most dismissive thoughts off the internet. And that worries me. Not for the doctors but for the teams sitting across from them every single day.

You see, everyday, there are newer veterinary technicians, assistants, CSR’s, managers and every other position out there who are reading those comments and absorbing them as normal. These people are going to work with these doctors and thinking this is what it’s like in VetMed and there’s nothing else but this out there. It’s “just how it is.” They don’t know yet that there IS something different. They don’t know they don’t have to work inside that dynamic. They don’t know that what they’re experiencing is not the baseline they deserve.

That’s the part that makes me want to get louder. That’s the part that pushes me to keep doing this work.

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At this conference, somewhere between sessions, I met someone. I’ll call him Stan.

Stan asked what I do. I told him about Leading Veterinary Teams. And something shifted in his face.

He got it immediately. Not the polite “oh that’s interesting” version. The version where someone starts talking about your work the way you talk about your work. Where they’re finishing your sentences and adding to them and asking questions that show they already understand why it matters. Talking about it as if it’s on the Fortune 500 magazine. I swear Stan had stars in his eyes.

That conversation gave me something I genuinely needed in that moment, and I didn’t know I needed it.

Because here’s the other thing I was sitting with at that conference. Person after person was saying “we really need this.” And I kept smiling and nodding and also quietly thinking: so …. why aren’t my books full? we need this so much where are all the people?

Is it a visibility problem? A conversion problem? Do people know this work matters but aren’t sure they want to pay for it? Is it the fact that the management track at this very conference (and so many conferences) wasn’t eligible for CE credit, which tells you everything you need to know about how this profession actually values leadership development even while it says it values it?

That last one really got me. If management and leadership matter, give the people CE. You don’t get to say it’s important and then structurally treat it like a nice to have.

But Stan. Stan reminded me that the belief is out there. That the people who get it really get it. And that’s enough to keep building.

After sitting with all of it, the threads and the conference hall, Stan, and the CE credits that don’t exist, this is what I keep landing on.

—> We don’t have a technician utilization problem.

—> We don’t have an advocacy problem.

What we have is a translation problem.

What gets said at the national level doesn’t always reach the hospital floor. What gets advocated for doesn’t always get enforced locally. What leaders intend doesn’t always become what teams experience. What a credential is supposed to represent doesn’t always translate into scope, pay, autonomy, or opportunity. And when none of those layers connect, people fill the gaps with frustration, opinion, and with lived experience that may or may not reflect what’s actually possible.

Then we argue about each other instead of looking at the system underneath.

Leaders implement on their intentions but teams don’t experience intentions. Teams experience systems, and if the system doesn’t change, the team won’t feel the change.

That’s not a people problem. That’s a design problem. And it’s the work I think about more than anything else.

Pick one thing you say your hospital values about its team.

Not what’s in the handbook, not what’s written on the wall. Not the all-staff meeting version. One actual value you believe your leadership is trying to live.

Then trace it:

If you can trace it all the way to the floor, good. Keep going.

If you can’t, that’s your answer. That’s where the translation is breaking down.

You don’t have to fix it this week. You just have to be willing to see it. Because the gap between what you say your hospital values and what your team feels isn’t always reality. It’s almost always about infrastructure.

And that’s exactly where to start.

Until next time, lead where you are. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Suzanne

Suzanne Thomas is the founder of Leading Veterinary Teams, a platform built for veterinary managers and frontline leaders who were promoted without a playbook.