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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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- 4 days ago51 min
168: You're Doing Feedback Wrong. With Dr Olivia Oginska
Ask most vets what feedback means, and they'll think of a meeting. Once a year - maybe someone explaining that you're not billing enough.Dr Liv Oginska reckons that meeting is barely feedback at all.Because real feedback is happening all day: the look on your face when someone walks in, whether you say the thing you've been wrestling with for three weeks, or take it home and complain about it to your partner instead.There's a famous quote: 'The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.'In this episode, we fix that. Liv shows what to actually say when someone goes straight to defensive, why you should never label their emotion, and the work you need to do on yourself first. Plus her practical advice on receiving feedback well.Dr Olivia Oginska is a vet, emotional intelligence specialist, certified workplace conflict mediator, lecturer at Murdoch University and founder of Human-Savvy. She's also just published research examining the links between feedback skills, psychological safety and turnover intention in veterinary organisations. In other words: does the way we talk to each other influence whether people want to leave? (Spoiler: it matters!)Somewhere in your practice there's a conversation nobody is having. It's already changing how everyone behaves. This episode is about having it.Resources and linksLiv's work: Human-Savvy A new cohort of the year-long Human-Savvy League leadership mastermind opens in October 2026.The Human-Savvy Symposium - a full day of this, in person, Brisbane, Friday 6 November 2026.Stuck on a case and want a specialist's eyes on it? Come and ask in our specialist support space.Close to 700 clinical episodes with full show notes: thevetvault.com (click "clinical content")Vets on Tour - Italy 2027 and the Serengeti with Prof Jill Maddison and Prof Dave Church: vetsontour.comTopics and time stampsWhy Liv Researched This Topic Personal Feedback Stories: Good and Bad Sponsor Break Feedback Is Constant, Not Just Formal Defining Psychological Safety Personality, Environment, and Fear of Conflict Two-Way Feedback: Leaders and Employees Behaviours That Destroy Psychological Safety Handling Defensiveness Practical Roleplay: Giving Difficult Feedback Feedback vs. Other Causes of Turnover A Vision for the Future of the Profession Closing Thoughts
- 2 weeks ago45 min
167: Space Plus People Equals Place: 5 Common Practice Design Mistakes to Avoid. With Jerry Kennard
What if the thing making your working day harder isn’t the workload?What if it's the building?In this episode we're joined by Jerry Kennard from Evoke Projects, someone who designs veterinary spaces for a living and has watched a lot of owners get this expensively wrong. Because a practice build always starts as a dream: the right location, the beautiful fit-out - the clinic you've always wanted. But plan it wrong, and that dream can quickly turn into a trap that stifles growth and demotivates teams . And most of it comes down to five mistakes that are a lot easier to avoid before you sign anything than after.In this episode, you'll learn:Why falling in love with your site might be the single most expensive mistake you can makeThe "too big or too small" problem, and how to future-proof for expansion without drowning in debtWhy designing for the pet and the client but forgetting your team is a false economyHow lean design and smart workflow let you do more in less space, without burning anyone outA great clinic isn't designed to look good on opening day. It's designed to perform every day. Join us to find out how. For more episodes like this with practical insights for practice owners join us on the Veterinary Business Accelerator podcast. Join Hugh and Jerry on a Vets on Tour adventure: https://vetsontour.com/
- 3 weeks ago1h 10m
166: It's Not Burnout. It's Fear. Dr Sarah Golding on vet burnout, imposter syndrome and getting your confidence back
Everyone says burnout. But Dr Sarah Golding thinks a lot of us are misdiagnosing ourselves.When vets come to her ready to walk away from the profession, they arrive with a vocabulary: burnt out, overwhelmed, imposter syndrome. Not one of them opens with the word Sarah reckons is often actually doing the damage:Fear.Fear of failing. Fear of the money conversation. Fear of the board, the Facebook post, the Monday morning debrief. And the big one, the one that shows up in almost every list she asks vets to write: fear of criticism, mostly from each other.Every fear you carry into a consult room was handed to you somewhere along your path - often by someone with good intentions - a teacher, a mentor, a friend. So we get into what to do about it. How to run a debrief that lets someone put a mistake down instead of carrying it for a decade. Why "don't worry about it, mate" is just as unhelpful as shouting. The difference between practising defensively and practising to help, and why clients can sense which one you are within seconds. Sarah's "debrief and dump it" process, complete with the literal bucket in her clinic that gets burnt at the Christmas party. And a small structural fix for the money conversation that has all but ended adult tantrums at her front desk.Dr Sarah Golding is a mixed practice vet in her second decade, principal practitioner and co-manager at Gowrie Vet Clinic in NSW, and this year a finalist in the NSW/ACT AgriFutures Rural Women's Award for her mentoring work through The Vet Mind Mentor.Somewhere in your career there's a case that wrote a rule about what you're good at, and what you avoid. This episode is about going back and reading that rule properly.Resources and linksSarah's work: The Vet Mind Mentor - the Resilient Vet Mastermind and mindset course, plus a free strategy call. Instagram: @thevet_mindmentorClose to 700 clinical episodes with full show notes: thevetvault.com (click "clinical content")Connect26, Greencross's conference, Brisbane, 7-8 November. Open to everyone in the profession. 20% off with code VETVAULT20: book hereVets on Tour - Italy 2027 and the Serengeti with Prof Jill Maddison and Prof Dave Church: vetsontour.comTopics and time stamps03:01 - Fear in veterinary practice06:23 - What feeling are we chasing?09:28 - Guilt, disconnect and early burnout11:58 - The six categories of fear13:33 - Where our fears come from14:30 - Mid-roll: Vet Vault updates16:05 - How we gift our fears to colleagues20:02 - System failure vs personal failure21:55 - The itty bitty shitty committee23:16 - Healthy caution vs paralysing fear26:22 - The debrief and dump it process28:24 - Accountability without shame34:56 - Imposter syndrome as hidden fear36:11 - Are vets more scared today?38:22 - You don't need all the answers40:02 - Defensive medicine vs helping46:03 - Consult room formula and money conversations54:45 - The changing fear behaviour activity1:01:57 - Schedule anxiety and work-life balance1:03:20 - Wrap-up: podcast picks and final thoughts1:08:22 - Advice for the new grads of 2026
- Aug 10, 202626 min
165: Making Sense of IDEXX Cancer Dx - Canine Lymphoma Screening. With Dr Sandra Nguyen
I love any new tool that can make my life as a veterinarian easier and get better outcomes for my patients, so when I first heard about IDEXX's new CancerDx test I was excited, but I had questions! Like, how is a cancer screening test useful to my patients, how reliable is it, why can’t I just use FNA, and how am I going to incorporate it into my workflows?In this episode I chat to oncologist Dr Sandra Nguyen to find out how she thinks about this test for her patients, and where it fits into our lives as general practitioners. We cover:A genuinely memorable way to finally keep sensitivity and specificity straight The advertised numbers for Cancer Dx, and how that compares to FNA cytologyThe two clinical scenarios where Dr Sandra finds it most useful: the vaguely "cancery" dog, and annual screening in at-risk breedsWhy you should keep those slides on the shelf when owners are undecided about chemoWhat to actually do with a positive result in a happy, healthy dogIf this is the kind of clinical content you want more of, our full library of case-based CE lives at https://thevetvault.com. Want to join us on a ski lift? Vets On Tour is where CE happens in ski boots, saunas, and the occasional conference room. Come find us at https://vetsontour.com/
- Jul 30, 20261h 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
- Jul 15, 202648 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
- Jul 3, 20261h 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)
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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