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The Vet Vault: Fall In Love With Veterinary Science: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Dr. Hubert Hiemstra
Vet life can be tough—but it’s also good. So, how do we make it even better? Join inspiring conversations with veterinary trailblazers who share real stories, fresh ideas, and strategies to help the talented, passionate humans (like you!) who make up the veterinary profession thrive—in work and in life.Hosted by Dr. Hubert Hiemstra, a veterinarian with over 20 years of experience and a passion for helping vets build happier, more fulfilling careers. Hubert brings warmth, curiosity, and a knack for asking the right questions, creating a space where the best ideas in vet med come to life.
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- 3 days ago1h 0m
164: The Planes That Never Came Home: Inclusion, Retention and the Hidden Curriculum, with Dr Alex Harrison
Most conversations about how to survive a veterinary career is a conversation with the survivors. We interview the vets who are still standing. The vets and nurses who left? Nobody interviews them. In this episode you’ll hear why we should be listening to these voices. Dr Alex Harrison is a veterinarian, a former practice partner, and the founder of the inclusion consultancy Vetquity. He is also profoundly deaf, and in this conversation he shares about what it cost him to spend years desperately trying to compensate inside a system that was never designed for people like him.This is not a soft conversation about being nicer to each other. It is a practical lesson in workflow design, retention economics, and why we spend more time thinking about our next CT scanner than about the people who will operate it.You'll learn:Why the survivorship bias in our burnout conversations matters clinically and commercially - and what we systematically fail to see when we only study the people still in the job.How to tell the difference between ‘unavoidable bullets’ from friendly fire. Some parts of veterinary practice is genuinely hard. A lot of what exhausts you is avoidable system design that we have mislabelled as inevitable."Solve for one, solve for all." Why the accommodation you make for one team member is usually just data about where the friction sits for everyone - and why "special treatment" resentment is mostly a myth.The hidden curriculum: the shadow syllabus that runs alongside anatomy and pharmacology, rewarding endurance, stoicism and self-sacrifice while suppressing help-seeking. Name it, tame it, reframe it.Why the resilience narrative lets us off the hook. What internalised ableism looks like in a high-achieving vet - and how it ends in burnout.The one thing Alex would tell every new graduate to look for in a job interview.Join us in the Italian Dolomites in January 2027 for our snow conference - world-class CE sandwiched between skiing, snowshoeing, thermal spas and very long mountain lunches: vetsontour.comFind show notes, clinical content and everything else at thevetvault.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and come and join the conversation in the Vet Vault Network.Resources and links mentionedVetquity - Alex's consultancy: toolkits, advisory work and speaking on structural inclusion in veterinary workplaces2025 AVA President's Award: Dr Alex HarrisonThe Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany YuStronger by Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM - the quadriplegic emergency doctor whose story reframes what "capable" meansDr Anna Dengate on reasonable residencies - our earlier episode on rethinking whether specialist training has to be full-timeDr Jocelyn Birch Baker - building a thriving regional practice staffed almost entirely by part-time parents (Smooth Operating Vets)Abraham Wald and survivorship bias - the statistician who worked out which parts of the bomber to armourTopics and Timestamps0:00 Intro: The Planes That Never Came Home3:02 Welcome & The Survivorship Bias Post4:11 Why Inclusion Matters for the Profession7:57 Avoidable vs Unavoidable Bullets10:42 Solve for One, Solve for All17:03 The Hidden Curriculum22:35 The Problem with the Resilience Narrative27:07 Fear and Co-Design in Practice39:43 Alex's Burnout Story & Internalised Ableism42:02 Defining Ableism45:36 Vetquity & Where to Start48:19 Rapid Fire & Closing
- 2 weeks ago48 min
163: Tech Tools for Vets 5: The Fix for Missed Billing, with SmartCapture
Think about the last thing you did at work and forgot to charge for. A nail clip. A blood test. A “quick” ultrasound that never made it onto the invoice.One missed charge feels insignificant. Across an entire clinic, it isn’t. (It’s estimated that the average veterinary clinic misses between 5% and 10% of its charges!)In this episode of our Tech for Vets series, Dr Patrik Holmboe from Nova Vet Family demonstrates SmartCapture, an AI tool that compares clinical notes with billed items to identify services that may have slipped through the cracks.But this isn’t about chasing clients for forgotten charges or blaming individual vets. It’s about finding patterns and fixing systems. Which charges are missed most often? Why are they being missed, and what can you change in your workflow to stop the same leak recurring?Patrik explains how SmartCapture learns the billing patterns of an individual clinic, and how clinic leaders can turn billing data into practical changes without simply telling the team to “charge better.”This episode includes a screen demonstration. You’ll still get the important ideas on audio, but you can watch the video version on Spotify to follow the walkthrough.Resources mentionedLearn more about Nova Vet Family’s SmartCaptureAAHA: Maybe Money Does Grow on TreesSubscribe to The Vet Vault newsletterVet Science Week 2026Vets on Tour conferencesASAV Annual Conference with the Veterinary Business GroupGreencross CONNECT26 Clinical ConferenceTopics and time stamps02:46 Meet Dr Patrik Holmboe & Nova Vet Family04:11 How SmartCapture Works06:45 The Scale of Missed Billing16:16 Potential vs. Confirmed Missed Charges21:11 Why AI Scribes Improve Results23:21 Turning Data Into Action25:29 Top Missed Charges & Tactical Focus35:28 Workflow & PMS Integration52:04 Wrap-Up & Newsletter
- 4 weeks ago1h 1m
162: Street Dogs, Brave Vetting, and the Double Life of Dr Janey Lowes
Twelve years ago, Dr Janey Lowes went to Sri Lanka on a holiday, and never really came home. Today she runs WECare Worldwide, a hospital that treats the island’s three million street dogs to a standard that you’d like your pet treated - from the worst trauma cases you can image do a highly efficient desexing service. And then, a few times a year, she flies back to locum in clinics that look a lot like yours.This one's about what it's like to live on both sides of that line that separates the reason we became vets, and the job most of us ended up with.We get into:Do-or-die medicine in a place where you're the only optionHow being the last line changes your perspectives, and what that does to your goalposts when you go back to first-world practiceThe bits of ‘normal’ practice that Janey misses the most (no, it’s not the fancy equipment)Charity vetting as a viable career option, not just a gap year - the good and the bad Support WECare Worldwide:This work runs on donations, and Janey's currently raising for a new hospital by running six hundred kilometres, the length of Sri Lanka. (She’s not actually a runner…)Website and donations: https://wecareworldwide.org.ukThe charity takes volunteers and offers longer-term work Volunteer and work with WECare: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk/volunteer/WECare on Instagram: @wecare_srilankaFind Janey:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeythevetYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@janeythevetHer book, Janey the Vet: Saving Sri Lanka's Street Dogs, is on Amazon, Waterstones and WH SmithMore from The Vet Vault:Everything we do lives at https://www.thevetvault.com, including our clinical CE podcasts and resourcesCome learn with us in person at Vets on Tour: https://vetsontour.comTopics and Time Stamps03:20 Going Viral, and the Unexpected Backlash08:24 The Love-Hate of Social Media10:17 The Birth of WeCare13:24 75% of Dogs Are Unowned13:53 Courage or Naivety?16:35 Mid-Roll Break18:31 Regrets? & Life in Sri Lanka21:30 Two Lives: Sri Lanka vs UK36:15 Are We Too Quick to Euthanise?39:55 What We Underestimate and Undervalue in ‘normal’ Vet Life43:22 Volunteering at WeCare49:03 Charity Vetting as a Career55:10 Rapid Fire Questions59:21 Advice for New Grads
- Jun 18, 20261h 25m
161: Tech Tools for Vets 4: Heidi - AI Scribe, Voice Agents And Clinical Decision Support For Vets. With Dr Kieran McLeod
You've been using your veterinary AI note taker for a couple of years now - it’s great - saves you heaps of time. But are you using it to its full potential?I’ll take a bet that you’re not. These things move fast, and it’s hard to keep up. Which is why, in our Tech for Vets Series, we pull apart the veterinary tools that are changing how we work, and this time we put Heidi up on our screens for a detailed walk through. Our guide is Dr Kieran McLeod, head of medical knowledge at Heidi Health. We start by putting the scribe through its paces to find the workflow tricks that you’re probably missing - I walked away with at least five tricks I'd never used. Then Kieran shows off all the shiny new AI magic coming your way: voice agents, built-in clinical support and a hardware solution that lets you leave your phone in your bag. You'll learn:The scribe features you're almost certainly ignoring - linked patients, the context window, smart dictation, and the one-click voice edits that mean you never type a note correction againThe AI voice agent that makes the phone call you've been dreading What baked-in clinical decision support looks likeHow to safety-net the worry that keeps you up - that quiet "did I miss something?" feelingHow to incorporate hands-free hardware into your workflowThis is a screen-share walkthrough, so head to Spotify if you want to watch the clicks rather than just hear us talk about them.Show notes and details live at thevetvault.comGet clinical support from human specialists at the Vet Vault Specialist Support SpaceGet rid of your mid-year 'meh' at our Vets On Tour New Zealand snow conferenceTopics and Timestamps02:35 Intro: Beyond the scribe005:18 Human-first vs. vet-first: does it matter?09:17 Note-taking basics09:46 Context windows & linked patients15:46 Multiple documents & the source of truth18:49 Smart Dictation for quick edits29:38 Sync changes across documents33:10 Task lists36:06 Collaboration & session sharing40:07 Sharing & exporting documents41:22 Heidi Comms: AI voice agents53:46 Heidi Evidence: clinical decision support01:04:50 Using Evidence for complex histories01:09:11 Evidence sources & collections01:14:01 Heidi Remote: the hardware mic01:21:46 EMR integrations (ezyVet & Covetrus)
- May 30, 202656 min
160: Toxic Workplaces Just Got Expensive: What The New Psychological Safety Laws Mean For Vet Practices. With Rhonda Andrews
A surgeon hurls a scalpel across theatre. It clatters off the wall. Nobody looks up. Twenty minutes later he's in the tearoom offering everyone a biscuit, and someone shrugs: "That's just him when he's stressed."If you've worked in veterinary practice for any length of time, you've got your own version of that story - maybe a bit less dramatic, but still things that completely destroy psychological safety. This episode is about that stuff, and the new psychosocial safety laws now rolling out across Australia that say plainly: no, actually, that's not acceptable. To make sense of what that looks like on a normal Tuesday in a normal practice, you'll hear from psychologist Rhonda Andrews, who works across high-pressure industries - emergency departments, the courts, and the veterinary profession - and who has spent years watching them all wrestle with the same problem: people breaking. This conversation is not about “just be more resilient”, but about systems. Rhonda makes a genuinely good-news case that these laws aren't more bureaucracy to dread - they're the push our profession has needed all along.You'll hear Why the things you've always filed under "just part the job" might now legally count as a psychological workplace injury - with consequences attachedThe myth spreading fastest right now - that bosses can no longer have an honest performance conversation - and why that's flatly wrong What the new psychosocial safety laws actually require of you as a practice ownerWhy this a team problem, not just something for management to sort outWhy "workload" is almost never the real problem - and the thing breaking your team underneath it that owners consistently missThe one shift available to everyone in the building - whatever their title - that changes culture without a single policy changeA note: this is the second in a small psych-safety miniseries. If you haven't heard Episode 158 with Dr Rebecca Faris on the AVA Thrive programme, start there for the bigger picture.Resources:Barrington Centre - Rhonda's psychosocial safety seminars (two online sessions, plus an in-person Melbourne day) and the Vet ECM training programmes for owners, leaders, and new supervisors: barringtoncentre.comFor show notes, clinical content and the newsletter head to thevetvault.com, and come find your people at a Vets On Tour conference - email me at info@thevetvault.com to find out about our new-grad 50% discount for Wānaka inAugust.Topics and time stamps04:52 Rising Mental Health Claims08:41 Mythbusting Owners Fears10:37 Defining Psychological Safety12:37 Vets Staying in Bad Jobs14:28 Sponsor Break Vets On Tour16:03 Systems vs Individual Responsibility19:35 Burnout Stats and Human Cost21:17 Who Can Influence Culture?22:46 Is Vet Work Uniquely Hard?24:05 Human Sector Parallels29:15 Business Model Reality Check30:18 ROI of Retention32:20 Psychosocial Safety Laws37:34 Workload and Rostering Fixes42:44 Leadership and Being Heard45:27 From Blame to Pathways50:27 Training Programs and Teams52:58 Myth Busting Performance Reviews54:27 Final Takeaways
- May 12, 202654 min
159: Tech Tools for Vets 3: Instinct ❤️ Scribble - What Happens When Your PIMS And Your Scribe Get Married? With Dr Caleb Frankel and Rohan Relan
The long-term vision is that you walk into a clinic, hit record at the beginning of the day - you walk out at the end of the day, and you never put your hands in a computer. You just did medicine, and everything went into the right place.’Sound too good to be true? Maybe. But it's closer than you think.If you've already adopted a veterinary AI scribe, you'll know it's transformed your day. But scribes are just the gateway drug. The really interesting question is what your scribe connects to next - and the answer, for a growing number of vets, is the brain of the clinic itself: your practice management software.This conversation brings together Dr Caleb Frankel, ER vet and founder of Instinct - the PIMS used by many of the world's largest specialty and emergency hospitals, and now built out for general practice too, and Rohan Relan, founder of Scribble Vet. Earlier this year, Instinct acquired Scribble - and what they're building together is a glimpse of where veterinary software could be heading.You'll hear:Why up to 80% of your veterinary work day is swallowed by a keyboard What "beyond scribing" looks like - from infographics, to embedded drug references that update in real time as you talk, to anaesthesia records that fill themselves in from across the room.The "easy to verify, hard to generate" principle - why the best AI tools in clinic don't try to replace you, they let you stay in the loop without doing the grunt work.What it means when your scribe and your PIMS talk to each other.Why an "open API" matters more than you think when individual vets can magically build for their own tools.The tech patient safety layer that can catch your mistakes before you make themWhere this all goes next - and why both guests believe we're still only seeing the beginning of what AI in clinical practice can do.We recorded this as a video with screen sharing, so if you want to follow along and see what these tools actually look like in action, watch it on Spotify.For our clinical content, show notes, and our full back catalogue, head to thevetvault.com. While you're there, check out our subscriber-only clinical podcast, our newsletter, and come and hang out with us in real life at Vets On Tour.Topics and TimestampsWhy Instinct Acquired Scribble 2:08Beyond Scribes: The Bigger Vision 7:48Demo: Scribble + Instinct Integration 10:06Plums Drug Reference Integration 11:30Mid-Roll: Events & Announcements 14:49Pushing Notes to Instinct 16:27Scribble Features: Translations, Care Cards & More 19:29Record Review & AI Verifiability 21:28Instinct PIMS Overview 24:17Instinct Expands to General Practice 24:51Instinct Features: Estimates, Safety Warnings & Clinical Tools 32:03Embedded Scribble: Voice-Controlled Anesthesia Records 38:07AI Safety: Human in the Loop 38:46APIs, MCP Servers & Vibe Coding for Vets 45:02Open vs Closed PIMS Philosophy 50:39
- Apr 22, 202654 min
158: Psychological Safety For Vets: Why The Job Might Need Fixing, Not The People. With Dr Rebecca Faris
"Maybe we're just picking the wrong people to be vets."You've probably heard some version of that line. Maybe you've even said it. 'The new grads can't cope. The younger generation is too soft. If this profession isn't working for you, maybe the profession isn't the problem - maybe you are.'But what if that's the wrong conversation entirely? Maybe it's not the people who need to change - but the job itself.That's the question at the heart of this conversation with Dr Rebecca Faris, the lead of the Australian Veterinary Association's Thrive programme - an industry attempt to figure out how we make veterinary medicine a profession people can actually stay in and enjoy.You'll learn:Why a full-time working week in veterinary medicine probably shouldn't be 40 hours - and the official position from Safe Work Australia that will surprise youThe difference between psychological safety and psychosocial safety (one is a vibe, the other is the law - and if you own a practice in Australia, you need to know which is which)What the new psychosocial safety legislation actually requires of practice owners Why "playing to your strengths" isn't the same as avoiding the hard stuff - and how to have that conversation with your employer without sounding like you're asking for special treatmentThe invisible emotional labour tax you're paying on every consult - and why recognising it changes everythingWhat genuinely great veterinary workplaces are doing differently, and why the "squeaky wheel" narrative is drowning out stories of practices that are getting it rightWhy "I can't hack full-time" might not mean there's something wrong with you - and the self-compassion case for rethinking what a sustainable vet career actually looks likeHow to get involved in shaping the future of this profession instead of quietly checking outIf you've ever felt wrecked at the end of a perfectly normal day and wondered whether it was you or the job - this one's for you.Resources mentioned:The Thrive Programme and 2025 Wellbeing Survey: ava.com.au/thriveCultivating Safe Teams training (AVA)2026 Thrive Wellness Symposium at the AVA Conference, Brisbane, 19 May 2026Safe Work Australia - psychosocial hazards guidanceThis episode is not an ad. We're not paid to feature Thrive or the AVA - we just think this is a conversation the profession needs to be having. If you've got thoughts, pushback, or your own story about thriving (or not) in practice, drop us a line at info@thevetvault.com.For our clinical content, show notes, and our full back catalogue, head to thevetvault.com. While you're there, check out our subscriber-only clinical podcast, our newsletter, and come and hang out with us in real life at Vets On Tour.00:52 Rethinking the 40-Hour Workweek03:03 Flexibility and Job Crafting04:57 Are We Picking the Wrong People?06:05 Playing to Strengths vs Business Needs12:39 Psychological vs Psychosocial Safety15:55 The New Laws: Employer Obligations17:51 Identifying Psychosocial Hazards20:40 Cultivating Safe Teams Training24:45 Workload and Emotional Labor32:34 Vets on Tour Break34:27 Should Full-Time Be 30 Hours?36:12 Inside the Thrive Initiative39:31 Mental Health First Aid41:35 Empathy for Difficult Clients44:13 Wins and Optimism46:27 How to Access Thrive51:27 Closing Advice: Get Engaged
- Apr 8, 202658 min
157: Tech Tools for Vets 2: AI-Powered Learning with StudyAnything. With Hasitha Jayatilake
You know that feeling: exam time is looming. You've spent three days making flashcards and highlighting your notes, but you haven't even started actually studying yet...Whether you're a vet student drowning in slide decks, a membership candidate juggling articles and notes, or a resident trying to jam an impossible volume of clinical knowledge into your skull - the way most of us study is, frankly, not backed by the science. Which is why you might need a little help from technology:In part two of our Tech Tools for Vets series, software engineer Hasitha Jayatilake joins me to walk you through StudyAnything - an AI-powered study tool that generates quizzes from your notes, tracks your weak spots over time, and builds guided learning pathways based on Bloom's hierarchy of learning. (By the way - he built this tool because he couldn’t bare watching his vet student partner making Anki cards at 2am!)What you'll learn:How active recall and spaced repetition actually work - and why highlighting your notes is basically doing nothingWhat Bloom's hierarchy means for your study plan - and how Study Anything uses it to move you from rote recall to clinical applicationStudyAnything’s guided learning pathway feature (just gone live) - that turns your uploaded notes into a structured lesson plan with concept maps, assumed knowledge, and motivational contextHow the community feature works - study groups, shared question banks, and what this means for educators (or podcast hosts!) who want to create resourcesHow to generate harder questions on demand - using learning outcomes and difficulty levels to get yourself on the honours rollWhat makes this different from Notebook LM or other AI tools This episode includes screen sharing, so if you want to follow along, watch the video on Spotify. If you prefer audio only, you'll still get 99% of the value.The team at StudyAnything are giving Vet Vault listeners the opportunity to try out their top tier subscription (LOTS of quizzes!) with code VETVAULT at studyanything.academy for 50% off your first month on the paid plan. That's about $3.50 to give it a proper test run.Note: This episode isn't a promotion, endorsement or an ad - it's part of our ongoing series exploring the tools you might be considering. If you have a software you'd like us to look at, let me know at info@thevetvault.comGo to thevetvault.com for show notes, access to our clinical continuing education content and to sign up for our weekly 'best of the Vet Vault' newsletter, or join us in person at one of our phenomenal Vets On Tour conferences. (Look out for our upcoming New Zealand, Italy and Africa conferences.) Topics and Timestamps3:26 Active Recall & The Science of Studying4:06 How StudyAnything Works - Uploading & Courses7:57 Bloom's Hierarchy & Learning Outcomes9:53 Ad Break - Vets on Tour11:24 Quiz Demo19:28 Guided Learning Pathway20:15 File Summary, Concept Maps & Key Terms29:10 Study Groups & Communities31:02 Comparison with Notebook LM & Competitors32:32 Spaced Repetition & Future Features37:29 Pricing39:48 Deep Dive: Navigating the Dashboard41:00 Deep Dive: Creating & Customising Quizzes
About The Vet Vault: Fall In Love With Veterinary Science
Vet life can be tough—but it’s also good. So, how do we make it even better? Join inspiring conversations with veterinary trailblazers who share real stories, fresh ideas, and strategies to help the talented, passionate humans (like you!) who make up the veterinary profession thrive—in work and in life.Hosted by Dr. Hubert Hiemstra, a veterinarian with over 20 years of experience and a passion for helping vets build happier, more fulfilling careers. Hubert brings warmth, curiosity, and a knack for asking the right questions, creating a space where the best ideas in vet med come to life.
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