The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

Dr. Hubert Hiemstra
  • 4.8 (14)
  • Science
  • Updated Weekly

The Vet Vault is a veterinary podcast for vets and vet students covering career growth, clinical medicine, leadership, and mental health and wellbeing across the veterinary profession. Vet life can be tough, but it's also good - so how do we make it even better? Host Dr Hubert Hiemstra brings honest, curious, occasionally irreverent conversations with the people making vet med better. Clinical CPD, careers, wellbeing, and the tech changing how we practise. Come fall back in love with veterinary science. Find show notes, clinical CE and the newsletter at thevetvault.com.

  1. 6d ago

    169: Exceptional Vet, Mediocre Pay: If I'm So Busy, Why Can't I Earn More? With Dr Andy Roark

    Why does a vet who's flat out every single day still hit a pay ceiling? Dr Andy Roark explains the hidden economics of veterinary practice, and an uncomfortable truth: the thing that makes us good vets might be the same thing holding our pay down. Andy is a practising vet, the founder of the Uncharted Veterinary Conference and podcast, host of The Cone of Shame podcast, and one of the best-known voices on the business side of vet medicine. He works with thousands of practice owners and managers, and he's still in the consult room too, trying to figure out how to find solutions for a client with $150 to her name - like you. In this conversation, he picks apart the sum every employed vet has done on the back of a lab result printout: why is there such a big mismatch between what I’m treating and the number on my pay slip? In this episode, he explains: ■ The Mediocre Industry Problem: Why it's better to be mediocre in an exceptional industry than exceptional in a mediocre one, and where vet medicine sits on that scale. ■ The Inherent Tension: Why veterinary profession is one of the only jobs where we beg customers not to leave, and how our drive to keep care affordable puts the ceiling on what we earn. ■ Where Every Dollar Goes: The three buckets that eat 85 to 90 cents of every dollar a practice brings in, and the one number that puts everything in perspective.  ■ The Invisible Stress of Ownership: Why practice owners often feel real shame when pay comes up, and how much of the finances they should share with their team. ■ Resentment as a Metric: How to tell when resentment is warning you about something, and how to choose what to do about it. ■ Corporate vs Independent: What a US survey found about who earns more and who finds more meaning in their work, and why comparing salaries is so often the thief of joy. ■ The Retail Model Mistake: The one thing Andy would change if he could rebuild the profession from scratch. Mentioned in this episode The 10th Anniversary Uncharted Veterinary Conference Cone of Shame PodcastThe Uncharted Veterinary PodcastBlunt Dissection with Dr Dave NicolQuestions With Crocker with Dr Tanasia CrockerFictional podcast StoryCorps Come skiing with us (while you learn) Vets On Tour is heading to the Dolomites. It's a week of CPD in Canazei, Italy, from 16 to 23 January 2027, with a Dolomiti Superski pass covering 1,200 km of runs. The learning is excellent, the snow is better, and the après is non-negotiable. Book your spot here. Topics and time stamps | 2:38 | Money & Business in Vet Medicine – Why vets are uncomfortable talking money  | 3:55 | "Money is not distributed fairly" – Mediocre industry vs. exceptional industry  | 5:06 | The Disney World analogy – Why vets can't just walk away from unpaying clients  | 7:07 | The Inherent Tension – Caring for pets vs. maximising revenue  | 9:31 | Why Employees Don't See the Full Picture – The young vet's $50/hr frustration | 14:04 | Compensation is more than money – Benefits, culture, flexibility & context  | 18:53 | Corporatisation & high salaries leading to unhappiness  | 22:35 | Resentment as a Metric – Choosing how you suffer  | 23:49 | The Dollar Conversation: "Andy, explain my pay"  | 27:29 | The Anchor Principle – Why clients think vet care is overpriced  | 29:13 | The Three Buckets – Labor Cost of Goods Overhead  | 33:54 | The Invisible Stress of Ownership – Catastrophising & shielding the team  | 37:53 | The Medusa Problem – Building trust before tackling money conversations  | 41:37 | Empathy for the business owner – Shame, fear & emotional baggage around money  | 45:49 | Corporate vs. Independent – Trust, meaning & pay trade-offs  | 49:07 | "Comparison is the thief of joy" – Don't chase dollars alone  | 54:42 | The Pass-Along Question – Redesigning the vet profession from scratch

    169: Exceptional Vet, Mediocre Pay: If I'm So Busy, Why Can't I Earn More? With Dr Andy Roark

  2. Sep 17

    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 links Liv'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.com Topics and time stamps Why Liv Researched This Topic (4:40)   Personal Feedback Stories: Good and Bad (8:11)   Sponsor Break (12:24)   Feedback Is Constant, Not Just Formal (13:17)   Defining Psychological Safety (19:48)   Personality, Environment, and Fear of Conflict (23:32)   Two-Way Feedback: Leaders and Employees (26:12)   Behaviours That Destroy Psychological Safety (31:15)   Handling Defensiveness (33:29)   Practical Roleplay: Giving Difficult Feedback (37:17)   Feedback vs. Other Causes of Turnover (42:53)   A Vision for the Future of the Profession (47:14)   Closing Thoughts (49:52)

    168: You're Doing Feedback Wrong. With Dr Olivia Oginska

  3. Sep 2

    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 out A 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/

    167: Space Plus People Equals Place: 5 Common Practice Design Mistakes to Avoid. With Jerry Kennard

  4. Aug 26

    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 links Sarah'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.com Topics and time stamps 03:01 - Fear in veterinary practice 06:23 - What feeling are we chasing? 09:28 - Guilt, disconnect and early burnout 11:58 - The six categories of fear 13:33 - Where our fears come from 14:30 - Mid-roll: Vet Vault updates 16:05 - How we gift our fears to colleagues 20:02 - System failure vs personal failure 21:55 - The itty bitty s****y committee 23:16 - Healthy caution vs paralysing fear 26:22 - The debrief and dump it process 28:24 - Accountability without shame 34:56 - Imposter syndrome as hidden fear 36:11 - Are vets more scared today? 38:22 - You don't need all the answers 40:02 - Defensive medicine vs helping 46:03 - Consult room formula and money conversations 54:45 - The changing fear behaviour activity 1:01:57 - Schedule anxiety and work-life balance 1:03:20 - Wrap-up: podcast picks and final thoughts 1:08:22 - Advice for the new grads of 2026

    166: It's Not Burnout. It's Fear. Dr Sarah Golding on vet burnout, imposter syndrome and getting your confidence back

  5. Aug 10

    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 dog If 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/

    165: Making Sense of IDEXX Cancer Dx - Canine Lymphoma Screening. With Dr Sandra Nguyen

  6. Jul 30

    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.com Find 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 mentioned Vetquity - 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 armour Topics and Timestamps 0:00 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

    164: The Planes That Never Came Home: Inclusion, Retention and the Hidden Curriculum, with Dr Alex Harrison

  7. Jul 15

    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 mentioned Learn 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 Conference Topics and time stamps 02:46 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

    163: Tech Tools for Vets 5: The Fix for Missed Billing, with SmartCapture

  8. Jul 3

    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.com Topics and Time Stamps 03:20 Going Viral, and the Unexpected Backlash 08:24 The Love-Hate of Social Media 10:17 The Birth of WeCare 13:24 75% of Dogs Are Unowned 13:53 Courage or Naivety? 16:35 Mid-Roll Break 18:31 Regrets? & Life in Sri Lanka 21:30 Two Lives: Sri Lanka vs UK 36:15 Are We Too Quick to Euthanise? 39:55 What We Underestimate and Undervalue in ‘normal’ Vet Life 43:22 Volunteering at WeCare 49:03 Charity Vetting as a Career 55:10 Rapid Fire Questions 59:21 Advice for New Grads

    162: Street Dogs, Brave Vetting, and the Double Life of Dr Janey Lowes
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Ratings & Reviews

4.8
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

The Vet Vault is a veterinary podcast for vets and vet students covering career growth, clinical medicine, leadership, and mental health and wellbeing across the veterinary profession. Vet life can be tough, but it's also good - so how do we make it even better? Host Dr Hubert Hiemstra brings honest, curious, occasionally irreverent conversations with the people making vet med better. Clinical CPD, careers, wellbeing, and the tech changing how we practise. Come fall back in love with veterinary science. Find show notes, clinical CE and the newsletter at thevetvault.com.

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