The Vet Vault is a veterinary podcast for vets and vet students covering career growth, clinical medicine, leadership, and mental health and wellbeing across the veterinary profession. Vet life can be tough, but it's also good - so how do we make it even better? Host Dr Hubert Hiemstra brings honest, curious, occasionally irreverent conversations with the people making vet med better. Clinical CPD, careers, wellbeing, and the tech changing how we practise. Come fall back in love with veterinary science. Find show notes, clinical CE and the newsletter at thevetvault.com.
Listen to episodes
60 recent
September 2, 2026Episode 16745 min
167: Space Plus People Equals Place: 5 Common Practice Design Mistakes to Avoid. With Jerry Kennard
What if the thing making your working day harder isn’t the workload? What if it's the building? In this episode we're joined by Jerry Kennard from Evoke Projects , someone who designs veterinary spaces for a living and has watched a lot of owners get this expensively wrong. Because a practice build always starts as a dream: the right location, the beautiful fit-out - the clinic you've always wanted. But plan it wrong, and that dream can quickly turn into a trap that stifles growth and demotivates teams . And most of it comes down to five mistakes that are a lot easier to avoid before you sign anything than after. In this episode, you'll learn: Why falling in love with your site might be the single most expensive mistake you can make The "too big or too small" problem, and how to future-proof for expansion without drowning in debt Why designing for the pet and the client but forgetting your team is a false economy How lean design and smart workflow let you do more in less space, without burning anyone out A great clinic isn't designed to look good on opening day. It's designed to perform every day. Join us to find out how. For more episodes like this with practical insights for practice owners join us on the Veterinary Business Accelerator podcast. Join Hugh and Jerry on a Vets on Tour adventure: https://vetsontour.com/
August 26, 2026Episode 1661 hr 10 min
166: It's Not Burnout. It's Fear. Dr Sarah Golding on vet burnout, imposter syndrome and getting your confidence back
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
August 10, 2026Episode 16526 min
165: Making Sense of IDEXX Cancer Dx - Canine Lymphoma Screening. With Dr Sandra Nguyen
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/
July 30, 2026Episode 1641 hr 0 min
164: The Planes That Never Came Home: Inclusion, Retention and the Hidden Curriculum, with Dr Alex Harrison
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
July 15, 2026Episode 16348 min
163: Tech Tools for Vets 5: The Fix for Missed Billing, with SmartCapture
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
July 3, 2026Episode 1621 hr 1 min
162: Street Dogs, Brave Vetting, and the Double Life of Dr Janey Lowes
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
June 18, 2026Episode 1611 hr 25 min
161: Tech Tools for Vets 4: Heidi - AI Scribe, Voice Agents And Clinical Decision Support For Vets. With Dr Kieran McLeod
You've been using your veterinary AI note taker for a couple of years now - it’s great - saves you heaps of time. But are you using it to its full potential? I’ll take a bet that you’re not. These things move fast, and it’s hard to keep up. Which is why, in our Tech for Vets Series, we pull apart the veterinary tools that are changing how we work, and this time we put Heidi up on our screens for a detailed walk through. Our guide is Dr Kieran McLeod , head of medical knowledge at Heidi Health. We start by putting the scribe through its paces to find the workflow tricks that you’re probably missing - I walked away with at least five tricks I'd never used. Then Kieran shows off all the shiny new AI magic coming your way: voice agents, built-in clinical support and a hardware solution that lets you leave your phone in your bag. You'll learn: The scribe features you're almost certainly ignoring - linked patients, the context window, smart dictation, and the one-click voice edits that mean you never type a note correction again The AI voice agent that makes the phone call you've been dreading What baked-in clinical decision support looks like How to safety-net the worry that keeps you up - that quiet "did I miss something?" feeling How to incorporate hands-free hardwar e into your workflow This is a screen-share walkthrough, so head to Spotify if you want to watch the clicks rather than just hear us talk about them. Show notes and details live at thevetvault.com Get clinical support from human specialists at the Vet Vault Specialist Support Space Get rid of your mid-year 'meh' at our Vets On Tour New Zealand snow conference Topics and Timestamps 02:35 Intro: Beyond the scribe0 05:18 Human-first vs. vet-first: does it matter? 09:17 Note-taking basics 09:46 Context windows & linked patients 15:46 Multiple documents & the source of truth 18:49 Smart Dictation for quick edits 29:38 Sync changes across documents 33:10 Task lists 36:06 Collaboration & session sharing 40:07 Sharing & exporting documents 41:22 Heidi Comms: AI voice agents 53:46 Heidi Evidence: clinical decision support 01:04:50 Using Evidence for complex histories 01:09:11 Evidence sources & collections 01:14:01 Heidi Remote: the hardware mic 01:21:46 EMR integrations (ezyVet & Covetrus)
May 30, 202656 min
160: Toxic Workplaces Just Got Expensive: What The New Psychological Safety Laws Mean For Vet Practices. With Rhonda Andrews
A surgeon hurls a scalpel across theatre. It clatters off the wall. Nobody looks up. Twenty minutes later he's in the tearoom offering everyone a biscuit, and someone shrugs: "That's just him when he's stressed." If you've worked in veterinary practice for any length of time, you've got your own version of that story - maybe a bit less dramatic, but still things that completely destroy psychological safety. This episode is about that stuff, and the new psychosocial safety laws now rolling out across Australia that say plainly: no, actually, that's not acceptable. To make sense of what that looks like on a normal Tuesday in a normal practice, you'll hear from psychologist Rhonda Andrews, who works across high-pressure industries - emergency departments, the courts, and the veterinary profession - and who has spent years watching them all wrestle with the same problem: people breaking. This conversation is not about “just be more resilient”, but about systems. Rhonda makes a genuinely good-news case that these laws aren't more bureaucracy to dread - they're the push our profession has needed all along. You'll hear Why the things you've always filed under "just part the job" might now legally count as a psychological workplace injury - with consequences attached The myth spreading fastest right now - that bosses can no longer have an honest performance conversation - and why that's flatly wrong What the new psychosocial safety laws actually require of you as a practice owner Why this a team problem , not just something for management to sort out Why "workload" is almost never the real problem - and the thing breaking your team underneath it that owners consistently miss The one shift available to everyone in the building - whatever their title - that changes culture without a single policy change A note: this is the second in a small psych-safety miniseries. If you haven't heard Episode 158 with Dr Rebecca Faris on the AVA Thrive programme, start there for the bigger picture. Resources: Barrington Centre - Rhonda's psychosocial safety seminars (two online sessions, plus an in-person Melbourne day) and the Vet ECM training programmes for owners, leaders, and new supervisors: barringtoncentre.com For show notes, clinical content and the newsletter head to thevetvault.com , and come find your people at a Vets On Tour conference - email me at info@thevetvault.com to find out about our new-grad 50% discount for Wānaka inAugust. Topics and time stamps 04:52 Rising Mental Health Claims 08:41 Mythbusting Owners Fears1 0:37 Defining Psychological Safety 12:37 Vets Staying in Bad Jobs 14:28 Sponsor Break Vets On Tour 16:03 Systems vs Individual Responsibility 19:35 Burnout Stats and Human Cost 21:17 Who Can Influence Culture? 22:46 Is Vet Work Uniquely Hard? 24:05 Human Sector Parallels 29:15 Business Model Reality Check 30:18 ROI of Retention 32:20 Psychosocial Safety Laws 37:34 Workload and Rostering Fixes4 2:44 Leadership and Being Heard 45:27 From Blame to Pathways 50:27 Training Programs and Teams 52:58 Myth Busting Performance Reviews 54:27 Final Takeaways
May 12, 2026Episode 15954 min
159: Tech Tools for Vets 3: Instinct ❤️ Scribble - What Happens When Your PIMS And Your Scribe Get Married? With Dr Caleb Frankel and Rohan Relan
The long-term vision is that you walk into a clinic, hit record at the beginning of the day - you walk out at the end of the day, and you never put your hands in a computer. You just did medicine, and everything went into the right place.’ Sound too good to be true? Maybe. But it's closer than you think. If you've already adopted a veterinary AI scribe, you'll know it's transformed your day. But scribes are just the gateway drug. The really interesting question is what your scribe connects to next - and the answer, for a growing number of vets, is the brain of the clinic itself: your practice management software. This conversation brings together Dr Caleb Franke l, ER vet and founder of Instinct - the PIMS used by many of the world's largest specialty and emergency hospitals, and now built out for general practice too, and Rohan Relan , founder of Scribble Vet . Earlier this year, Instinct acquired Scribble - and what they're building together is a glimpse of where veterinary software could be heading. You'll hear: Why up to 80% of your veterinary work day is swallowed by a keyboard What "beyond scribing" looks like - from infographics, to embedded drug references that update in real time as you talk, to anaesthesia records that fill themselves in from across the room. The "easy to verify, hard to generate" principle - why the best AI tools in clinic don't try to replace you, they let you stay in the loop without doing the grunt work. What it means when your scribe and your PIMS talk to each other . Why an "open API" matters more than you think when individual vets can magically build for their own tools. The tech patient safety layer that can catch your mistakes before you make them Where this all goes next - and why both guests believe we're still only seeing the beginning of what AI in clinical practice can do. We recorded this as a video with screen sharing, so if you want to follow along and see what these tools actually look like in action, watch it on Spotify. For our clinical content, show notes, and our full back catalogue, head to thevetvault.com . While you're there, check out our subscriber-only clinical podcast, our newsletter, and come and hang out with us in real life at Vets On Tour. Topics and Timestamps Why Instinct Acquired Scribble 2:08 Beyond Scribes: The Bigger Vision 7:48 Demo: Scribble + Instinct Integration 10:06 Plums Drug Reference Integration 11:30 Mid-Roll: Events & Announcements 14:49 Pushing Notes to Instinct 16:27 Scribble Features: Translations, Care Cards & More 19:29 Record Review & AI Verifiability 21:28 Instinct PIMS Overview 24:17 Instinct Expands to General Practice 24:51 Instinct Features: Estimates, Safety Warnings & Clinical Tools 32:03 Embedded Scribble: Voice-Controlled Anesthesia Records 38:07 AI Safety: Human in the Loop 38:46 APIs, MCP Servers & Vibe Coding for Vets 45:02 Open vs Closed PIMS Philosophy 50:39
April 22, 2026Episode 15854 min
158: Psychological Safety For Vets: Why The Job Might Need Fixing, Not The People. With Dr Rebecca Faris
"Maybe we're just picking the wrong people to be vets." You've probably heard some version of that line. Maybe you've even said it. 'The new grads can't cope. The younger generation is too soft. If this profession isn't working for you, maybe the profession isn't the problem - maybe you are.' But what if that's the wrong conversation entirely? Maybe it's not the people who need to change - but the job itself. That's the question at the heart of this conversation with Dr Rebecca Faris, the lead of the Australian Veterinary Association's Thrive programme - an industry attempt to figure out how we make veterinary medicine a profession people can actually stay in and enjoy. You'll learn: Why a full-time working week in veterinary medicine probably shouldn't be 40 hours - and the official position from Safe Work Australia that will surprise you The difference between psychological safety and psychosocial safety (one is a vibe, the other is the law - and if you own a practice in Australia, you need to know which is which) What the new psychosocial safety legislation actually requires of practice owners Why "playing to your strengths" isn't the same as avoiding the hard stuff - and how to have that conversation with your employer without sounding like you're asking for special treatment The invisible emotional labour tax you're paying on every consult - and why recognising it changes everything What genuinely great veterinary workplaces are doing differently , and why the "squeaky wheel" narrative is drowning out stories of practices that are getting it right Why "I can't hack full-time" might not mean there's something wrong with you - and the self-compassion case for rethinking what a sustainable vet career actually looks like How to get involved in shaping the future of this profession instead of quietly checking out If you've ever felt wrecked at the end of a perfectly normal day and wondered whether it was you or the job - this one's for you. Resources mentioned: The Thrive Programme and 2025 Wellbeing Survey: ava.com.au/thrive Cultivating Safe Teams training (AVA) 2026 Thrive Wellness Symposium at the AVA Conference, Brisbane, 19 May 2026 Safe Work Australia - psychosocial hazards guidance This episode is not an ad. We're not paid to feature Thrive or the AVA - we just think this is a conversation the profession needs to be having. If you've got thoughts, pushback, or your own story about thriving (or not) in practice, drop us a line at info@thevetvault.com . For our clinical content, show notes, and our full back catalogue, head to thevetvault.com . While you're there, check out our subscriber-only clinical podcast, our newsletter, and come and hang out with us in real life at Vets On Tour. 00:52 Rethinking the 40-Hour Workweek 03:03 Flexibility and Job Crafting 04:57 Are We Picking the Wrong People? 06:05 Playing to Strengths vs Business Needs 12:39 Psychological vs Psychosocial Safety 15:55 The New Laws: Employer Obligations 17:51 Identifying Psychosocial Hazards 20:40 Cultivating Safe Teams Training 24:45 Workload and Emotional Labor 32:34 Vets on Tour Break 34:27 Should Full-Time Be 30 Hours? 36:12 Inside the Thrive Initiative 39:31 Mental Health First Aid 41:35 Empathy for Difficult Clients 44:13 Wins and Optimism 46:27 How to Access Thrive 51:27 Closing Advice: Get Engaged
Is this your show?
Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.
