Coping with stress in veterinary practice using an athlete's mentality

In this interview, Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, host of the podcast Healthspan Digest, offers strategies that veterinary professionals can use to cope with the stress that the veterinary medicine profession may bring. As Shaw explains, key strategies will involve exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

Below is a partial interview transcript, lightly edited for clarity:

Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS: The best way to cope with the daily stressors of vet medicine is to be prepared and in order to be prepared, that has to happen before going into the office, before going into the clinic. And my analogy that I always think of is that of an athlete, and athletes, when they go to game day, or when they go to perform, they are capable of a really high level of performance. You know, physical performance, emotional performance, and focus.

But that doesn't happen just because they walked onto the field that day. It happened from what they did off-field. It's what they did in practice. And I think that with providers in the vet team, what really is key is taking the time outside of the office to prepare for the challenges that are inside the office, to build that resilience.

And the key ways to do that really come down to exercise, nutrition, sleep. We need those 3, just to kind of leave it at those 3 for now, like those 3 have an absolute physiological impact on a person's ability to make decisions—the, you know, cognitive clarity to make decisions, to make challenging decisions, to have the physical stamina to engage in the very physical career of vet medicine, and sleep.

Sleep really enables us to recover from the wear and tear of, you know, the previous day, both the physical challenges and the emotional challenges, and only when all of these things come together, can a provider, can somebody on the team, show up and be resilient to the stresses that are inevitable in practice.