This Week on the Uncharted Podcast…
If you are in veterinary medicine, you've heard conversations about cyberbullying. Ranging from clinics getting beat up in local social media groups to experiences like the recent one the team from Maine Veterinary Medical Center had to navigate, veterinary medicine is seeing the impact of words from keyboard warriors. Dr. Andy Roark and Stephanie Goss were talking through some of their thoughts on cyberbullying, cancel culture, and the impact of negative words from the public on the team. Let’s get into this…
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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.
Stephanie Goss:
Hey everybody. I am Stephanie Goss. And this is another episode of The Uncharted Podcast. This week's episode is a little bit of a heavy one.
Stephanie Goss:
Andy and I are talking about cyberbullying and what it means to be canceled these days. And we are going to talk specifically about a case that has taken both mainstream media and the attention of the veterinary medicine community recently.
Stephanie Goss:
We are going to talk about the main hospital that was recently involved in an infamous case of cyber bullying. But if you want to hear more information and get the inside scoop on that story, head on over to The Cone of Shame Podcast. The July 7th episode has all of the details.
Stephanie Goss:
We'll drop a link below in the show notes because Andy had the opportunity to talk to the doctor involved in that case and their marketing media manager, as well about how their team dealt with the situation both during and after.
Stephanie Goss:
But what Andy and I wanted to talk about today is the idea of what it means to be canceled in veterinary medicine. This is something that is near and dear to my heart as a manager.
Stephanie Goss:
Because I think it's something that we don't talk about enough and we need to start talking about it more and make our teams aware of things that are happening when it comes to cyber bullying and the comment section that has taken over the world.
Stephanie Goss:
But also is near and dear to Andy, as someone who lives his life very publicly on social media, and who has experienced the ugliness in the backlash that can come with being online.
Stephanie Goss:
And so we are going to talk about what do we do? What does it mean? What does cancel culture mean? What do we do when our clinics are involved in situations of cyber bullying? Varying degrees.
Stephanie Goss:
And while it was a very heavy one, this was a really good episode and we really enjoyed talking about this and I hope you enjoy it as well. So let's get into it, shall we?
Meg Pearson:
And now the Uncharted Podcast.
Andy Roark:
And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and Stephanie burn it all down Goss.
Stephanie Goss:
That's so appropriate. How's it going, Andy?
Andy Roark:
It's good. Life is good. Yeah. We're in the thick of the summer here.
Stephanie Goss:
Is it swelteringly hot over there?
Andy Roark:
It's pretty brutal. Yeah. It's pretty brutal. Been some good swimming pool sitting weather but overall it's pretty brutal.
Andy Roark:
It's been a busy time at the clinic. I took my oldest daughter with me a couple days ago. She wants to be a vet, she thinks. And so she went in and everything died.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, no.
Andy Roark:
It's when you bring your kid to work. And there was literally a crashing kitten. There was a one week old puppy that was DOA. There was a transfusion cat. Not all of them were mine.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. But just that kind of day.
Andy Roark:
But more than one of them was mine. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
It's so hard.
Andy Roark:
We just drove home in silence. And then we were pulling into the driveway and we pulled into the garage and I stopped and she just sat there that she said, “Does that happen a lot?” I was like-
Stephanie Goss:
Poor kid.
Andy Roark:
“Not to that degree. Not to that degree, but it does happen.”
Stephanie Goss:
Poor kid.
Andy Roark:
So her mother asked her, “Do you still want to be a veterinarian?” She was like, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I do.” So she wasn't totally turned off so that's good. It was bring your kid to death day.
Stephanie Goss:
That's so hard. You think about going to work with your parents, this exciting thing and you're discovering what it's like to be a grown up, and then that was a reality check.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. It's okay.
Stephanie Goss:
That was some serious adulting there.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. We made it though. How about you?
Stephanie Goss:
It's good. It's really good. It's the middle of the summer crazy. So lots of travel is happening and camps and all of the things. So it's crazy busy, but it is really good.
Stephanie Goss:
We're working on lots of fun stuff that is coming from Uncharted and there's lots of stuff happening behind the scenes and our team has been growing.
Stephanie Goss:
And so things are good. It's busy. I'm not going to lie, I am ready for some summer weather. Summer here in Western Washington generally starts right about this time, so we're recording this just after 4th of July.
Stephanie Goss:
And the summer starts the 5th of July and the first two days of summer have been very disappointing. It has been overcast and gross.
Stephanie Goss:
And I'm like, “For the love of all that is holy. Can I please just have some sunshine?” Because this year weather wise has been awful, but it's good.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Good. That's awesome. We got big stuff coming from Uncharted in the back half of the year. And we just finished up the first launch period for the Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Toolbox online on demand course. And we hit and exceeded all our sales goals, which were legit. So yeah, super happy with that. Doing good stuff.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I'm excited to hear how it's going for people in their clinics. We've had a lot of people who have gotten the course and we're starting to hear the feedback and the follow up, and I'm super excited to see how that is going.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think there's a lot of people who are looking at it for the fall to to start doing some exam room training and stuff with it then.
Andy Roark:
And so I learned with the angry client course that we have that people get it and then they just use it along and along, which is why I made it so modular this time, just to really make it easy to break up and use.
Andy Roark:
But I suspect we'll be getting feedback on the course for the next year or two as people use it in different ways and I'm going to keep updating it and adding new stuff and replacing stuff if I feel like it ever feels outdated, it needs to be freshened up. So anyway, that's the plan.
Stephanie Goss:
And I think one of the things that's great about it is that right now it's a great time to have something that is asynchronous, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Because everybody's shorthanded, everybody's super overwhelmed. And I have actually been talking to a bunch of vet friends from outside Uncharted this last week, just catching up with people, because the kids are gone and I actually can have a phone conversation without getting interrupted. It's amazing how that works.
Stephanie Goss:
But I've been talking to people and they're just like, “I'm training four new people at once.” One of my friends was like, “We literally have eight new people who have started in the last 30 days and it's chaos.”
Stephanie Goss:
And so we were talking about how nice it is to have a plan and a structure that allows you to be like, “Okay, today is one of those days where I literally cannot with you, and don't take it personal, but I cannot. I need to focus on our patients or our clients or whatever. But here's some learning, here's a actual structure.”
Stephanie Goss:
And so to be able to use it, asynchronously is super, super awesome. And I am really looking forward to diving into, we've got the Get Shit Done conferences coming up in October, and we're totally talking about how do we get shit done shorthanded because everybody's shorthanded right now.
Stephanie Goss:
And we have to start to think outside the box and think about how do we redo some of the stuff that we've done the same way for a really long time because what we've always done is not working.
Stephanie Goss:
And so I'm super excited to get together with everybody and have some really good conversation about how do we solve some of these challenges.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. You don't need to be an Uncharted member to come to that either. So we try to make it really accessible. But yeah, it's virtual, everybody can jump in.
Andy Roark:
But yeah, we've got a ton of stuff coming out the back half of this year. And then next year is going to be the year of Uncharted I think. It's looking pretty incredible in a lot of ways.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. We're going to have some fun. This episode, I don't know how fun this episode's going to be, but I think it's a really timely one and I think it's something really, really important to talk about. So you just recently, I think the episode dropped this week, right? Today.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. July the seventh is the day that we're recording this. It's the Cone of Shame episode. I got to interview the lead doctor. She's an emergency critical care specialist and the communications manager for Rarebreed Vet clinics.
Andy Roark:
Their hospital was the hospital in Maine, and I'm intentionally not giving a ton of details, because I don't want to stir things back up for them.
Andy Roark:
But they were that hospital in Maine that the world watched recently as they got really absolutely trashed online.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And I think they got a lot of attention in the vet world because I don't know that they did anything really quote unquote wrong.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And I think that's why so many people paid attention. I think it was a very scary and upsetting case for a lot of people because I think most of us could see ourselves being this practice.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
That really got torched. And so for those people who don't know the story, there was a hospital, it was emergency hospital and they had people come in-
Stephanie Goss:
They should go listen to the episode, right?
Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. Well, yeah. You can hear in detail. If you want to hear it all Cone of Shame veterinary podcast is the other podcast I do.
Andy Roark:
The July 7th episode is called something like what does it mean when your vet clinic is canceled? And they share their stor. And so you can absolutely get all the details there.
Andy Roark:
The gist of the story was that they had a very, very, very sick patient that needed a major surgery, $10,000 plus surgery to save this young patient and the owner did not have the finances to do that, which is terrible.
Andy Roark:
After a lot of discussion, the owners said, “Is there someone else that would take this dog and pay for the surgery? And I would give them the dog.”
Andy Roark:
And the clinic found a group, found a rescue group that would pay for the surgery.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And take the pet. And then after it happened, the owner was a bit confused about what happened or they had a lot of emotions-
Stephanie Goss:
Second thoughts.
Andy Roark:
Second thoughts. And exactly. I'm not trying to determine what their thoughts were. I think it would be a horrible experience for anyone to go through.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
But anyway, they ended up on the local news, which was picked up by national news, and also they was on the first page of Reddit, which is a huge internet site.
Andy Roark:
And anyway, literally thousands of angry phone calls came into the vet clinic in one day. Yeah. And they had to shut the phones down and death threats and a police presence was required and it was just this absolutely horrible thing.
Andy Roark:
And so anyway, that's the basic story of what happened there.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. So today, you and I aren't necessarily going to talk specifically about them, but in talking about this case and in you doing the Cone of Shame episode with them, you and I were talking back and forth about cancel culture in general and cyber bullying.
Stephanie Goss:
And you and I both said we can totally empathize here because it's so easy to imagine our own clinics in their shoes, right? And we were talking about the context of that feeling you get when you get a crappy review or your name gets dragged through the mud in local Facebook groups.
Stephanie Goss:
You certainly have dealt with the online trolls and commentary through the Dr. Andy Roark site over the years, right? I think all of us immediately felt this empathy towards this clinic.
Stephanie Goss:
Because we looked at it, I know I looked at it as a manager, and was like, “They did so many things right and they were smart.”
Stephanie Goss:
And yet they're still in the middle of this and it was heartbreaking. And like you said, I think that's why so many of us in veterinary medicine looked at this and went, “What the heck and how do we change this? How do we stop this?”
Andy Roark:
They had documentation of everything. They had legal documentation. They had signed contracts. None of this was fly by night.
Andy Roark:
It was all stuff that they had clearly set up to be able to make things like this happen. And they still ended up dealing with a lot of over the top reactions and a lot of hate.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And one of my personality traits is when things like this happen, I tend to look at it and go, “Well, can we learn from this?”
Andy Roark:
And I feel like there's got to be something that the rest of us can take away because I'll be honest, I don't think this is going away.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
I think this is probably becoming more common, at least in the short term. I hate it. Veterinary practices make good villains. It's very easy to whip people up into an emotional frenzy.
Andy Roark:
Everybody hates a hypocrite, they hate a hypocrite. And the other thing is, everybody wants a simple story. And there's a lot of of narratives in politics where there's a very simple story that you go, “That doesn't makes sense.”
Andy Roark:
It's like, doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, it's simple. And people can recite it and they understand it. And so the narrative that the greedy vet clinic took advantage of the powerless pet owner, it hits emotional chords with people.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
And they react strongly to it. And that's what social media runs on, is strong, emotional reaction.
Andy Roark:
And when I say vet vets and vet clinics make good villains, I mean that from a psychological standpoint and from an algorithm response standpoint.
Andy Roark:
We are in a position where we can be made targets because of the trust the public has in us, because of the reputation we have as advocate for pets.
Andy Roark:
People can tell a story that paints us as hypocrites, as people pretending to care when we don't and that gets an emotional reaction pretty regularly.
Andy Roark:
I don't think this is going away and I hate to say it, but I think it's going to be part of our profession. And that's why I think it's something we should start to talk just pragmatically about.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. Think about how many of us have had the conversation with our front desk teams when you have the client on the phone or in the building who has pulled the emotional blackmail card and said, “If you really cared about animals, you would help my pet.”
Stephanie Goss:
It's that same feeling and response, I think. Let's be real, veterinary medicine was very slow to get online and to get involved in social media.
Stephanie Goss:
And so for so many of us, it was that personal experience, right? Or it was somebody at the dog park who was telling everybody at the dog park about their crappy experience, but it was small and it was local for so many of us for so long.
Stephanie Goss:
And I think now cases like this and things that we are starting to see on repeat have really made it feel more personal for a lot of us.
Stephanie Goss:
And also it's that gut feeling of like, “Oh, this could happen to my clinic.” You hear about it and it happens to other people, it happens in other places. You don't think about yourself being in their shoes.
Stephanie Goss:
And now I feel like it has happened repeatedly enough. And there have been more cases like this, where the ducks actually were in a row.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And the right things were done and the team still was just massacred over it. And so I think it has become something that is absolutely something that we need to talk about.
Stephanie Goss:
And more than just talking about it, I think every one of us has to think about how do we handle it? Because yeah, it may not be us today, but we need to be able to be ready if it is us.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, I agree. And it's funny when I was talking to the vet clinic that went through it. I said, “This really spoke to me.” Because it was only a month or two ago, I had a puppy that came in that had a broken leg and the owner did not have the funds to pay for the animals broken leg.
Andy Roark:
And I didn't know what I was going to do because this is a one year old happy dog other than the fact its leg is broken but it's a hard orthopedic procedure.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
And they don't have it. And it's everybody on a fixed income. And she made it easy on me because she said, “Hey,” and this is awful to here, but she said, I'm glad she was honest. She said, “Hey, this dog was a gift to me. And I don't have the energy to take care of it. I didn't ask for a dog. If there's someone else who would take this dog, then I would 100% percent surrender it.”
Andy Roark:
And I like many other vets knew someone else who would take the dog. It was not one of our staff members. It was nothing like that and you and I can talk about that stuff in a bit.
Andy Roark:
But anyway, I had somebody who would pay for the surgery and do the thing. And so we did it and I just look and say, “I'm not going to crap on the emergency hospital for what they did because I did the same thing.”
Andy Roark:
Because when you're there and they're like, “I can't afford it.” And you're like, “I don't want to put this animal to sleep if somebody else would be able to provide the service.”
Andy Roark:
And again, and I also get where the patent owners come from. There's a lot of nuance here. So let me frame this up a little bit and say the number one, real absolute burn down the building scenario that I see often involves people surrendering pets because they can't afford care.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And boy, that is a time honored tradition by veterinarians where you say, “Well, you can't afford it. Why don't you give us the dog, surrender it, and we'll either see what we can do or we'll get somebody else to pay for it,” and things like that.
Andy Roark:
And as a vet, I know that comes from a good place. I know it's not a secret thing of, “Oh, that's such a great dog. I want to have it.” That doesn't happen.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
But I also can understand how you're the pet owner and you say, “I love my pet. I cannot afford to pay for this service. You're willing to do the service and then give the dog away. Why don't you give it to me? Because I love it more than anyone else will love it.”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And I see that a lot. I see that especially a lot when there's not someone who's like, “I will pick up the bill.”
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
But anyway, there's a lot of weird things like that in the way that we have traditionally done these types of cases. I think it's getting worse because guys, we didn't used to do $10,000 surgeries.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
That just didn't happen. And so that's not a thing that existed in the past. So that ratchets up the stakes. And now we've got these procedures that people really struggle to pay for.
Andy Roark:
And then the other part was we didn't have social media where someone would be angry and go out and share their story and elicit emotional reactions, warranted or not, from other people. That just didn't happen.
Andy Roark:
And so now we've really seen, even though we've done this for a long time, the repercussions now, and probably the frequency with what you're doing, is very different. And so I think that's really put us in a tough place.
Andy Roark:
The other one is just this simple, my pet died. And there are circumstances we've all seen where those things come out with one side of the story being told online. And it can be a horrible experience for the vet clinic.
Stephanie Goss:
So let's start like we do from the head space perspective and then I think you and I have some things we want to talk about specifically in terms of how do we handle this?
Stephanie Goss:
I don't think you can avoid it, right? We are not solely in control because it involves clients, right? It involves people outside of our control.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
But how do we mitigate the impact for the team certainly, and for the clinic? But from a head space perspective, where do we start with this?
Andy Roark:
So I thought a lot about this, because I was like, “What's the takeaway from what we've seen and when we see clinics just getting burned online and things like that? And their reputation is really just taking a beating.”
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I think the first thing is, and I could speak from personal experience, as someone who has been torched and pitch forked online many times for different things.
Andy Roark:
It feels awful. It's easy to look at other clinics and you haven't gone through it, and you're like, “Oh, well, it's just a bunch of people online.”
Andy Roark:
It feels like your reputation is being destroyed. Everything that you've built is being torn down. If you are the doctor that is being named here, you feel like no one's ever going to trust you again to do your work and that all of the good you've done in the past doesn't count for anything.
Andy Roark:
And I can tell you that is a horrible, emotional experience, but I have found that to be the most common path for most of us who are going through this and so just know this feels awful.
Andy Roark:
It taps into this caveman part of our brain, right? The tribal status part of our brain where we are these tribal community building people, right? And being shunned from the fire circle is to die in our caveman mind.
Andy Roark:
And when we see our reputation being torn down, we are being publicly shamed by the tribe. It presses emotional buttons in us that are real hardwired and that are ancient.
Andy Roark:
And boy, it gets a response that's really hard to imagine if you haven't been through it. Those are the big opening validation things is just know if this happens, it's going to be awful.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, and I think you and I talk a lot about head space obviously on the podcast. And one of the things when it comes to dealing with a lot of other situations that we have talked about repeatedly is the idea of we can't take it personal.
Stephanie Goss:
And this, I think maybe more than anything else we've talked about, it almost feels when it's you, when it's your clinic, when it's your medicine as a doctor or a paraprofessional staff, or when you're getting ripped by a client for the way you treated them from a customer service perspective, I felt like it was impossible to not take it personal, right?
Stephanie Goss:
And I know rationally in my head that there is a person on the other end of this. There's a pet owner who is emotional, who loves their pet, who cares, who is hurt.
Stephanie Goss:
And I know that rationally hurt people hurt people, right? We've talked about that before. And yet more than anything else, this is a place where from a head space perspective, it is really, really hard.
Stephanie Goss:
And for me, being in the middle of it at one point in time with my clinic, it felt impossible to not take it personal.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And that's a really hard thing. We should acknowledge that. And rationally, I think a lot of us know in our brains, we should not take this personal because hurt people hurt people.
Stephanie Goss:
But knowing that and actually embracing it and breathing it and living it is really, really, really hard.
Andy Roark:
Well, this is why it's so much harder in situations like this. When there's an angry client and they call you and they talk to you and they say, “You are stupid.”
Andy Roark:
You go, “That's one person. And that's a hurt person.” The problem with stuff like this is you have what appears to be a thousand people all agreeing that you are stupid.
Andy Roark:
And so me saying, “Well, that's her opinion and she's an angry person.” That's much easier for me to keep that in proportion than, “A thousand people told me that I am terrible. How could a thousand people be wrong?”
Andy Roark:
There's so many of these people and they're all so angry and they're all talking about how horrible I am or about how horrible the clinic is.
Andy Roark:
And that's where, social media as we have it, it really drives this. Things to remember here with social media are a few people can sound like a ton of people.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And the first time I got into it with a group that did not like something that I had said, or not said, I ultimately ended up going back and finding it was six people.
Andy Roark:
But they used all the different platforms, they called on the phone, and then when one of them would post, the other ones would jump in and comment and tag other people.
Andy Roark:
But really there was six people who were all clearly well connected and they may have all been related. They could have been one person with six accounts. I don't know.
Andy Roark:
But man, it felt like a stampede when it was happening. But you're hearing all of these voices. And so social media is awful about making a couple of people seem like a ton.
Andy Roark:
It's also awful about making the most passionate voices seem like the most important and the loudest. And that is one of the things that I, as a beef, I really have a social media is people like it gets everyone a voice.
Andy Roark:
It disproportionately amplifies the angriest people. It makes small groups seem like big groups, especially fringe groups, and it amplifies misinformation and things that aren't true because those things get a lot of attention and they spread quickly.
Andy Roark:
And so it's not like just having a conversation. It is set up in a way that really is negative in its impact on people who are at the receiving end of this.
Andy Roark:
The last part about it is our own psychology too, is stepping back. And I talked about a caveman status and we've talked about negativity bias a ton of times.
Andy Roark:
We tend to remember the bad things that happen over the good things.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
We have a bias towards remembering what went wrong at the clinic instead of what went right. When it started off, and I said, “I took my daughter to the clinic and everything died.” Of course, that's not true.
Andy Roark:
There was actually a litter of, there-
Stephanie Goss:
There was puppies.
Andy Roark:
There was. There was a laundry basket full of puppies that came in and my daughter just melted and loved it.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And she talked about that as much as she talked about the other stuff. But I only like, “Oh, this was awful.”
Stephanie Goss:
Everybody died.
Andy Roark:
Everybody died. That's negativity bias. And I have it just like everybody else does. And so anyway, but of course that negativity bias it makes it so hard for us to remember the good things that we do. All the thank you's that we got.
Andy Roark:
It makes it really easy for us to remember, especially the hateful things that people say. And so all of these things just tee up on us.
Stephanie Goss:
It's so interesting because you're totally right about the few people look like a lot. I was reading an article this week written by a mother and she was presenting a side of parenting that is something that was not talked about a lot.
Stephanie Goss:
And the article really resonated with me in a huge way. And I was like, “Oh my God, it feels like somebody crawled inside my brain.”
Stephanie Goss:
So I very rarely go in the comment section because I know what the comment section is like, because of what we do for a living.
Andy Roark:
Oh, exactly.
Stephanie Goss:
So I very rarely travel and traverse the comment section, but I appreciated this article so much. I opened it up and I was pleasantly surprised because the first 20 comments were all from people like me who were just like, “Oh my God, thank you for sharing. We don't talk about this. I appreciate this.”
Stephanie Goss:
And then immediately I lasered in on the first horrible, horrible comment from someone who was like, “You're an awful person. You're a horrible parent. People like you shouldn't be allowed to have children.”
Stephanie Goss:
And then there was a whole litany of comments from other people who agreed with that person, right? And I remember thinking to myself, “If I was the writer, I would 100% have ignored all of these positive comments about how this resonated with so many people and I would've focused solely on that negative people ripping you apart.”
Stephanie Goss:
And your point was so good because after a while I looked back and I looked and I was like, “The good and the positive comments here actually really truly outweigh the negative.”
Stephanie Goss:
But I guarantee that for that person the negative was really hard to ignore because it was small, but it was so awful.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
It was that same feeling. And as a clinic, every time something negative gets brought up in a community group or one star review, there are always those amazing, wonderful, Mrs. Jones clients who bring your team cookies and Christmas gifts and they immediately jump on and say all of the good, wonderful, positive things.
Stephanie Goss:
And yet our brains are just hardwired to dismiss that good, I think so much easier than we can let go of the negative. And it is hard. This is a hard head space one to overcome.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
I think because you have to be really intentional and it takes a lot of emotional work, which is hard. And so for a lot of us, it's like, “Oh, okay.”
Stephanie Goss:
It's easier to let that little negative voice start shouting and ranting in our heads and think, “Well, maybe I am a bad doctor. Maybe I did do something wrong. Maybe I should have offered to do the surgery for free.” Right? “Am I a horrible person?”
Stephanie Goss:
And it's really easy to let yourself slip into listening to that voice in the moment of like, “If I was a good person, maybe I would've done this.” Which is so negative. It's hard and it's crappy.
Andy Roark:
Well, of course. And the benefit of hindsight is great. So as I've been doing this for 15 years now online, and the number of people who will show up with hindsight and say, “Oh, well, you should have seen this.” Give me a break.
Andy Roark:
After you know how the story ends, you can totally go back and critique decisions that are made.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
All right. So I'm going to wrap up head space here with some positive head space.
Stephanie Goss:
Okay.
Andy Roark:
Because I want to validate the crappy sludge that people are going through when they get dragged into a local Facebook group, when they get beat up online, all those things.
Andy Roark:
All right. Now it's time to get our head into a place that is going to be good. Number one, note that this often is not fair. Life is not fair. This is not fair.
Andy Roark:
This is one side of the story that's being told publicly. And because of our professionalism, because of medical ethics, because of legality, we're often not able to tell our side of the story. We're generally not able to tell our side of the story.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And that is not fair, but it's real. So at least take heart in the fact that this is not fair and most of us know it's not fair.
Andy Roark:
Keyboard disassociation is real. People will say horrible things online that they would never say to a quote unquote, real person.
Stephanie Goss:
Right? Yes, yes.
Andy Roark:
There are a lot of people out there, I think who have a good heart, especially when it comes to animals. I think a lot of them often feel powerless and impotent to actually affect change for animals they care about.
Andy Roark:
And so when the opportunity to punish someone that they are told is a villain comes up, they do it with glee, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
There are people out there I swear who all they want to do is beat somebody up, but they don't want to be a bad person. So they wait for the opportunity to beat someone up and tell themselves that they're a hero for doing it.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
And they jump on those opportunities. I think that you see those people, they're just brawlers online, but they only are bullies when it's justifiable.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And I don't like that. That is a subculture on the internet, but those people just lurk out there looking for something to do.
Andy Roark:
And the last part is, and this is the one that hurts me, this is the one that stings is when our colleagues, other veterinarians, vet techs, people who work in vet clinics, they will often come in and critique and they'll say, “Well, you should have done this or you should have done that.” And again, hindsight is 22.
Stephanie Goss:
Should is a dangerous word.
Andy Roark:
And you say well, “Why did they do that? When I'm getting beaten up online, when people are saying I'm terrible, when I'm getting a one star review and people are piling on, why would another person who doesn't know me, come in and say that?”
Andy Roark:
And the answer to that question, I believe is, we as colleagues, we want to believe those people made a mistake.
Stephanie Goss:
Sure.
Andy Roark:
Because that means that it won't happen to me because I wouldn't make that mistake. And we can tell ourselves that this is not going to happen to me and we can feel safe.
Andy Roark:
And so when you see people online who come in and say, “Well, they never should have done this and they never should have done that.”
Andy Roark:
Those people are trying to convince themselves that this would not happen to them because they would know better. And that my friends is bullshit. And it is. But you see it all the time.
Stephanie Goss:
True story.
Andy Roark:
And again, you see it in horror movies, people are like, “Oh, what an idiot. She ran into the basement. I would never do that.”
Andy Roark:
You're saying that because you want to believe that you would survive the horror movie. But you wouldn't, you would be killed.
Andy Roark:
You may not have run in the basement. You would have done something equally stupid, and you would've been staked to a tree with a big butcher knife like the rest of us.
Andy Roark:
Suddenly off topic. But it's really hard for me not to take the feedback from my colleagues of why didn't you do this? That's a dagger in my heart.
Stephanie Goss:
Right. Yes.
Andy Roark:
I believe that a lot of times it is people they're thinking themselves, “Why would this not happen to me? I better come up with a reason. Something that I would do differently.” And then they do that.
Andy Roark:
Remember that these things are a force of nature. I really believe that being torched by an internet mob is being hit by lightning at this point with that general frequency, it absolutely happens.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And there's not a whole, whole lot you can do about it. We like to believe we have a lot more control than we do.
Stephanie Goss:
And we don't.
Andy Roark:
And we don't. And your good heart is not going to necessarily get you out of this. In fact, we can look at the things in Maine and say, “Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes going above and beyond is really what sets you up to make people really angry.”
Andy Roark:
And boy, that's unfair, but it is 100% true. So I think these things are more and more just something that happened. And there are cases where people do bad stuff and they get caught. Don't think I'm not saying that.
Andy Roark:
But in most of the instances I see, this could have happened to a 100 other practices that same day.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Anyway, this too shall pass. And after talking to a lot of people, myself included, who have been through things like this, it feels terrible. It runs its course.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
People get bored and they move on. This is going to be a terrible 72 hours and a generally crappy week but 12 weeks from now, this will be an unpleasant memory and your clients will be coming, they'll be there just like they were before.
Andy Roark:
And honestly, they probably won't remember it. And this is on a basis of whatever happened was unfair representation of what the vet did. Not something awful that truly happened.
Andy Roark:
But for the most part, this too shall pass. And in every one of my experiences in clinics that I've talked with as they've gone through these things, 12 weeks later, the clients who actually came in the door still come in the door.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And there's things that we can do to mitigate the damages and to make this as-
Stephanie Goss:
Survivable.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. Exactly right. Well, there's things that we can do to mitigate how painful this is going to be.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
And I think we should talk about those after the break. But let me check in with you, any final head space pieces before we move on to action stuff?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. No, I agree. I think when I was thinking about it, we were talking about this too shall pass. Again, when you're in the thick of it's really hard to imagine that it's going to blow past, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Because it's all consuming. That's all you can think about. And from an outside perspective, when this happened and I can think of lots of other examples, including some with you and the doctor Andy side, you think, “Oh my God, this is never going to go away.”
Stephanie Goss:
And it was all over. I have been staying off of social media for a whole bunch of reasons lately.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, yeah, totally. I got you.
Stephanie Goss:
And yet when this happened, I got multiple texts and calls from people who were like, “Have you seen what happened to this hospital?” And I was like, “No. Because I haven't been on social media.”
Stephanie Goss:
And I opened it up and there are hundreds of people that I am connected with online who I know from veterinary medicine. Literally almost every single one of them had posted something or reposted something.
Stephanie Goss:
And it was everywhere and for days and I thought, “This is never going to go away.” But then something else stupid happens in the world and our media culture takes over and then it was old news and it really did.
Stephanie Goss:
But in that moment, even as an outsider, I looked at this and said, “Oh God. This is not going away anytime soon. This is intense. It's everywhere.”
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And I think it's good advice. It will pass and that doesn't make it any less painful, let's acknowledge that. It does feel crappy. It is not fair. It doesn't make it any less painful in the moment, but we can all do hard things for a certain period of time, right?
Stephanie Goss:
And so I think this is one of those things where I think you have to lean into it and say, “I can put one foot in front of the other and I can do some of the things we're going to talk about next. And I can lean into my team and sooner or later it will go away.”
Andy Roark:
Yeah, yeah. And just to be clear, when you looked at the vet pages, almost all of them were supportive of the vet clinic and stuff.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, yes.
Andy Roark:
And I thought that was a wonderful thing from our side of the profession. And again, if you want to hear their story, it's the July 7th Cone of Shame, that podcast.
Andy Roark:
But the profession, a lot of people really came out very positive for them and that's great. Let's take a break and we'll come back and let's get our ducks in a row just to protect ourselves as best we can.
Stephanie Goss:
Sounds good.
Andy Roark:
Hey, Stephanie Goss. You got a second to talk about GuardianVets?
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. What do you want to talk about?
Andy Roark:
Man, I hear from people all the time that are overwhelmed because the phones never stop ringing.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
And I'm sure you hear from these people as well. Our caseload is blowing up and the doctors are busy and the phones just don't stop.
Stephanie Goss:
They never stop. That is a true story.
Andy Roark:
I'm amazed by how few veterinarians know about GuardianVets. This is a service where you have registered technicians who can jump in virtually and help you on the phones.
Andy Roark:
You can flip the switch and GuardianVets can jump in and take some of the load off the front desk and they can handle your clients and get them booked for your appointments and give them support. And it really is a godsend.
Stephanie Goss:
Pre pandemic, it was amazing to me how many people hadn't heard about it for after hours call help. But at this point I can't believe how many people don't realize that they are offering help during the daytime as well.
Stephanie Goss:
Which I would think right now is a huge benefit to practices because everybody is shorthanded. Everybody is drowning in phone calls.
Stephanie Goss:
And so we talk about it, we've talked about GuardianVets a lot on the podcast, and every time we do, we always get somebody who says, “What is that?”
Andy Roark:
Guys, if you're not familiar with GuardianVets, if you think that you could use some help on the phones or up the front desk, check them out, it's GuardianVets.com.
Andy Roark:
And if you mention our podcast, me and Stephanie Goss, you get a month free. So check it out. GuardianVets.com.
Andy Roark:
All right. So, what do we doing here, Steph? Are there things that we can do? We're excited as a force to nature. Does that mean we just throw our hands up and just let it go and hope that we don't get hit by lightning?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes and no. It depends. Right?
Andy Roark:
Acceptance is important, but also yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
I do think that, okay, you know that lightning strikes happen.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And you can't control that. And yet, does that keep me in my house for my whole life to avoid the lightning? No. And I think we have to adopt that same mentality, right?
Stephanie Goss:
We have to open our eyes to the fact that this is a cultural shift and it is happening more and more frequently, like you said.
Stephanie Goss:
And I don't want to live in my house and hide for the rest of my life, right?
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And so at some point I think that all of our rationales have to shift to this is a possibility. It might be a small possibility, especially if we do things to set ourselves up for success. But even if we do all of the right things, it could still happen.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. It is a force of nature. There's a quote from the Quran that roughly translated is, it says, “Trust in Allah, but don't forget to tie up your camel.”
Andy Roark:
And I'm like, “That's it. A 100%.”
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
Well, we're going to trust that everything is going to be okay from above and at the same time, I'm still just going to go ahead and do the basic thing that I can do to prevent hardship for myself.
Stephanie Goss:
I love it. It's brilliant.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. It's pretty great.
Stephanie Goss:
That's right, right? Yeah. There are things that we can do and we're going to talk about some of those and things that we should do, because we want to try and avoid it if we can.
Andy Roark:
Sure.
Stephanie Goss:
And there are things we can do preventatively and then to avoid it and then things that we can do to mitigate the impact when it does happen. But I think you have to recognize that it's possibility.
Andy Roark:
Sure. Of course. So first part is acceptance. It might still happen, but there are things that we can do it. So I was thinking about this a lot and go, “Okay, well, what do we do?”
Andy Roark:
Well, we do have things. We can at least put our thumb on the scales. We can reduce the probability of this happening. And we can try to reduce the severity of things like this happening when they do occur.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
And so those are the big things that I'm going out. Obviously if we can, we're going to avoid it. So how do we avoid it? Clear protocols and intentional decisions, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
Especially about money and surrender.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
What are your policies when clients can't afford procedures? Do you allow people to surrender pets? I am getting less and less okay with this just because of how the world is changing.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I don't like people surrendering animals and those animals getting passed off to the staff. There's a lot of things I don't like about that.
Stephanie Goss:
One of my biggest pet peeves.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. And that's really hard to defend. It's like this person who wants the pet can't afford it, so now we're going to give it to Carol who has too many pets and doesn't really want another one, but she's going to take it because we're going to emotionally blackmail her into doing so.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I don't like that. So anyway, what are your policies? Are you doing this? How do you do this? What paperwork is involved in this? Does the pet owner have a chance to come up with money and get the pet back in a certain amount of time?
Andy Roark:
All of those things need to be thought out about what exactly are you doing?
Stephanie Goss:
And let's be clear, in this case in particular when I looked at it, I wanted to stand up and like give this hospital a standing ovation, because I was like, “Look, here's this hospital that had policies, that had protocols, that had thought about some of this and done all of the right things.”
Stephanie Goss:
And then I took a step back and I looked at my own practices and my friends' practices and did some asking. And for most of us, we haven't talked about it. We haven't thought through it.
Stephanie Goss:
For most of us, the common situation is, Dr. Roark goes into the exam room and then the proverbial shit hits the fan. And then Dr. Roark comes out of the exam room and we all huddle up in the treatment room and go, “What are we going to do here?”
Stephanie Goss:
Because we do care and we want to take care of the patient, we want to take care of the client. And so we're making those decisions, not only are we making them in real time and on the fly, but we're making them in times of very high emotions.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
Which is really stupid from a business perspective. That's the worst thing that we can do to take care of our teams, to take care of our patients and our businesses.
Stephanie Goss:
And so I think the smartest thing that we can do is acknowledge, like you and I started this by saying we have to acknowledge that this is a thing that is happening more and more frequently.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And that it very well could be us. And so taking the time to sit down and talk through what actually are our protocols? And not just the surrender piece is a big, huge, hairy piece of it that has to be talked out from a lot of different angles.
Stephanie Goss:
But all of the pieces leading up to that, when it comes to, how do we talk to clients about finances? The first time we're having a financial conversation with the client should never be in that case of an emergency, right?
Stephanie Goss:
And for so many of us, it's the same as it is when we're having the surrender conversation. It's happening because now the emergency has happened or now the unexpected has happened. And the owner has said, “I don't know what to do here.” So we're having that conversation for the first time.
Stephanie Goss:
And so for my fellow managers out there and practice owners, this is where we have to look at the fingers pointing back at ourselves and take the reins back a little bit here and say, “Okay, there are a lot of steps along the way here that have to really be thought about and talked out and decisions made.”
Stephanie Goss:
And then not only the decisions made as a team, but then communicated to the team so that every member of the team knows when this situation happens, even if it's a once in a blue moon situation, what to do, right?
Stephanie Goss:
Your team should know what happens when there's a fire in the building. You shouldn't have a fire in the building with any regularity, right?
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
But if that happens, every member of your team should know what to do. And that adrenaline takes over. It should be the same in this situation.
Stephanie Goss:
Even though we're way more likely to face having to have the financial conversation or the emergency conversation, or the surrender conversation, way more often than we are a fire in the building.
Stephanie Goss:
But we put more time and energy into that disaster planning than we do into this. And so this is where I can't soapbox on this hard enough.
Stephanie Goss:
We have got to take a step back and spend some actual time developing plans and protocols, not just on the surrender piece which is huge and important, but also on the financial part of it.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I would say having those protocols, making those decisions at an unemotional time away from the moment it happens.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes. Away from the situation. Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Training your team on communication, right? And that's your doctors and your people. How often do we see people being to torn up online, not because of anything they did, but because of how what they did was communicated to the pet owner. That's 99% of the time.
Andy Roark:
And so make sure you've got good protocols to communicate with. I'm a huge fan of sending home notes, medical notes, your soaps, however you want to set it up.
Stephanie Goss:
Documentation.
Andy Roark:
Documentation, but also giving that to the pet owner explaining what happened, even in brief terms. But just trying to make them feel supported in what happened, make sure that they try to feel okay about it.
Andy Roark:
And again, we're all working against time deadlines, but the better job we can do of that, the lower the chance of us getting hit by lightning. So those are the big things for me, as far as reducing your probabilities.
Andy Roark:
Good protocols that are well thought out, have as many payment options that you can, or at least a clear structure of payment options to help people afford care in a way that works for your practice.
Andy Roark:
And then good communication training so that people are good at communicating sensitive topics and things like that. And so that's how we reduce the probability.
Andy Roark:
And the second thing is trying to reduce the impact when this does happen. And the biggest way to reduce the impact is to have a great reputation with your current clients and with your community.
Andy Roark:
And that's something that you actually do have the power over. People will say to me, “Andy, what's the best way to handle a truly awful unfair one star Google review?” And I'd be like, “The best way to handle it is to have 500 five star reviews already.”
Stephanie Goss:
Yes, yes. I'm so glad you said that because it is such a soapbox. You ignore it because you should be able to ignore the one off random one star review or maybe your team really did screw something up and maybe there was some truth in what is being shared.
Stephanie Goss:
But your reputation should be able to absorb that hit because you're focused on the good and so many of us ignore that and do the panic flail about and go, “Oh, now I have to deal with the negative.” And we focus so much time and energy on that.
Stephanie Goss:
And I have looked repeatedly at colleagues and said, “What if you took the amount of energy that you're spending on this and put it into actually talking to the clients who are happy with your services?”
Stephanie Goss:
And getting them to write reviews and getting them to share their story and leave that information. That is far more advantageous for all of us to focus on that good, so that we can absorb those things, right?
Stephanie Goss:
I don't think that there's actually anything, even with a good reputation in something like this, where the mob mentality sets in and it is the thousand calls in a day to the clinic. I don't think there's anything you could do to mitigate that.
Stephanie Goss:
But the piece of this that often gets focused on is, “What do I do with that one star review?”
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
That is something that you absolutely can focus on the positive and outweigh that in.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I agree. I think that's the best thing you can do. I've seen people get defensive and that generally goes badly.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Once the narrative starts it's hard to wade into that and have any sort of a positive outcome. The one side of the story has been told and getting people to change their minds.
Andy Roark:
It's amazing. No one's going to believe this when I say it, it turns out people on the internet are not really interested in changing their minds.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
I don't know. But again, broad generalities, not true of everyone, but internet mobs in general, they're tough to turn around.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Deep breaths. This too shall pass. Don't respond immediately. You need to try to get your head straight. You need to try to get some perspective.
Andy Roark:
And the immediate response is generally the defense and emotional one. And that escalates rather than diffuses the situation.
Stephanie Goss:
Yes.
Andy Roark:
Circle up the wagons, talk to the team, quick team training, right? What do they say when angry people call? What do they do if people have questions when they come in? What are we allowed to say? What are we not allowed to say?
Andy Roark:
And if you say, “Andy, I don't know the answers to those questions.” I would say, “You need to get your PLIT representative on the phone. You need to look at your liability insurance.”
Andy Roark:
That you should already be in contact with those people about, “Hey, this is happening. I'm expecting a board complaint as a distinct possibility.” If you don't have that insurance, you need to get that insurance.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
But you do not want to be without support for this. So included in your license defense should be advisement on things like this. Get that advisement. Figure out what you can say and what you can't say and start to work on what your response is going to be.
Andy Roark:
There's a ton of resources out there and there's more and more coming along. The AVMA has really good cyber bullying resources. Not One More Vet is putting out more and more, they're really focusing on this. I think AAHA has some resources.
Andy Roark:
We want to turn off commenting on social media sites. It may get so bad, especially if your mega internet being [inaudible 00:55:03], you may end up turning off the phones and just reaching out to people who have scheduled appointments to communicate with them coming in.
Andy Roark:
I've seen it happen. People go, “I'll never turn off the phones.” Fuck that. If you have literally thousands of phone calls coming in a day, and again, it's a small number of people looking like a lot.
Andy Roark:
These are robo callers. They're bots that just call and immediately call again, immediately call again. At some point you may have to actually do it. It's just a thing that happens.
Andy Roark:
So anyway, get the resources together, figure out what you can say, communicate that to your team, give them some language to use.
Andy Roark:
Remember the phrase let's practice what we're going to say, turn off your online reviews, turn off your comments on your social media. You might have to turn your phones off for a day or so.
Andy Roark:
And hopefully not. That is the absolute worst case scenario.
Stephanie Goss:
Right.
Andy Roark:
But beyond that, just remember that this too shall pass.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah. I think the other thing too, I think those are all great things and there are some great resources out there that have been put together in our industry in terms of cyber bullying in particular.
Stephanie Goss:
And I definitely would think about like having our teams prepare for that and do some education and figure out some of this stuff ahead of time.
Stephanie Goss:
And then the other thing too, this is where I'll soapbox, instead of what does your handbook say? This is where you lean into professional help if it gets really bad.
Stephanie Goss:
And think about maybe you do need to get somebody to help with PR. Maybe you do need to talk to an attorney to find out what you can say and what you can't say or someone from a marketing or PR firm, those are wise investments if you're really facing the keyboard mafia.
Stephanie Goss:
The other thing that I think is so, so important is you have to think about taking care of your team as well.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
And so this is one where I would absolutely say, this is a great example of why we need EAPs Employee Assistance Programs, because the team, this is going to be hard on them mentally, emotionally, potentially physically, if people come to the clinic and are picketing and bullying outside of the clinic, right?
Stephanie Goss:
There's all these potential impacts here. And so having support for them, thinking about bringing in someone from the community to be a professional resource. Because as a manager or a practice owner, that's not my job. I shouldn't try and make it my job. And the team needs support.
Stephanie Goss:
I think about the poor doctor in the case in Maine and the team who was a part of that case, right? They're giving themselves emotionally and doing their best to take care of their patients and they're still getting crapped on.
Stephanie Goss:
And then they're getting death threats and it is personal. People literally are calling and leaving death threats for the team. That has a emotional, psychological impact far beyond what I think a lot of us can imagine.
Stephanie Goss:
And so the last piece of that for me is that there has to be support and resources for the team. It is not your job to know what those resources are from a professional perspective.
Stephanie Goss:
But as a practice leader, it is a 100% your job to make sure that your team has access to those resources. And get them taken care of.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. I agree. The last thing that I would say is lean into the work and lean into your purpose. So if you're going through this, try to keep your team focused on the actual clients in the building.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
On doing the work, on taking care of the pets, on serving the people who are not faceless people on the internet, but are actual real people who know you and who come in.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
I think that's the most mentally healthy thing you can do is try to recognize that a lot of this is noise. And the people who actually come in and know you, they're the ones who matter.
Andy Roark:
And the pets that you're actually going to put your hands on, those are the ones that you can help. And so just trying to focus in and really think not in the existential threat level, but in the what's right in front of me that I can actually do?
Andy Roark:
And who here can I actually show how compassionate I am to? That's all you can do. And so I think that's where you should focus and you try to get the team to focus there. I think that's about the best path forward.
Stephanie Goss:
Whew. Man.
Andy Roark:
Yeah. That's heavy.
Stephanie Goss:
This is a heavy one, a real heavy one. My heart goes out to this clinic certainly and all of our colleagues who we have watched go through it. This is hard.
Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Stephanie Goss:
It is hard. It is heavy. And I think the number one thing that all of us can do is acknowledge there is a possibility, maybe a very small statistical possibility, we think about the millions of vet clinics out there.
Stephanie Goss:
But I think we have to stop thinking, “This couldn't happen to me.” And start thinking, “What would I do if this happened to me?” Right?
Stephanie Goss:
And start to think about how do we take care of our clients, our teams, our patients, ourselves, and really think proactively and not reactively here.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, yeah. I agree. Once you're in it, you're in it and there's not a great way out.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
Avoidance is the best strategy and know that that's not entirely in your control.
Stephanie Goss:
Yeah.
Andy Roark:
There's always benefits to over communicating. There's always benefits to having a plan. I think that that's all you can do. And then just know that sometimes it happens.
Andy Roark:
It's going to happen to the absolute best of us. Keep your chin up and just know unfortunately I'm afraid this is part of modern medicine.
Stephanie Goss:
Oh, man. Well, have a wonderful week in your work. Friends, have a great week and we will talk to you all again soon.
Andy Roark:
See you everybody.
Stephanie Goss:
Well, everybody, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for spending your time with us. We truly enjoy spending part of our week with you as always. Andy and I enjoyed getting into this topic.
Stephanie Goss:
I have a tiny little favorite ask. Actually two of them. One is if you can go to wherever you source your podcast from and hit the review button and leave us a review, we love hearing your feedback and knowing what you think of the podcast.
Stephanie Goss:
And number two, if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button. Thanks so much for listening guys. We'll see you soon.