This week on the podcast…
Dr. Amanda Doran joins Dr. Andy Roark to discuss managing (and being) a neurodiverse doctor. Very little of the conversation is specific to veterinarians as opposed to other members of the vet healthcare team, and everyone in the clinic can benefit from this conversation. We cover common behaviors as well as resources and management strategies for supporting a diverse group of individuals across an organization. Let's get into this!
You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
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About Our Guest & Recommended Reading
Dr. Amanda Doran: @dr_amanda_doran
Love and Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life – https://amzn.to/3c7ZL5i
Upcoming Events
The Secret Sauce to Optimizing Workflow with Senani Ratnayake
Back by popular demand! It's time to take a look at the workflows that aren't working and come up with a plan to move forward with a strategy that makes sense.
Date: November 30
Time: 5:30pm ET/2:30pm PT – 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT
Getting The Most Out of Relief Vet Relationships with Dr. Maggie Brown-Bury
Dr. Maggie Brown-Bury is a relief veterinarian in Canada and she is already booked for all of 2023. How does she do it? Who ends up at the top of her list of availability? If you're struggling to find a consistent relief veterinarian or don't know where to start, this 1-hour workshop can help.
Date: December 13
Time: 7pm ET/4pm PT – 8pm ET/5pm PT
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Episode Transcript
This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, boys and girls to the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here with the one and only Dr. Amanda Doran. We are talking about managing the Neurodiverse Doctor. We start off talking about that, then we talk mostly about being a neurodiverse doctor and what that is like and what that experience is like. This is a fun episode, it is a make you think episode just about how people are different and about working with people who see the world differently in your practice. I think this is one of those things where we talk about neurodiverse doctors and really we're just talking about is people are people and people are different, and we all have different skills and strengths, and things that we're good at and things that exhaust us, and things that we're not good at.
And we're not cookie cutters. We're our own beautiful distinct human beings. And when you understand that, then a lot of ideas for how to support people become really clear. And so anyway, this is a fun conversation. It's a neat make you think sort of conversation. It's a good reminder about the humanity of our professionals, so whether you are a doctor, or a tech, or front desk, or manager, I think this is going to be just a good general episode to hear. Guys, without further ado, let's get into this episode.
Meg:
And now the Uncharted Podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Amanda Doran. How are you?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I'm great. How are you?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Man, I'm doing great. It is good to see you again. It has been a minute. How are things going?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Oh, good. Living the dream. Northern Minnesota's very beautiful several months of the year. The rest of the time it is hot.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
But it's gorgeous right now.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's awesome. Well it's good to see you in person. You actually came down and stayed with me and my family a couple of years ago pre-pandemic.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Right before, yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, it was right before working on some business projects and that was a awesome thing. And the family says, hi. What are we doing here? We are here, so those who don't know you are Dr. Amanda Doran, you are doing some speaking and writing, especially particularly kind of in the wellness space in vet medicine. You are an associate vet with Minnesota Pets, which is a home hospice veterinary company. And you do a lot of different things. You have a lot of different interests. I love it. I'm a big fan of people having what I call a third space, which is things you do that are like not normal home stuff and not work stuff. And so you have a booth at the farmer's market called Wicked Witch of the West End.
And you also have, you just told me, I was actually humbled. You have 35 cherry tomato plants. I have three tomato plants that I have fought all summer long just to have, and they have a high tomato failure rate. Let's just say that there is a lot fewer harvested than grow on that thing. But anyway, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. I asked you to be on because you did a workshop for Uncharted very recently that was extremely popular and well attended and it was on managing the neurodivergent doctor. And boy, we got a lot of positive feedback on that session. A lot of people who said they wanted to know more, they weren't able to come to the workshop. And so I just thought that would be a great opportunity to have you in to kind of run through this topic with you. And it's something I really honestly don't know a whole lot about. This is a weakness of my own and so I'm really excited just to start breaking this down, you ready?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah. Thanks. Good to be here. I feel like we only scratched the surface in the workshop, so definitely.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, I know. Well that was the feedback that I got was there's a lot there. Well, let's just start out at a high level when we talk about managing the neurodivergent doctor, what are we talking about? Give me an idea going into this workshop, and again, neurodivergent can mean a million different things. Help me start to piece this together in my mind. I want to get my head around what am I talking about? I think a lot of us are probably managing neurodivergent doctors and we don't even know that we're doing that. Many of us may be neurodivergent doctors who have not yet realized or recognize that that is a part of who we are. And so talk to me a little bit about that. What does that look like as people come in? Paint me a picture in the clinic of the neurodivergent doctor, if you don't mind.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Absolutely. Yeah, so I think definitely newer terminology that we're talking about. And so I think kind of neurodivergence as a term was really developed to help talk about and develop acceptance for people with autism. But the umbrella's gotten a little bit bigger and includes a lot of other different conditions in neurodivergence. And probably the most common one I think we do see anecdotally and I have personal experience with is people with ADHD. And so these might be people who are having a really hard time managing time, or managing different tasks, or they might have problems with memory, or organizing things, or starting projects and following through, they might have some challenges with emotional control, or paying attention, or focusing, they might get sucked into the vortex of time in the exam rooms, and might have a hard time consistently following goals, especially with something that they're not interested in. And we are neurodiverse as a population.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, so like goals that were set from someone else?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah, if it's something that people don't have a strong interest in, they might have a hard time working towards that goal.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, so going back to those things, do me a favor, pick back up. And so you listed time management, task management, organizing, emotional control, paying attention, pick back up with neurodivergence. We're all sort of a diverse group and just kind of I think that's a laundry list of behaviors sort of help to put that into an organized framework, I guess. How do you start to look at these things?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I guess essentially what neurodiversity means is that within our population of humans, we have a variation of cognitive function, right? Our population is neurodiverse, and in kind of thinking back to like back to basics of left brain versus right brain and kind of logic versus creativity and how we process things and how we engage in projects and how we perceive things and even how we solve problems. We all have all the things, but we do different things differently. And there's kind of this societal standard and then many people have traits that make it easier for them to adapt to those standards. And some people have traits that maybe are leaning a little bit more towards right side of the brain and make it more difficult to adapt to those expectations or those cultural standards that we have.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Does that kind of make sense?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Yeah, no, it does. I will tell you sort of, okay, I like the way that you're starting to lay this things out, so I'll just sort tell you a position that I sort of have on the way that people's minds work and where it comes from.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when I was in the second grade. And the doctors, the psychologist who did the child testing, told my parents not to expect too much from me. I probably wouldn't go to college, I probably wouldn't go on and do these other things. And my dad was a surgeon, so I think that that was the idea my parents maybe had. Now this was in 1982, which is the stone ages for child psychology, things like that. I am, listen, this is how I think about it, so I said something, I have a friend and her child was just diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and he is about seven years old now, I think.
He's probably second grade, something like that. And my friend had just gotten the diagnosis of her child had ADD, and she was obviously kind of worried about what does this mean and things like that. And what I said to her was, I'll tell you based on my life experience, we live our lives in a construct. I think that was made. We've got this crazy system, pardon the phrase, but we have this ridiculous system where kids are supposed to go and sit on their bottom for six to eight consecutive hours with a 15 minute recess break, which is what elementary school kids get now. And that's how their success is measured, is their ability to sit still and to take these tests that are put in front of them. And I say, this is ridiculous. Think back about how evolutionarily we came along.
The kid that never sat still, that was always exploring, that was always sort of investigating and doing new things, that loved to socialize with others, that kid's bound for success in the wild in a lot of ways. But that's not what success today looks like in the modern society that we have. And so when I think a lot about that, I will say that a lot of my career success comes from my inability to calm my mind in a lot of ways. I'm known as a pretty creative person. I like to think that I'm a fairly innovative person. Innovation and creativity come from smashing disparate ideas together, taking something and combining it with something else. And that's just kind of what my brain does. But if you are looking for somebody who can come and sit at a desk for eight consecutive hours and push paperwork, I'm not your guy, I'm never going to make it. And that's just the way that I am wired.
And so when you talk about neurodivergence and you talk about all the different types of behaviors that we see people who are not organized raising my hand, people who have problems paying attention, raising my hands, people who forget things, raising my hand. I check those boxes and that's sort of where I am. And so my big thing is I think that people have often thought that they is normal and abnormal and I reject that categorization. I would say what's what is beneficial is often context specific. And some of us may not thrive in the classic academic or classic work environments because that's not how we're wired. But that does not mean we are wildly successful in other ways or in other, I don't know, pathways. I know doctors who are forgetful and they can't stay focused and they're creative and funny and kind of, there's people who are sort of scattered and they bounce all over the place and the clients love them, the client, the techs are driven nuts by them, but the clients love them because they're fun and they're engaging.
Yeah, exactly right. Amanda is raising her hand. Exactly right. And I go, that's not a downside to me. And that's why I wanted to bring you on here was my position very much is I don't buy this normal/abnormal categorization in a lot of ways. I think that we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses and we're all very different. I think understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are is absolutely vital to your career success. I think having an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the people that you manage, I think that, that's vital to being a good manager. If you take someone who has a hard time organizing and push them into a position where they are going to organize come hell or high water, you're often going to burn that person out rather than have them figure it out. That's just my position. I'm curious how that sounds as I say it?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's going to make some people miserable. This makes me think of this book that I read recently by Marcus Buckingham, it's called Love Plus Work. And he was one of the people that developed the Strengths Assessment and he talked about strengths and weaknesses in a way that I'd never heard before. And it changed a lot of perspective for me and not so much as strengths are things that you're good at and weaknesses are things that you're bad at, but strengths are actually as things that give you strength, give you energy. You don't have to be good at it, but do you like it? Do you want to do it? Do you want to get better at it?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
And weaknesses as things that you don't like, you can be really, really good at things that you hate doing. There is definitely some things in general practice that I had to adapt to and put masks on for and cope with that from the outside looks like strengths because I was really good at it, but I hated it. It left me completely drained at the end of the day. And so-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh interesting.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I think as employee and manager kind of working together to help people find what are those strengths? And it's not, like you said, not necessarily giving people things. Like if you don't like organizing, you're going to have a hard time doing it. Are you in the right seat on the bus following your strengths, finding that love in your work and if you have that drive to want to do the thing that you like, even if you're bad at it, you can put in the hours to get better at it. And I think we don't always know what those things we are, we don't feel like we're allowed to follow those loves. I feel like that was one of my challenges in practice. I feel like I have to do this but I don't really want to do it, but I'm good at it and people keep telling me I should keep doing it but I kind of hate it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah, finding those strengths and redefining, what does it mean. A lot to unpack there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There's a lot to unpack there. I completely agree. Okay.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey friends. It's Stephanie and I'm jumping in here for one quick second because there's a workshop coming up and it is one of the last ones for this year of 2022. And I want to make sure that you don't miss it because it is coming to you from my dear friend Maggie Brown Bury. Maggie is a former emergency veterinarian who lives in Newfoundland, Canada. And a few years ago Maggie made the decision to make a change and she moved out of ER medicine into being a relief veterinarian. And I remember Maggie telling us within weeks of opening up her schedule, her whole first year was booked. And so we asked Maggie to come and do a workshop for how to get the most out of the relationships that you build as a practice with your relief veterinarians.
Because more and more practices as we face the veterinarian shortage, are struggling with needing to have relief doctors on their schedule maybe more regularly than we would have previously. And he's got some great ideas after working with a ton of different practices on how you can leverage that relationship and set yourself up for success, set your relief veterinarian up for success, and set your clients up for success, so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, head on over to unchartedvet.com/events and find all of the information about the workshop and how to sign up. I hope to see you there. And now back to the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark:
One of the things I always talk to people about when we talk about employee management is there's two different questions that I usually ask about employees, is when you're trying to delegate something away, you're like, Hey, would you do this thing for me? The question is, does the person get it? Meaning do they understand what you're asking for or what needs to happen? And the next question is, do they want it? And to your point, there are a lot of us that are good at things that we don't enjoy. This is an interesting idea of your strengths are things that give you strength and your weaknesses, you might be good at them, but they take strength from you, they take effort. There are things that I am good at that people ask me to do and they are exhausting and there are things that I am good at, people ask me to do that once you ask me to do them, I'm not going to stop.
I'm just going to get going and I am going to shake hands and kiss babies or kiss hands and shake babies, whatever, I'll just get going. And I'm not going to quit because I love doing it. But I think that's a really interesting way to think about it, so is this being good at something and wanting to do that thing I think are entirely different. I also really like your thoughts about when you are someone who has different skill sets, when you have these things that make you happier, that fill you up and things that don't. And you got to march to the beat of your own drum as a lot of us do. I think that there is a lot of weight in the veterinary culture on behaving in a certain way and following certain norms that have been laid down. And again, I'm just sort of talking off the cuff here, but you can't tell me that… We all took the same path, right.
We all went through undergraduate to become veterinarians and then we went through vet school and then there's some strong cultural norms in vet medicine and we all think that a veterinarian looks a certain way or acts a certain way and the technicians look a certain way or act a certain way or things like that. And I feel like there is this implied pressure to conform in a lot of ways. And I have found, and this is so stupid and simple, but for years people have asked when they ask for any career advice or anything, I always tell them the most valuable thing that I have ever found that I tell everybody is if you want to be successful, figure out what you like doing and figure out how to do more of it and figure out what you don't like doing and figure out how to do less of it.
And I think a lot of people don't think they have permission to do that. They're like, no, I have to do all of the vet things. And I go, no you don't. You're talking to a guy who literally works one day a week in the vet clinic and otherwise does what he wants to do. I was doing Facebook and people were telling me I was ridiculous and why are you spending your time doing Facebook? And I was like, it worked out for me in the long run. But those, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed expressing myself and this was before I didn't enjoy Facebook anymore, but at the time I enjoyed expressing myself and doing those things and other people, I mean I made these goofy, I don't know if back in the day I made these goofy videos that I, there's videos out there of me in a dog suit, a hundred percent running around.
And I remember well respected colleagues of mine being mortified on my behalf that I was making these things and I was like, I think it's funny. I am having a good time and I get that it's not your thing but I can do it. And it makes people laugh and I enjoy it. It makes me excited about that medicine so I'm going to do it. I really like that you said that it was like, I think some of us maybe need permission to say I'm not going to function the way that the other doctors do in the practice and I'm going, Hey buddy, as long as you can make that swing around and balance out with other people so their needs are being met and that you are not leaving other people hanging, go forth with confidence and do it.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah. Well, I think if anything it helps. It's helped me show up better every day when I do work, when I'm able to do those things. I think more so than balance or harmony, it's this idea of resonance. There's never going to be this perfect scale where it's like okay, my work and my life are balanced. It's kind of taking that it's like a dance that you have to do those other things. I remember hearing everybody say that in vet school. Oh yes, you must have these things outside of veterinary medicine that you do.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
But I feel like it's one of those lessons where you got to get burned. Some people know fire back because they've been told, well you got to figure out for yourself. Nobody knows what you love. And I think a lot of times we're conditioned to look for that external validation of people saying, yes, you're doing the thing. But it's a huge shift to shift that internally and follow what your weird little heart wants.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I completely agree with that, but I think when we're talking about managing people who are just different or who marched to the beat of their own drum.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Or just have different skills, I think that not waiting for someone else to validate you is so important. And I think it's really hard. I think a lot of us who approach the world of differently, I think a lot of us live in shame, you know what I mean? Why can't I keep my calendar the way that other people do and why can't I just sit down and do these things that other people just sit down and grind through? And I say, look, we all have to figure out how to get those things done. We all have to figure out our own ways. But I completely agree with you as far as I think that we need to think about what makes us happy and making sure that we're doing the things we need to do.
But beyond that, the fact that the other doctors don't work one day a week, they work six days a week or four days a week, that doesn't affect me. That's not what I'm doing right now and that's not taking anything away from them. But I'm not doing it and I'm not feeling bad about not doing it. This is kind of where I am and what I'm doing. And so I think a lot of us need to hear that as, hey, this is fine.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
As far as the work life balance stuff, it's funny you bring that up. I had a conversation literally yesterday with a good friend of mine and we were talking about work life balance and I've never been able to categorize work life balance like a lot of other people can. I've never been able to be like this in my work self and this is my home self. And it is just, again, because of I think, the way that I see the world or whatever, that split has never worked for me, so I'm a big fan of Danny McVety calls it work life integration and it's just sort of like, I do a lot of different stuff.
I mean I write about that medicine when I'm at home and sometimes when I'm at the vet clinic on my lunch break, I'm doing other things and just I hang out with the technicians and we'll talk about our hobbies and just geek out about whatever the TV shows we're watching are, things like that. But I just mix those things together. But for me it's an outlet that works and keeping it separate just doesn't work for me.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But it totally works for other people. And so I would never tell someone else, don't prioritize life balance. I would just say, well life balance for me looks very different than it does for other people. But I know after 15 years of doing it this way as a professional, this works for me and that's it. Well let's bring this back around to what this looks like professionally and working with others.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so we talked about managing sort of a neurodiverse doctor. We all have these different ways of approaching our job, of what we're good at. It's funny that when I said What does this look like? You listed a long string of problems, you know what I mean, of like oh they forget this. So this person, they don't get that done and they don't do this. What's funny is that when we ask about a neurodivergent doctor, people don't say, oh well these are typically creative people. These are people who bring diversity of perspective to the scene. These are people who often have ideas that others haven't thought about. They're think they're people who maybe have a different perspective when you ask what's going on that you just haven't rolled around and considered.
And I go, we always think about the things that we see where people don't match up in a positive way to the benchmarks that are set, but we don't really stop and say, well why do they exceed these other areas so strongly? I think that that's an important thing to consider when we talk about sort of neurodivergence and neurodivergent doctors is you cannot look at this as a detriment. What you have to do is look at the person as a specific package and start to identify what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses. And I love the idea of the strengths as what fills them up, what makes them stronger. Do you agree?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Absolutely. And yeah, kind of what we talked about a little bit before in veterinary medicine, we kind of live by this kind of strict calendaring, very planned timeline and that makes some people very, very miserable. And you can very much struggle to manage time and to be productive when kind of the processes and practices that you're using don't match those natural tendencies that you have.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
And so I think when we think about neurodivergence, at least personally as I've started talking about it, people are coming and asking me all the time, how do I help this person who gets sucked into the Bermuda Triangle in an appointment? Whether that's in practice or an in-home euthanasia where they just completely lose track of time. And I think realizing that it's not an intentional disregard, like for some people it is actually a sensory issue and time doesn't exist if you're not looking at it. And so yeah, I was definitely that doctor who you'd send a search party because I was still in the exam room, well after the time it should be over, so I feel like that's where it comes up the most.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I definitely see that. I think that to me, again, it depends on the individual a lot. I think classic organization and focus are often things that we see in doctors. What have you seen that can be helpful in setting, I know this is such a broad category of individual, it's hard to drill too deep into specifics, but in general terms, what are the steps that practices take to make these people successful and to bolster them up and to make them feel comfortable and happy in the workplace?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I think the biggest thing is making sure that there's space to have those conversations. For people to be vulnerable and not blame them and see it as an intentional disregard for time. Helping them be able, you might have to help them a little bit in developing some of those skills, so consciously tracking time, like when are you going in, when are you coming out? What's happening in there? What appointments are these happening in? Are these appointments that give you strength and you're just so excited to talk to these people and help them? Or are these strengths that are weaknesses and it's sucking your energy to be in there and you feel like you can't get out?
Making sure everybody I think it's important for, but especially people who are neurodivergent, making sure you're taking breaks and eating food and going outside and getting exercise. Maybe having an afternoon coffee, because I think you do have a natural tendency to forget to do some of those things. I worked in the practice that didn't have clocks in the room and I found that really challenging. I felt rude always looking at my watch. But unless looking at the clock, I don't know times exists. And even when I was in general practice, kind of having buffer time in throughout the day to make sure I had a quiet place to go with no noise to catch up on my records so that I wasn't doing other things.
Because there's always 10,000 things going on in the treatment room and you want to help people. But unless I had a quiet place with no distractions, I couldn't get my records done before the end of the day. And I think another thing that would be helpful too is doing some role playing with language to help move visits along. I think sometimes we don't necessarily know the words to help people get back on track and be like, okay, what is our intention for this appointment? What is our desired income? What words can we give people to have light, moderate, or more heavy nudges to get us back on task? And I think those skills kind of develop over time, not the classes that they have in school always.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh no, I love it. I just wrote down words to move appointments along. I'm like, oh, that's super great. Okay, so what I hear you saying, and this all makes total sense with me, I really love it. Assume good intent. We talk a lot uncharted about assuming good intent and just say, this person, they're not running late because they don't care, they're not failing to fill out paperwork because they're jerks and they're disrespecting you or blah blah, blah. Assume good intent. Everybody's trying their best. Some things come easier to some people than other people. I think that's just a great opening head space. I love the idea of just asking what happened. When this person is running late instead of saying, you are not going fast enough. It's going, Hey, I'm noticing that you're getting stuck in these rooms or you're spending a lot of time in certain rooms.
Why do you think that is? Is there something, and the rooms that you were in, why do you think that ended up being a trap? I also love flipping it around. I'm a big fan of positive inquiry, which is asking people about what worked well and then figuring out why it worked well, so you can know other places, so I can say, Hey, yesterday I felt like you were really moving efficiently through the exam rooms. I felt like you were doing a great job as far as staying on time. And that's what the tech said. What was good about yesterday? Why do you think you were you able to do that so well? And that can often give you some insight into, oh, this is how I support this person. And they go, oh well, yesterday I saw these types of appointments or I had this set up, or yesterday my technician was doing this thing that was helpful for me.
And I go, ah. And now it's not, Hey, tell me about why you're failing. Tell me about why you're running behind. Tell me about why people are frustrated.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Great.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, it's tell me about why these appointments were particularly good. And I've just found that, that is a very soft, nice way to get, it's to help me to help you you know what I mean? Help me help you. I don't know what's going to be helpful for someone else, especially someone who sees the world differently or perceives it differently than I do or has different strengths than I have. I'm like I don't know how to help you because I don't have the skills that you have, I have different skills and I really like that. And then the big thing is, and the way I just phrased it is the way I would phrase it talking to the person, is not what can we do to get you to conform?
What can we do to fix you? No, it's what can I do to support you? How can I help you? How can I lift your workload? How can I make your time here more enjoyable? How can I help you meet the needs of the staff or any of those things? But how can I help you? How can I support you? What would you like me to do? What would make your time here easier? What would set you up for success? What does a great day of appointments look like for you? Those are all the types of questions that I try to get to get in there and develop specific action steps to support this person at an organizational level without making them feel like, oh, you are coming up short and so I need to give you a crutch. It's not that. And I don't want anybody to feel that way.
And that's not true. It really is more you kick butt in a different way than the rest of the doctors do. And so I need to make sure that you have support for your style and I need to understand what that would be, because I don't know your style as well as you do. And then I really like your point about enforcing breaks. I just, it's funny as you say that, I go, oh man, that makes so much sense of, hey, we've all had doctors that we have to stuff a sandwich into their hand and be like, you need to eat this. When was the last time you went to the bathroom? When was the last time you drank water, Amanda? We've all had those conversations, right?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Have you seen the sun today?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It's so simple. Yeah, exactly. But that makes so much sense when you say that. And I go, oh, and it's an easy thing to do and it's a good thing to do, right? I mean, many of us work in states where breaks are enforced. A lot of us work in states where that's not necessarily true. We should still do it. And I just think that this is a good thing. It's one of those things where sometimes you slow down to go fast. And I find that that's really true in taking care of our staff and our doctors, especially with some people. I have to get them to slow down so that they can feel better, and so that they can focus, and so that they can then be productive and we can go fast. And so I think all of those are really, really great. Amanda, do you have resources that you really like? You mentioned one of the Love and Work book.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I'm going to check that out. It's not one I'm familiar with. Any other resources that pop to your mind that you think are particularly useful that you like?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I do like reading books about time management, particularly related to neurodivergent people because I feel like a lot of the kind of more popular books, some of those things don't work. And so even people who may experience neurodiversity, even looking into like ADHD coaches or other people to help with non-traditional kind of executive functioning I found is really helpful.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Part of that is I don't really remember names very well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure, gotcha.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What does somebody search for to find that, because you're talking about this thing, and I'm like that makes total sense to me. It's not a genre that I'm familiar with. What are some of the terms that when you look like you said executive functioning, coaches, ADHD coaches, things like that-
Dr. Amanda Doran:
ADHD Coaches.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Are there certain terms that you kind of look for?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Yeah, I feel like ADHD coaching is a big thing that's becoming more popular. Or maybe just noticing it more and even kind of learning more about time and how different people relate to time and how it varies for everybody. We talked just briefly about those kind of languages for progressing with visits. I'm doing a talk at the hospice conference later in the fall kind of talking about how to do that with in-home euthanasia visits. And yeah, just kind of recognizing some of the more traditional approaches for kind of “neurotypical” people. If you feel like you're struggling with them as a neurodivergent person, it may be that there are other resources that can be helpful, so ADHD coaching is something that's really helped me and those people are full of resources.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That's awesome. That's really, really cool. Amanda, where can people find you online? Where can they follow you and keep up with your adventures?
Dr. Amanda Doran:
I do have a website @dramandadoran.com and the little social media on the Instagram @dramandadoran. And you can also find Wicked Witch West End on Instagram too. But most of my projects and other things that I've done on that Dr. Amanda Doran website, and if anybody has questions or wants to reach out, my email address is dramandadoran@gmail.com.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Awesome. That sounds great. Well thank you so much for that, guys. I'll put links to everything we talked about down in the show notes.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Everybody have a wonderful week. Amanda, thanks again for being here.
Dr. Amanda Doran:
Thank you, Andy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our show. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Got to give us a special shout out to Banfield the Pet Hospital for making transcripts possible. Speaking of inclusion and accessibility in vet medicine, Banfield makes transcripts possible so that people can more easily access the information in this podcast. And they didn't have to do that and we could not do it without them, so I just got to stop and give a shout out to those guys. Guys, if you got any questions for us, shoot us a question in the mail bag. The email address is podcast@unchartedvet.com and Stephanie Goss and I are happy to tackle that. I'll be back with the goddess Stephanie Goss next week and we will see you then. Take care, everybody.
