The Vet Vault: Veterinary Career, Clinical Skills & Wellbeing

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_mindmentor
Close 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 here
Vets 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 shitty 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

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 cytology
The two clinical scenarios where Dr Sandra finds it most useful: the vaguely "cancery" dog, and annual screening in at-risk breeds
Why you should keep those slides on the shelf when owners are undecided about chemo
What 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/

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 workplaces
2025 AVA President's Award: Dr Alex Harrison
The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu
Stronger by Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM - the quadriplegic emergency doctor whose story reframes what "capable" means
Dr Anna Dengate on reasonable residencies - our earlier episode on rethinking whether specialist training has to be full-time
Dr 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 Home
3:02 Welcome & The Survivorship Bias Post
4:11 Why Inclusion Matters for the Profession
7:57 Avoidable vs Unavoidable Bullets
10:42 Solve for One, Solve for All
17:03 The Hidden Curriculum
22:35 The Problem with the Resilience Narrative
27:07 Fear and Co-Design in Practice
39:43 Alex's Burnout Story & Internalised Ableism
42:02 Defining Ableism
45:36 Vetquity & Where to Start
48:19 Rapid Fire & Closing

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 SmartCapture
AAHA: Maybe Money Does Grow on Trees
Subscribe to The Vet Vault newsletter
Vet Science Week 2026
Vets on Tour conferences
ASAV Annual Conference with the Veterinary Business Group
Greencross 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

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 option
How being the last line changes your perspectives, and what that does to your goalposts when you go back to first-world practice
The 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.uk
The charity takes volunteers and offers longer-term work 
Volunteer and work with WECare: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk/volunteer/
WECare on Instagram: @wecare_srilanka
Find Janey:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeythevet
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@janeythevet
Her book, Janey the Vet: Saving Sri Lanka's Street Dogs, is on Amazon, Waterstones and WH Smith
More from The Vet Vault:
Everything we do lives at https://www.thevetvault.com, including our clinical CE podcasts and resources
Come 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