I'll Never Go Back: One Veterinarian's Pandemic Reflections

When COVID-19 hit the United States in March 2020, serving our patients’ needs was suddenly not so simple. On this 2-year anniversary, we asked veterinarians across the nation to share their experiences. Read on to see how one Florida practice navigated the pandemic.

How do you think the pandemic has changed veterinary practice?

I’ve been a veterinarian for 17 years, and I’ve owned my practice for 10 of those years. I’ve seen the profession change a lot over the years. I worry there is a trend toward making medicine more transactional that is damaging the psyche of young veterinarians. When we make clients the enemy, as the thing getting in the way of us doing our jobs, that does a disservice not just to clients but to ourselves.

I think it’s gotten worse during the pandemic, to some degree. People have been so emotionally raw during the pandemic—both staff and clients—we’re seeing more of those negative interactions. Everybody is doing the best they can but clients are definitely more reactive, and we have also become more reactive, as a profession… Because we’re burned out, we’re exhausted, we’re emotionally raw.

Nobody means to be that way but as we’ve had more negative interactions, we come to anticipate negative interactions. So it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy and it is self-defeating. If you think, “Ugh, I have to see all these clients today, they’re all gonna be terrible,” then you're looking for bad things to happen… and I do think that has gotten worse during the pandemic.

People are definitely the thing that makes the job hard. But you know, relationships are the best part of practice, both with the animals and with the clients. When you have really good clients who place their trust in you and you honor that bond, that’s the best part of practice.

What has been the biggest challenge for veterinarians during the pandemic?

The hardest thing about being a practice owner throughout the pandemic has been trying to make rules in a constantly changing environment. I am so close to my staff. I have a staff of 16, including 3 associates, and they really are like family. Making decisions that were going to paint me to be the bad guy was hard.

Just like the rest of the country seems to be divided fifty-fifty, so is our practice. So I made a rule 6 months into it that we don’t talk about COVID here. We just don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about politics or religion, and we don’t talk about COVID. It had become such a divisive thing with my staff and morale was really low. When I made the rule, nearly immediately the staff was better again. Within a week, we were more cohesive, we worked better as a unit!

But it was really hard in the beginning, trying to keep everyone happy and keep them unified. Some of us hated curbside and some of us loved curbside. Every time I made a decision, it wasn't going to make everybody happy, but decision after decision after decision had to be made! I would lie awake at night. I feel very responsible for these 16 women and their families, and I wasn't sure if I was making the right decisions. We’re a year and a half past that point, but the first few months were really hard.

Did your practice experience any change in demand for veterinary services during the pandemic?

We’ve always been a really busy practice, so I don't think it has been as overwhelming for us. Before the pandemic, our schedule would be maybe 75% full, and then we’d get walk-ins, urgent calls, same-day appointments. With the pandemic, especially because there was a period of time we were only seeing urgent care, when we did start seeing everything again, we’d have like 9 drop-offs every day. Bleeding or vomiting dogs or dogs with UTIs. So we had to change the way we did our scheduling to accommodate them without getting burned out. We blocked off more same-day appointment slots, we blocked off a longer lunch, we stopped taking appointments earlier in the day.

Because we were proactive about that, I think for us it has been more sustainable, as opposed to a practice that maybe feels the pressure to just see everything every day. We tried to be very intentional about what we saw so that maybe it wouldn't be so overwhelming.

How were these scheduling changes, along with curbside and mask policies, received by your clients?

Certainly there were a lot of grumpy clients in the beginning. But thankfully we have a really fabulous client base. Our clients trust us a lot and most of them were grateful we were trying to keep them safe.

The people who got mad left early on. The first month or two were hard because people were mad they couldn't get their way, but we just didn’t pander to them. If someone said, “There's another clinic in town that’s letting people in,” I would say, “That’s okay, you can go there!” And that was fine because we had plenty of business.

One day, we had a client who got really ugly about curbside. She said, “This is ridiculous, I can’t believe you’re not letting me inside with my pet.” We said, “Well, Dr. X has cancer.” The client was speechless. She came back the next day with this really lovely heartfelt card and flowers. She said, “I feel so terrible. I’ve really never thought about you guys as human beings. I’ve never thought about the fact that you have lives and problems beyond this clinic. I’ve only ever thought about what you could do for me and I’m so sorry for that.” It was a really good moment for my staff… people can come around if you just communicate with them.

Did you find that curbside or other pandemic-related changes affected the way you practice medicine?

What I saw was a decrease in compliance with recommendations. So much of communication is not verbal. When you have the woman in the room with her Chihuahua and you can pull up the lip and say, “Look at her teeth, these teeth probably really hurt, see how red that gum line is… we can clean her teeth and she’s going to feel so much better.” We lost that visual communication. Clients couldn’t physically see what we were pointing at. Also, when clients come inside the hospital, they can see us giving their dogs kisses and cuddling them, so they trust us so when we say, “Your dog needs a dental and it’s going to be this much money.” They’re like, “Okay, I know this person wants what’s best for my pet so I’m gonna do it.”

We saw fewer clients accepting not just dentals, but everything, even lab work and x-rays. If a client brings in a vomiting dog, normally you have a good long conversation with them, and then the technician can go through the estimate line by line. Instead, the client is sitting in the hot parking lot for what feels like an eternity waiting, and by the time you call them [after the physical exam], they just want to go home. They don't want their dog to have x-rays and lab work and whatever, they just want to go home. As soon as people were allowed back inside, compliance was much better again. I don’t think it was anything anybody did wrong! It’s just human nature.

Even though we had gotten used to curbside, it’s so nice to not have to make 6 phone calls. I hated it, and I was so glad when clients were allowed back inside. I know I was the one making the rule! But I still hated it. I loved when I felt like I could invite people back in.

What lessons from the past two years do you think you will keep in mind as we move forward?

The pandemic has made me as an owner think very proactively about what I can do to protect the mental health of my staff. Things like putting blocks in the schedule, making lunchtime longer. Not that I wasn’t paying attention to mental health before, but because now everybody was struggling and everybody was stressed out, it was like, “Okay, I need to be ahead of this and make changes before things become problematic.” I believe I will continue to think that way moving forward.

I also became quicker to turn away more difficult clients. I don't even mean like sending a lot of letters firing clients; I’ve only had to do that a handful of times. But I became much less tolerant of bad behavior from clients, because I could see how damaging that was to my staff. I told my whole staff, you don’t have to tolerate it! Just walk away and get me or get the practice manager. If a client says, “If you don't give me my way, I’m going somewhere else!” then say, “Okay, that’s fine, you should go somewhere else.” I just stopped worrying about it.

I prioritized taking care of my staff. I was never a “client is always right” person, but I definitely was more tolerant of that behavior [before the pandemic]. Now I’ll never go back.

If you could go back in time before the pandemic, what advice would you give yourself?

Hang in there. This is going to be super hard, but at the end of the day what you're doing is important. It matters and it’s going to continue to matter to the people who matter to you. Don’t let all of the BS discourage you from doing the thing you love that makes such a difference in the world.

Stop listening to the noise. There’s just so much noise, not even just from the TV and Facebook… even within our profession, there’s been so much unrest and negativity. I had to remember how much I love my job at its core. I think if I had done that sooner I would have been happier sooner.

Clinician's Brief conducted interviews via Zoom in February 2022. Responses are lightly edited for length and clarity.