The perfectionism trap in vet med: why 'good enough' IS good enough

"I'm failing and... I'm failing myself, I'm failing the pet, I'm failing the client, I'm monetarily failing if I'm having to suggest more things because I feel like what I've done already has been inadequate..."

This young vet was crippled by self doubt at the end of every shift, and you and I know she's not alone with these thoughts. It's crazy to me sometimes, with this outside perspective, how vets that are much cleverer than me still think they're failing everyone because every diagnosis or treatment plan they come up with doesn't work out to perfection.

Veterinary brains are highly wired to always do the best and work the hardest. In order to get into vet school our grades had to be near perfect, and IN vet school it is expected to perfectly know each subject each teacher is going on about in that moment. Text books have clever flow charts where everything follows a logic, one-lane path: if this, then that. The books make us falsely believe that veterinary medicine is an almost two dimensional, logic to a fault (and with a concrete solution to everything) field, like this:

_- - - - - - >>>> 123 +/- abc = X with a nice 🎀 at the end.


When in reality, it looks more like something like this:

~?<(@($:**&@)` ~..... ?}")(%^$£!@:> ... With one of these at the end: 😵‍💫 🤔 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's a running joke that unfortunately the pets don't read the text books, but it's also SO TRUE!! So, here's the problem: When our brains, built and trained for problem solving and resourcefulness, are incapable of landing on the perfect diagnosis and treatment (within the owners budget, of course, whatever it is), we believe something has gone wrong.

If something has gone wrong, it means we've missed something, or we didn't try hard enough. Or another vet would have done it better (typical black and white thinking; they're ALL right and I'm ALL wrong). So now our brain starts freaking out, because this obviously means we're failing, we're not good enough and what are we even doing pretending to be "real" vets ?!?!

The more this happens to us, the worse it gets, because now we start to freeze up and can't make a decision whenever there is a possibility that something doesn't have that "perfect" solution. Not only do we worry about the consequences for pet and owner, but also, quite subconsciously, we remember how hard we were on ourselves last time and how uncomfortable it was to go through so much self doubt. And our brain wants us to avoid being uncomfortable, so it stalls us and gets us to double check every decision with colleagues, "just in case", to protect us.

But this is a road to a dead end, because it's a self fulfilling prophesy and you'll trust yourself less and less. Like the vet I coached the other day: "I wish I could jsut vaccinate all day, so I didn't have to make decisions and risk being wrong".

The way out of this? We've GOT to accept that in our profession, good enough IS enough. That the text books can stick their flow charts where the sun doesn't shine (respectfully), because when you have an owner with zero budget that brought Luna in way to late AND already tried with whole milk, garlic and coconut oil, your case ain't flowing nowhere along any chart.

You WILL miss things, because sometimes you just don't have access to all the tools you need. Some treatments that seemed straight forward won't work, because a) the owner gave the whole treatment on day one as opposed to over 10 days, 2) they failed to tell you their pet already had 3 lots of antibiotics and you don't have the history or 3) it's a full moon/there's another, underlying disease you could never have guessed/just because.

The more you can lean into doing the best you can with what you've got, and not beat yourself up over all the things you in hindsight "should" have done, or "other vets would have done better", the more you can relax and trust yourself, and be able to make better decisions from a grounded place. Perfectionism, ironically, makes us worse vets because being in fight and flight response gives us tunnel vision, we lose perspective and our ability to think creatively.

I have (of course! 😁) a whole module on this in the Happy in Vet Med course. Check it out here, and watch the video that will give you a feel for how I teach.

In your corner,

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Ready to fall back in love with Vet Med?

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