Finding hope in the veterinary career

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM, is the cofounder of Veterinary Hope Foundation. She sat down with dvm360 for an interview at the Fetch conference in Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss what this organization does for veterinary professionals. Through the foundation, Chosa is aiming to change the narrative of despair for the veterinary career and find the joy in this amazing work.

Below is a partial transcript of the video.

Elizabeth Chosa, DVM: So my friend, Blair McConnel, VMD, MBA, and I cofounded the Veterinary Hope Foundation in the spring of 2021. We did that in response to, what I've come to call, this collective sense of despair in our profession.

There is a changing narrative over the years and we noticed that things are trending toward the negative when we're talking about mental health. And we're talking about veterinarians who are struggling with their mental health. This narrative has become sometimes almost like we're victims of our profession, that if we enter veterinary medicine, it's inevitable that we're going to suffer and be miserable. And we knew that wasn't true. I love being a veterinarian. I have worked in a lot of different sectors and I have found a place to belong in all of them. And so we knew people were really suffering and struggling, but we also knew that there had to be a way to empower veterinarians and to start to focus the narrative back toward positive change.