NOMV and IndeVets team up to fight the veterinary mental health crisis

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IndeVets, a veterinary staffing agency, and Not One More Vet (NOMV) have teamed up to help support veterinary professionals in crisis through a partnership around NOMV’s Lifeboat program. The program is a peer support space that veterinary professionals can utilize to discuss mental health and wellness issues using evidence-based practices for those in crisis.

According to an organizational release,¹ Lifeboat is an online all-volunteer program where veterinary professionals are separated into groups called Peer Companion Pods. Here, the participants are joined by 3 companions and a peer who is looking for support. Participants can then chat with their peers and receive assistance in asynchronous time.

“When we talk about people who go into medicine in general, and certainly into veterinary medicine, we're talking about incredibly caring [and] empathetic, people who are often perfectionists, and quite frankly, we're often worriers, right? If you put all that together, it makes a really amazing caregiver,” explained Carrie Jurney, DVM, DACVIM (Neuro), president of NOMV, during the Lifting Up Vets with Lifeboat event.

“But at the same time, you put that caregiver in a high-stress, fast-paced environment with not enough staff, and just the aspects of the job, right, that we don't always get to win,” she continued.

Through this newly launched partnership, 5 IndeVet doctors volunteered to go through the Lifeboat training to help themselves prepare to help those who are struggling with a mental health crisis safely and effectively.¹ The partnership will help IndeVet veterinarians give back and help other veterinary professionals who are dealing with industry challenges they themselves have once had to deal with.

“It really comes down to working in that hospital every day with that support staff and dealing with possibly sad cases and possibly angry clients or sad clients, right, or people who don't know how to express themselves appropriately. So my hope, with all of us talking out loud and going into these hospitals and leading by example, that's so big, that's one of our core values at IndeVets. So having our support that's going into these hospitals and showing them also the support, so that we are paying it forward into those hospitals,” said Marisa Brunetti, VMD, chief veterinary officer at IndeVets, during the event.

“So my goal in 5 to 10 years is that small hospitals, whether it's 1 doctor practice or 12, doctor practice, can actually understand what it's like to be supportive, to have their team be respected, to put boundaries up, so that the staff can feel respected so that we can take care of more pets in a better way,” she concluded.

Reference

IndeVets and Not One More Vet Team Up to Fight the Mental Health Crisis in Veterinary Medicine. News release. IndeVets. May 1, 2023. Accessed May 4, 2023. https://www.accesswire.com/752121/IndeVets-and-Not-One-More-Vet-Team-Up-to-Fight-the-Mental-Health-Crisis-in-Veterinary-Medicine