Balancing the highs and lows of veterinary medicine

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM, cofounder of Veterinary Hope Foundation, sat down with dvm360 for an interview at the 2024 Fetch conference in Nashville, Tennessee. She explained that this profession has its ups and downs, and it's essential to remember this balance to avoid focusing solely on the negatives. This revised mindset can help improve well-being not only at work, but also outside of it.

Below is a partial transcript of the video.

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM: I think it's really important to remember that veterinary medicine is a field that is going to have hard days and hard moments and hard cases. And I think that we need to remember that life is not black and white. A lot of us are perfectionists and a lot of us see things in extremes just by nature. But that's not a good way to live. Because life is not all good or all bad, and veterinary medicine is not all good or all bad. We have to hold space and allow things to be both really hard and also really good at the same time. And I think if we can keep that in mind and live more comfortably in the gray area—work through the hard moments and seek out the good moments—that's one of the keys to being able to enjoy not only this career, but to enjoy life.