I have a confession to make about ultrasounds in vet med🫣

I have a confession to make 🫣

I am such an experienced veterinarian, flying through emergency consults and surgeries as if I was making pancakes, analysing bloods and urine and other bodily fluids on the go, delegating and directing a team with ease and grace, and then….. I don’t know how to do a proper, full abdominal ultrasound.

Somehow I’ve always ended up working at clinics where u/s wasn’t available or much used, so I’ve just gotten used to using everything else available in order to diagnose my patients.Until now, because now other clinics will refer patients to the hospital where I work, for overnight care and further investigations INCLUDING FULL ABDOMINAL ULTRASOUNDS🙀🙀🙀🙀!!

And I suddenly realised I was avoiding doing them altogether, because I just didn’t feel competent enough, and I was telling myself I didn’t want to waste the client’s money on a diagnostic test I couldn’t complete to a high standard, that it would be a waste of time and energy.Which is all very well, but in this way I have actually had access to an ultrasound device for over a year and not learned to use it besides a quick fluid or bladder check🤦‍♀️.

Why? Because I HATE doing something I’m bad at!!

Again, why? Because I feel shame and inadequacy thinking “I should be good at this by now”.

Which then ironically keeps me from getting good at it!🫠

So I finally started scanning.

I’m doing an online basic course so I can learn a systematic approach. I scan my patients during the night, take a shot at what I THINK I’m seeing, and I stay behind in the morning and let my clinical director, who is a crack at scanning, do the scan with me next to him, and we go through it again, together.

At my last scan I got 80% right, so I might soon actually start charging for doing a scan… 😬

My point is, when we’re unwilling to be bad at something for a while until we’re good at it, we could go through our whole life never learning, for the sake of avoiding the discomfort.

Without the awareness that we’re doing it, you just don’t face it.🤷🏻‍♀️