Listen in as VIN Foundation Board Member Matt Holland chats with Dr. Bronwyn Fullagar about her dedication to self-care, how humor plays a vital role, and what it’s like performing veterinary surgery around the world.
HOST AND GUEST BIOS:
Dr. Matt Holland
Matt Holland, DVM graduated from the University of Illinois CVM class of 2017. He is a Veterinary & Pre-Vet Student Advocate for the VIN Student Team and his interests are Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, mental wellness, environmental health, student debt, & policy. His interest in policy led him to Washington, D.C. after graduating, where he completed the AVMA/AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Congressional Fellowship in the office of Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos and the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship at the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture. Originally from a suburb of Chicago, IL, he came to veterinary medicine as a second career. After graduating in 2007 from Drake University with a B.A. in radio and television journalism, he worked as a freelance television producer for various media outlets in Chicago and New York City including Big Ten Network, Major League Baseball Network, and the Chicago Bears. During veterinary school, he found a love for giving back to the profession, and one of his proudest achievements is serving as SAVMA President. He is thankful for the opportunity to keep giving back as a VIN Foundation board member and excited for the future of the VIN Foundation.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSc, MS, DACVS-SA
Dr. Bronwyn Fullagar is a specialist small animal surgeon based in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Bronwyn grew up in Brisbane, Australia and earned her veterinary degree from the University of Queensland in 2007. After a few years in mixed and small animal practice, she moved to Calgary for a rotating internship, then to the Ohio State University to complete a residency in small animal surgery. She returned to Canada and was awarded Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2016. Since then, Bronwyn has worked as a specialist small animal surgeon in Canada, Australia and the United States, and has volunteered as a surgical instructor for World Vets and the Worldwide Veterinary Service. At work, she enjoys challenging soft tissue surgery cases and she loves to share her enthusiasm for surgery, helping veterinary students and practicing vets to boost their expertise and confidence. When she’s not in the clinic, you can find her in the mountains, trail running with her dog, mountain biking or backcountry skiing.
LINKS AND INFORMATION:
- The Vet Vault Clinical Podcast: https://vvn.supercast.tech/
- VIN Foundation Student Debt Center: https://vinfoundation.org/studentdebtcenter
You may learn more about the VIN Foundation, on the website, or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
If you like this podcast, we would appreciate it if you follow and share. As always, we welcome feedback. If you have an idea for a podcast episode, we’d love to hear it!
TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Jordan Benshea: Welcome to the Veterinary Pulse podcast. My name is Jordan Benshea. I’m the Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Veterinary Pulse is the heartbeat of the profession. Join us as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, from student debt to mental health, and share stories. Stories connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible through individual donors like yourself, and our technology partnership with VIN, the Veterinary Information Network. Thank you for being here. This episode, VIN Foundation Board member, Dr. Matt Holland is having a conversation with surgeon and public speaker, Dr. Bronwyn Fullagar, about practicing all around the world, the importance of humor, and prioritizing self-care. Please check the Episode Notes for Bios, links, and information mentioned. Thank you for listening.
Meet Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA)
Matt Holland, DVM: So welcome, Bronwyn. Thanks for joining us.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Thanks, Matt. It’s great to be here.
Matt Holland, DVM: And for the listeners, we met a few weeks ago at The Big Student Careers Fair. I was in the audience for one of Bronwyn’s presentations. What she said and how she said it compelled me to reach out to her and get to know her a little bit. Fast forward to her being a guest on the podcast. So, thanks again for joining us.
Bronwyn’s Journey to Veterinary Medicine
Matt Holland, DVM: I guess we’ll start with, What’s your story? Where are you born and raised?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I’ve been away from Australia for about 10 years, but I was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia and spent a brief stint as well in Canada growing up but mainly in Australia.
Matt Holland, DVM: Did you have a defining moment for when you knew you wanted to become a veterinarian?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): No, not really a defining moment. I was always interested in the outdoors and the natural world, and in science and discovery. There was a period when I was a younger child that I wanted to be a tree surgeon, actually an arborist, and had a t-shirt made by my grandmother that had Dr. Fullagar tree surgeon written on it, which was pretty, pretty cool at the time. Then in early high school made a pivot, I think when our family got our first dog and we started taking the dog to the veterinarian. We had a lovely local vet that let me be really involved in all the vet visits. So that encouraged me to pursue that career path.
Matt Holland, DVM: Do you still have the t-shirt?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I don’t. You know, I wish I did. It’d be cool to wear these days.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah, that would be super cool! I mean, there’s still time to become a tree surgeon.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Right! Exactly, exactly. I’ve got most of the basic skills, power tools, and some spatial awareness. I like climbing trees. So, yeah.
Matt Holland, DVM: I hear already in your story, we’re not even very far in your story, and I hear you had a lovely vet who helped you out. That seems to be so crucial to anybody’s life course, having a good teacher, a good coach, or a good mentor. So, you got to school, and when did you decide that you wanted to become a surgeon? Was that before you got to school or when you were in school? How did that come about?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): When I was at vet school, I was a generalist. I liked everything. I thought I wanted to be an equine vet for quite a while. I loved horses growing up, and that really appealed to me, but then as vet school progressed, there were some mentors that suggested that maybe I do an internship at a few points. Really, when I graduated, I wanted to go into mixed practice and test out all the skills that I’d learned, move to a different place, and just kind of try everything out. So, I did mixed practice for a couple of years after graduation. It wasn’t until about two and a half, three years after I graduated that I started to realize that I wanted to go back to school and do some more training. The part of my life as a vet that I felt like I didn’t want to give up was surgery. I guess I just liked the contrast between communication, talking to clients, and developing those relationships, and then that contrast where you have a day or an afternoon in the clinic where you’re doing a really focused skill, when you’re present in a little space by yourself that’s quiet, and you’re working on something really practical. I enjoyed that aspect, so that’s one of the reasons why I decided to keep pursuing surgery.
The Near-Death Experience
Matt Holland, DVM: I might have glossed past the mixed animal practice part except for I listened to an episode of The Vet Vault where you were the guest, and you told a story about mixed animal practice that also involved the tree. So, I don’t want you to tell it to humiliate you, but because you learned some really valuable things, I think that would be good for the audience to hear.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Sure, sure. Yeah. Well, it’s my near-death experience, which fortunately, obviously turned out okay in the end. I was on call. It was my first job as a new grad, and it was Easter in Australia, that’s kind of the start of your year as a new grad. I think I’d been at the practice for about six weeks, and I was on call for the four day, Easter long weekend. It’s just me in my little car, little Subaru, and we were on call for a fairly big radius of hobby farms and small animal emergencies. I had seen a series of emergencies that had lined up, and the bottom line was I hadn’t slept in about 24 – 36 hours. I went out to a local producer’s property, and he’d had several cows die unexpectedly, sudden death. And because it was Queensland and it’s summer, if you don’t do your post-mortem exam straightaway, then you’re going to lose all chance of getting valuable information. So, it seemed important that I go out and investigate why these animals have been dying. It was nighttime when I drove out. The end of a long day and a long weekend. I did a very thorough post-mortem on the cow. I might have been using my car headlights to light the procedure. So, at the end of the procedure, I said to the farmer, can you please just wait for one second, just going to check my car turns on here before you leave, because we’re out in the fairly remote paddock. I turn the car on, and I was silly, I was covered in blood and cow manure, you know. I was disgusting, so I don’t want to get into the car, so I stuck my hand in through the open car window to turn on the car, which obviously is a silly thing to do. But anyway, I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I did that and then the car proceeded to drive away into the dark night. Mistake number two was thinking that I could stop this moving vehicle by myself. So, I sprinted off after the car, was trying to jump in through the car’s window to, I don’t know what, grab the handbrake or somehow stop the moving vehicle. I didn’t see a tree coming up. I essentially got squashed between the car and the tree, and pretty seriously injured. The car, obviously, proceeded to drive off and total itself in the corner of the paddock, fortunately didn’t injure anybody else. I was on the ground in a pretty bad way. Fortunately, the very lovely farmer and his family were there, and they called an ambulance. I got picked up by the ambulance and taken to the to the hospital. Everything turned out okay, but I just still remember when I was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that the on-call phone just wouldn’t stop ringing, it just kept ringing even in the ambulance! Eventually the paramedics answered the phone, and it was still more calls coming in. It’s just one of those crazy weekends. I got airlifted in a sort of medivac situation to the nearest city and spent about a week in hospital and six weeks off work. So yeah, pretty, pretty serious injury and all from silly decisions that I made when I was really really tired. I think moral of that story is nobody’s superhuman. There comes a point where keeping going even if you feel like you need to for the sake of your patient to get to a point where you’re not really helping anybody by carrying on and so you need to ask for help, say no, delegate, or see if you can do things a different way rather than putting yourself and potentially others in danger. Yeah, that’s crazy new grad story.
Matt Holland, DVM: I’m glad you’re healthy, obviously. That part is not fun to talk about or relive, I’m sure, but I think it’s important to mention what you said, nobody’s superhuman, and you can’t do it all, but as a new grad, you probably want to, I imagine. It’s hard to say no.
Advice for New Graduates
Matt Holland, DVM: For new grads out there, do you have one piece of advice you would give them or two, if you have two.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, I’ve got lots of advice. I think in the vein of having boundaries and knowing yourself, one thing that a mentor said to me at one point when I was having one of these really long weekends is that no veterinary patient’s life is worth more than your life. If you’re getting to a point where you’re feeling like keeping going puts yourself in danger, and being really, really tired is one of those things, then it doesn’t need to be fanfare or anything like that, you just need to calmly speak to someone and say, “Look, I’m at a point where I don’t think keeping going is in anyone’s best interest. So, I need some time off. Maybe we can reorganize the schedule, or I need to take the next day off, because I haven’t slept in 24 hours” or something like that. That’s where having good management and mentorship in your practice, particularly in your first practice, is really important. To have those people that will have your back, that are looking out for you to keep you sane, keep you going, and make your job sustainable. You go through a lot of crazy hard times, through study, internships, and residencies, but ultimately, this is a career that you’re hoping will last you many, many years after all that training and hard work is done. You want to make it sustainable, to carry on going, and keep it enjoyable. I speak as someone who’s definitely experienced being pretty burned out at times. It’s difficult to avoid, but I think having really good mentors that you can talk to about it is key.
Mentorship and Burnout
Matt Holland, DVM: Okay, two things there that I want to touch on, and I know they’re related, we’ll figure out a way to make them related, but mentorship and burnout and you said especially mentorship with the first job. How do you know what to look for in a mentor? How do you know if where you are interviewing has good mentorship? What are the telltale signs?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I guess I was really lucky, I went into a practice that did have really excellent mentorship. When I was searching for new graduate jobs, I talked to other veterinarians who had graduated from my vet school recently.
Matt Holland, DVM: That’s smart.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Australia’s pretty small and certainly, if you took one state of the US, for example, and you said, “Okay, I’m going to look at the veterinarians that graduated from my school in the last couple of years.” Maybe you’re friends with them, because you used to do clubs together, or you knew them through social events and things like that. So, keep in touch with them and talk to them about where they’ve worked. If you’re interviewing for a job, usually a good indication of if they’ve got good mentorship is if they’ve had new graduates work for them before and who have stayed on more than a year. If you’re in a job, and they’re routinely taking new graduates, and each one of those graduates is staying for a couple of years, two or three years, this probably means that the job’s pretty used to taking new grads, they’re pretty good at guiding them through that job, and if you speak to those graduates, and they share that they’ve had a positive experience, that’s a pretty good indication that the practice is well set up to provide mentorship for new grads, and they’re not going to leave you totally alone on your first day with an enormous dog spay or something that you’re going to feel really stressed about. I would ask the questions and ask them are you willing to be a mentor? How are my first few weeks in practice going to look? Is my schedule going to be different? Is there a certain list of competencies that you’re going to ensure that I get better at? Can I shadow you for the first few equine callouts before I have to do one by myself? Or same with anything that you feel sort of uncomfortable with. I think someone else should be in the building when you’re doing your first few surgeries to give you a hand. Maybe for the first few weeks you want to have your consults half booked so you’ve got extra time. Just things like that. I think talking to other new graduates who have worked at the practice is one of the most useful things you can do and same goes for internships, talking to previous interns and asking them if they would mind sharing their experiences there and the positives and negatives of each place.
Matt Holland, DVM: It sounds like you’re saying to be direct about what makes you uncomfortable. If it makes me, as a new grad, feel uncomfortable to do this kind of surgery, be direct beforehand and say will I have mentorship with this, rather than just hoping and praying.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I think most employers would rather you be open and upfront about something that you’re not as competent with than be overconfident and have something go wrong. I think nobody expects you as a new graduate to be an excellent surgeon. There’s no way you can be, you’ve only been learning surgery for maybe a year. This is just an example, but really any skill. If you’re keen to learn, you’re accepting of feedback, you’re asking for help when you need it, and then you’re steadily building on those skills and building your confidence up, that’s what employers are looking for rather than somebody who comes in on day one who can do a spay in 45 minutes or tube a horse every time, or whatever these sort of day one competencies.
Matt Holland, DVM: I figured out a way to connect it to mentorship and burnout, because I think good mentorship reduces the likelihood of burnout, but it doesn’t totally prevent it. At least the way I think about burnout is you have to feel it, you have to be it at least once before you know. How do you think about burnout as it relates to practice? Also, if as it relates to being a new grad is different than that too?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I think there are two aspects of burnout in veterinary medicine. I’ll just qualify this with I’m not an expert on veterinary mental health, or burnout, or anything like that. This is just based on my own experience over the last 10 years or more in practice. I think there’s two facets of it. One is that our industry is very, very demanding both physically and emotionally, and there’s some long-standing expectations of veterinarians that will work certain hours and do certain things. So, I think that’s gradually changing in the sense to make the profession more sustainable for veterinarians, vet technicians, and nurses. I think the other aspect that is now getting taught better in vet schools that maybe wasn’t 10 or 15 years ago, is knowing yourself a little bit better. So, recognizing how to pick up early signs that things aren’t going great, how to take care of yourself a little bit better and maybe set better boundaries, foster your life outside of work, and be aware of what makes you tick and what doesn’t, and try and pursue the things that bring you enjoyment that constitute a good day at work for you. So, I think there’s two facets, there’s the industry side of things, and then the individual side of things. They have to work in concert in order for us to have veterinarians and veterinary staff that are highly capable and doing a really great job for their patients and their clients. And also doing it in a way that keeps them happy, safe, and practicing vet med for a long and fulfilling time.
Matt Holland, DVM: That life outside of work is so important. I remember, as a student, I didn’t really grasp that until third year, because and I’m calling being a student work in this example, but all my friends were from vet school, so even when we were doing non vet things watching a movie or playing video games, it was still with my vet friends. It wasn’t until third year that I started re-engaging with my sister and my best friend before I moved. I didn’t know, I thought that they were saying to me, “Oh, it’s fine. We know you’re busy. Vet school is really busy. It’s okay if we don’t talk all the time.” And they were trying to support me, but it’s like one of those things you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. So yes, the life outside of work piece is huge. I want to pick back up on your story. You said you’re keen to learn, or you think new grads should be keen to learn. That’s a key aspect for being a new grad, but what were you keen to learn after vet school?
Specializing in Surgery
Matt Holland, DVM: I’m getting to the surgery residency.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): In my first job, I was keen to learn everything. I was trying to improve my skills in all areas, and I think that’s really tough. That’s one of the challenges of mixed practice is that you’re trying to learn a whole bunch of different things all at once. So, you’re training yourself to become a better and better generalist. I think what I was hoping for was to get really good at one thing. In the end, it suited my personality better to try and focus down on one thing and try and do that really well, as opposed to doing lots and lots of things well, if that makes sense. So that’s how I had decided to specialize, and I think that probably resonates with many people that decide to specialize or people that decide not to, because in order to become a small animal surgeon, or any specialty, you have to give up a lot of other things. I’ve given up large animal practice. I don’t think I’ll go back to being an equine vet ever. You’ve got to sort of say goodbye to that and be okay with that. Likewise, I do some charity work. I do some and I occasionally work in GP clinics as a locum or fill in. That sort of thing. I do a little bit of GP, but I’m a better surgeon than I am a GP these days. So, you’ve got to be willing to give some things up in order to get much better at your chosen specialty.
Comparing Veterinary Education
Matt Holland, DVM: Was the education in the States very different from the education in Australia? Compare and contrast the educational systems.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yes, I think they are slightly different, I guess. Bear in mind that I’m commenting on Australian vet school between 2003 and 2007, and the US system much more recently now. So, there’s a bit of a time lapse in there as well. But certainly, one of the big differences in Australia at least at our vet school is that we were much younger. I went in straight from high school, but most people went in after one or two years of undergrad. There, your first-year vet students were between 18 and well, there was some mature students, some older ones, but most people were sort of 18, 19, or 20. We were fully done, graduated, and out there working by the time we were 22 to 25. Whereas, in the US, students tend to be older because they’ve done undergrad first. They’re a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and they pay a lot more for veterinary school. The debt load that you’re taking on to be a vet student is not a joke, and most vet students, I think, take that really seriously and apply themselves in a much more diligent fashion, I think. You know, we had a lot of fun at vet school. I still studied a lot, but we mucked around a lot, there were a lot of social events, and a lot of laughs, we had a really good time. And I think our training was much more at that time training to be a generalist. So, lots of the details that I think US vet students are expected to know, we learned concepts as opposed to details. Having said that, I sat the US qualification exams in order to become registered in the US, and I felt that the stuff that I had to know for those exams I had learned in vet school in Australia, so I think the actual education in the end is quite similar, but maybe the style is just a little bit different. I guess my first impression of being in a North American vet teaching hospital was that I was in awe of the size of it, and all these specialists, and the fact that there were interns and residents. It was really neat to have this massive group of people all under one roof, all doing these amazing things with these incredible facilities. That sort of scale doesn’t exist in many other parts of the world, really, in terms of the facilities and the brainpower in the institutions in North America.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah. I remember I had a two-week externship during fourth year in India and was talking with students there and telling them about what you just described. How we had any specialty you could name at our teaching hospital, and they were like, “Wow, 90% of our vet school grads go to food animal. We don’t really take care of pets the way that you do.” It sounds obvious now that I say it, because I’ve learned it, but it struck me in that moment. It really is very different depending on where you are in the world. You mentioned in there that the cost of education in the US is exorbitant. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Student Debt Center from the VIN Foundation. You though, you wanted to share a resource, too. Is that right?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah. I work on a podcast called The Vet Vault. The Vet Vault was started by Gerardo Poli and Hubert Hiemstra, and they are two Australian veterinarians. Hubert has recently branched out and started a clinical channel at the podcast. So that’s a podcast where you can find specialists giving really useful clinical tips. I purchased the surgery section, but there’s an emergency critical care and medicine section. It’s very conversational, it’s pretty entertaining, but they’re great 20 minutes to half an hour bite sized segments of clinical information that you can listen to in the car on the way to work. So, check it out, especially if you’re a recent graduate or a vet in practice trying to hone your skills in those areas. I think it’s a really great resource, so have a look.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yes, that’s great, and if it sounds like Bronwyn is a polished speaker, I imagine that’s part of the reason why. I think you’re the second guest we’ve had who also has their own podcast.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, I feel like it’s one of the number one pandemic activities, isn’t it? Starting a podcast.
The Impact of the Pandemic
Matt Holland, DVM: I know that in the before times, you used to travel all around the world and do locum work and relief work. Kind of wherever the work was, is where you’d be. I imagine that’s changed during the pandemic.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, it did change. So pre-pandemic, I was working in the US, Canada, and Australia. I also did some volunteer work abroad with a few of the vet charity organizations, doing some teaching and training of veterinarians overseas in surgery which I really enjoyed. When the pandemic came, it was a bit of a shock to the system, like for many of us, because the travel component of my job wasn’t really possible anymore. So, I’ve taken on some longer assignments since the pandemic. I’ve been lucky to work in some great practices on longer term bases to avoid the trouble and stay in one spot a little bit more, but certainly a change of pace for me over the last year or so.
Matt Holland, DVM: Do you think if you could wave a magic wand and end the pandemic today, do you think you would go back to the previous lifestyle? Or do you think you would take pieces of the current lifestyle/workstyle and carry them with you?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I think a combination. One thing I’ve enjoyed about staying in one place is that you get to know the people in the area in one place a lot better. I do enjoy that. I enjoy forming those longer-term relationships with colleagues and people in the community.
Australian Coffee Culture
Matt Holland, DVM: Okay, one thing that I have to bring up before we part ways is also on an episode I heard, you said the coffee is very different between the US and Australia.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, yes. I mean, it would be unAustralian of me to not be a coffee snob. So, the coffee culture in Australia is very, Australia has, I think Australians would agree, some of the best coffee in the world. Coffee shops in Australia tend to be independently owned. Starbucks tried to come to Australia, but they went out of business because their coffee wasn’t good enough for the palates of the population, and people like to support local, small businesses. So yeah, there’s lots and lots of coffee shops, and all of them small, most of them serve really excellent coffee, because there’s so much competition you can’t really get away with something less than excellent coffee. I guess our definition of coffee is espresso coffee. So, a flat white would be the classic Australian coffee. I think they’ve made their way now to the US, so many people sort of know what a flat white is now. I’ve actually got one in my hand right now. My quota for this morning.
Matt Holland, DVM: I prefer espresso to like the auto drip. I like the more intense version of coffee. I had no idea that Starbucks came and was asked kindly to go away.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, there’s one or two Starbucks in each major city, but if you think of a city like Sydney with 5 million people, there’s a couple of Starbucks, you know, it’s nothing like North America.
Matt Holland, DVM: I lived in Chicago, and there would be two or three Starbucks on the same block. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s nuts. Okay, so again, if we could wave a magic wand and end the pandemic, if there’s one place you could recommend that somebody visit who’s never been to Australia, where would it be?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Ooh, well, I’m a little bit biased because I’m from southeast Queensland, but I think if you can experience any of the coastline between north of Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, you’ll be spoilt for choice in terms of some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I spent a bit of time up at Noosa in the last few weeks surfing and there’s a gorgeous National Park full of rain forests that juts out into the Pacific Ocean. There’s some pointbreaks along there that are just some of the most beautiful surfing spots in the world. I think that’s a pretty special spot. One of my favorites.
Matt Holland, DVM: Sounds beautiful. Do you surf?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, I’m learning. It’s a lifelong process. Surfing is one of the most difficult sports to learn. The learning curve is really, really, really slow, but I love it. Yeah.
Matt Holland, DVM: More or less difficult than surgery?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, that’s a good question. I was thinking about that the other day. I was getting a bit frustrated in the surf, you know, getting walloped by waves again and again, and thinking, why is this so hard? And I thought, well, I learned surgery as an adult, so I guess I can learn surfing. I was thinking, imagine if I spent three years of my life in a surfing residency, I bet I could become pretty proficient at it. It’s just time. Time in the water. So yeah, I think they’re equivalent. I think they’re equally hard. You’re definitely not going to learn either of them in just a week.
Matt Holland, DVM: I like that perspective. If you did a surfing residency, you’d probably have some skills that a lot of other people don’t. I don’t know, you still might think you don’t have it down perfectly, which is true, but like, I’m just relating it back to new grads, or people who have been practicing for a couple years. You’re not going to know how to do everything right out of school. Still, you’ve got the skills and the training, because you’ve been doing it for years, you just have to apply it.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, and you’re always learning. I think anything you do in vet med, and I guess most things in life, too, you’re always learning and improving. Like in surgery sometimes too, you know, if you watch the best person in the world run an ultra-marathon, they’ll run it faster than anybody else, but the actual race is still really hard for them. I think the same goes for things like surgery, where you can watch the best surgeon in the world, and they look like everything’s always easy, but they’re still going to have some days where things go wrong, it’s really hard. The harder procedures you try, you know you’re pushing yourself to the edges of your comfort zone, and sometimes you’re going to have complications and things like that. You’ve got to have that kind of mindset. You’re always expanding your knowledge base and being okay with the fact that it’s not always going to go perfectly. I think many of us veterinarians are perfectionists, me included, and so that can be a difficult thing to get a handle on, but I think it really helps if you can have that mindset that we’re all just continuing to improve.
Matt Holland, DVM: So, everybody’s always learning, totally agree.
Final Thoughts and Takeaways
Matt Holland, DVM: Are you learning is there something that you’re going for in terms of like, I want to own my own practice, or I want to be the head surgeon at a school? Are you going for anything like that, or just kind of riding the waves, so to speak?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, I think one thing that I’d like to do more of and get better at is teaching. I think if I look at the parts of my job that I enjoy the most, it’s usually something to do with interpersonal communication, and teaching, sharing with others, and helping other people to feel more comfortable in surgery. Hopefully my experience, if you share your own struggles and trials and tribulations and triumphs with other people, then they can feel inspired to give things a go that they wouldn’t have otherwise done. So, I think whether it be through more volunteer postings, teaching people in other countries, whether it be working in a veterinary school, or even just through podcasts and things like that, that’s the side of things that I’m focusing on more at the moment.
Matt Holland, DVM: If you have one thing to leave with the audience, what would you hope that they take away from you?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Can I have more than one thing?
Matt Holland, DVM: You can, yeah, I’m an easy sell on that.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Right. So, I think my two or three main things, the first one’s really small. The first one is just, if you can find humor in the everyday, you will have a much better time I think in most things in life, but especially as a vet. I mean, we are animal doctors, which is a wonderful and sort of crazy profession when you think about it. And, you know, animals do silly things, people give their pets ridiculous names. You know, we can laugh with our clients, we can laugh at our patients. There’s always something silly going on in the vet industry, in the vet clinic. So, if you can find those little chestnuts of joy and share them with your clients too if their pet does something ridiculous in the clinic, share it with them, and that helps to build those relationships. It helps to make your day much better I think, so that that would be a huge thing.
Matt Holland, DVM: I have got to interrupt and say that’s part of why I wanted you to tell the story, too, about the car and the tree, because when I heard you tell it on the other podcast, you had a great sense of humor about it. You probably didn’t right when it happened, I imagine, while you were being airlifted, but the fact that you can look back on that and find parts to laugh and smile I think that says a lot about you.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, it is. I think even at the time, it was pretty humorous. I mean, once I realized that I was going to be okay. Getting wheeled into the ER wearing coveralls that are covered in cow entrails and manure and blood and having the ER team, you know, just like on Grey’s Anatomy cutting off the coveralls with their pair of scissors, getting all excited about it. Sounds like, “it’s not my blood, it’s the cows blood! It’s not my blood, don’t worry!
Matt Holland, DVM: With the defibrillator ready?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, yeah, it was like you’re in something else. I remember my boss; he was a straight-talking Australian guy. He came to visit me in the hospital and looked at my chest X-ray and the interns at the hospital were all sort of mulling over my X-ray and trying to work out what was going on. It’s pretty clear even to me that one lung field was completely white on the X-ray and the other lung field was black. We all know that’s abnormal. My boss just walked in, he said, I’m no radiologists, Bronwyn, but the right side of your chest is f’d and all the interns just turned around and looked at him. It was just one of those classic country practice moments. Anyway, it was, I think, even at that time. I think my family probably didn’t find it very amusing. There were some touchy gray moments, but I think trying to retell my ridiculous story of how I managed to injure myself to the ER rounds team. Every morning, they come past my bed, and I’d have to retell it, it was pretty, pretty silly. So yeah, I think humor is a bridge if you’re having a bad day, and you can manage to find something funny that’s very helpful. The other thing which goes for vets both in and out of practice is keeping track in your veterinary life, your career, what are the days that bring you enjoyment, like one of the things that make you tick. I listened to a podcast by Dr. Justine Lee, founder of VETgirl, and she had her quote, which is one of my favorites, she just said, “if it doesn’t spark joy, triage it out of your life.” You know, just coming from an ECC specialist, it was pretty funny. So, after you’ve been doing things for a while there’s parts of practice, or parts of your job that don’t bring you joy, then see if you can find a way to shift your focus away from those things and towards the things that do bring you joy.
Matt Holland, DVM: Is there is there a third?
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Oh, and the third which you already touched on, so I wasn’t going to bring it up again, but my third one would be, for me personally, the thing that has helped me a lot is having interest in life outside of work. You mentioned before, we make wonderful friends who are veterinarians and veterinary team members, but I think it’s really important also to foster friendships outside of the industry, because they’re the people when you’ve had a really rough week, like if I go trail running with the local running club, people that don’t know me as a vet, they know me as Bronwyn who likes to go running. I have other identities apart from just being a vet and it’s really refreshing to switch out of the clinic mode into another part of your life that brings you happiness and fulfillment that’s not at work. So, trying to find one or two things and people, seek out those relationships outside of the vet industry because I think they help to keep us grounded. They make us better when we do head back into the vet world.
Matt Holland, DVM: Yeah. Back to number two, at the risk of sounding cheesy, it’s been a joy to talk with you today.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, thanks, Matt. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you. Hopefully, it’s been helpful.
Matt Holland, DVM: It’s helped me so, you know, the rest is playing with house money. I don’t know if you know that phrase, maybe that’s an American phrase.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): I think it’s an American phrase, but I get the idea.
Matt Holland, DVM: Well, good. Yeah. Good to talk with you, and thanks so much, again for joining us.
Bronwyn Fullagar, BVSC, MS, DACVS(SA): Yeah, thanks, Matt.
Outro
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the Episode Notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.
