Overcoming Perfectionism As A New Vet

Welcome to another episode of Questions With Crocker! This episode Dr. Crocker and Shane discuss their WVC 2024 experience, their newest implementation at their veterinary clinic, different ways to overcome perfectionism, and more.

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TIMESTAMPS
Intro 00:00
WVC 2024 Recap 00:44
Shane's Removing The Waiting Room In The Clinic 10:33
What Advice Can You Give To New Vets Struggling With Perfectionism? (@adrianna) 15:00
The Problem With Perfectionists Not Changing Anything 17:00
Pet Owners Judge Veterinarians For Their Surgeries 17:48
Start To Do Work In Gratitude 20:50
Dr. Crocker Requested Not To Receive Feedback Constantly 24:30
Sometimes It's Better To Get More Things Done Over Being Perfect 25:25
Talk To People 27:58
Outro 28:36

Transcript

0:00

[MUSIC]>> Welcome back to another episode of Question of the Crocker with me, Dr. Crocker. Emma has been chained.>> Hello.>> Good morning. It is morning we are back.>> I feel like I need to say something different than, hey, or hello. I'm like a tagline or something.>> I would agree. What would it be if you could have any tagline?>> I don't know.>> You know, I have a tagline, but it's really annoying, so I don't say it that much. But I always say you can have a bad day with a good attitude and you can have a good day with a bad attitude.>> Definitely not saying that.>> I'll stick with high.>> That is one of my->> Hello, we're on here.>> You are here and it's early in the morning. We got the kids off to school and we are filming this and we are excited to be back in our office at the house and I enjoyed WVC. I enjoyed talking to people in person. It was really nice, but it was so busy at that conference.>> Yes.>> I was speaking podcasting. You were helping me with that. But you were hanging out some while I was podcasting. So what did you do in Vegas while I was doing all the other CE things?>> I do have a lot of free time.>> What do you mean you didn't have free time?>> I also had a little bit of money, but mainly I was.>> In the conference area or the->> Exhibit hall?>> Exhibit hall. What do a couple of talks?>> Yes. And we've talked about this before. The exhibit hall is massive at this conference. I think they said they had 20,000 people this year. It is one of the largest veterinary conferences, which is wonderful, but it also means there's so many people to catch up with and there's a lot to see and do. So I think I walked more there than I did move into Disney.>> 100%>> And might be or hurting so bad.>> That was her done.>> Yes. So we did go to a couple of continuing education talks together. We went to the practice panel and then I did a couple talks on ER stuff. But there was some interesting things that we learned at the panel and then also when we were podcasting with people who were large practice owners. And I think it made you and I kind of sit back and talk a little bit more about our practice and what we're thinking about moving forward. For people who are just joining the podcast, I am an emergency veterinarian, but we own a small animal general practice together. Shane is an entrepreneur. This is one of multiple businesses that we own and he works, I'll say, our quotes from home and the golf course. No, you do a lot. But they talked a lot about the economy and what was your takeaways with that in regards to veterinary medicine and owning a practice?>> I think it sounded like we're going to see a leveling off of the new norm. So I think coming off of pandemic, everything was running hot, a lot of visits. So now everything is flattening out. So it gives some interesting statistics to look at, to look at your book, the number of invoices, etc. To see if they're flattening out. And then also look at staff hours per invoice, which I thought was really interesting we've done that before.>> Mm-hm.>> And the other concept, which they brought up, which honestly I had never heard of, not coming from business background, was price elasticity. So I'm going to try to put this in like my terms and then you can clean it up since you do have the finance background. But basically what they were talking about is because there was such a high demand during the pandemic with everyone staying home and getting pets, that and then also with the cost of everything being more, that prices did go up in veterinary medicine. Pretty significantly. And there's a lot of talk of, we haven't kept up with inflation in the past in our industry. We've been talked about like how low the margins actually are in veterinary medicine. But it was, it was a pretty dramatic increase in a lot of areas. And so they were talking about how we maybe hit the ceiling on some of those prices, where you need to start looking at how many knows you're getting in practice. Which I don't track that. That's not something I've thought of. But they were saying if you're recommending dentals or you're recommending, you know, spay neuter, preventative care, and you're getting more nose than you used to get, that probably means your prices are at the higher end for like the demographic that you're in. And so you might need to rethink a little bit your marketing, how you structure those things, how you communicate on them, and have you hit the high end of that. And if you have, what does that look like going forward? Does that? Yeah, I would throw in their economy as well. Right. So even Darryn, like the pandemic, there were a lot of incentives that were passed out that people qualified for. So they weren't filling the burden of cash crunch. Now I think that's starting to catch up a little bit. So people, I think, you know, with the price of everything going up, the cost of food and you just going to, you know, fast foods, going to cost a family of $60. So I think people are starting to fill the effects of, you know, cash tightening. So they're having to live for places that cut. So I think that also plays a part in. The pricing as well. Well, and historically, veterinary medicine has been pretty recession proof is kind of what they've said because people really do value their pets and they want to care for them. And I think we still see a lot of people in the ER that, you know, do a fair amount. But in general practice, and with the preventative care, you can see people kind of picking and choosing maybe a little bit more of what they're going to do. Or pushing off things that normally they would do quicker. They'll say, you know, I need to say about for that dental or I will do that, you know, next year maybe. So I think it's important to kind of remember what everyone's experiencing in their lives and be okay with having those financial conversations and being a little more understanding when people can't do everything. We hear a lot of times in our industry people say, like, if you can't afford the vet, don't get the pet. I absolutely disagree with that. I think that circumstances can change in people's lives. Medical things can happen that you weren't expecting. So ideally you have a plan in place for those things, but pets have such value to people, to mental health, to wellness as a whole. So there's got to be a happy medium. The other thing I find interesting that's talked about a lot at the conference was just wages. So trying to pay especially our support team members more. But the conversations are interesting because what I hear is we need to pay everybody more. But then I also hear we need access to care. We need to make sure that we keep things, you know, affordable for pet owners. But I also hear you need to start getting technology in your practice and you need to be, you know, buying the latest and greatest thing in the new AI analyzer. And so as a practice owner, I am very kind of torn a little bit on how much I lean into like one side or the other because to be honest, you cannot be a low cost practice. That's reasonably priced for pet owners, what they consider reasonable and still pay top dollar to your team unless you just don't want to make money and you just want to break even, which as a practice owner, you need to make a living too. So what are your thoughts on that? I know we've talked a lot about this industry as a whole compared to all the other industries you have in your hand in, but do you have any thoughts on that and kind of do you see that disparity? Yeah, I think a lot of that conversation probably comes from people that aren't responsible for pay roll or paying the lease when they're saying like we just need to pay more. Yeah, we need to pay more and we need lower the cost. We need to help people out. And I think it all makes a lot of sense until you start trying to figure out how you're going to pay for it. So being on the other end of the table, even though intentions may be well, that I want to pay my staff more, you still, like you said, you have to make sure that the practice is profitable. So I don't think we hear that conversation as much from practice owners. I think what you hear from practice owners from what I've gathered is I want to pay my staff the most I can afford to pay. I want to treat them really well. I want to treat them fair. I want to give them opportunity to succeed. And they may say I'm going to increase prices going into 2024 by 4%. But I'm going to pass that 4% straight to my team, right? So they're maintaining the practice margin. They're not increasing their margin. They're maintaining their margin, but they're able to pass on a little bit of that to their staff. But again, that increases prices to get the staff more money. Well, and you say 4%, but like on average, all the distributor companies, this year that we get our inventory from, we get everything from, on average, they went up eight person on us. So even if we don't raise prices and we just eat that cost, we're going to lose money. If we raise prices, then we're going to be where we were last year. Yeah, just, I mean, just think about straight numbers, a million dollar practice. It's getting 8% less than they were making the year before. That's $80,000 less, right? So that's a huge number. That's a big number. That's two team members. If I'm saying so, if you're not raising prices at least, equivalent to inflation, you're technically losing money year after year. And if you're giving staff additional raises on top of that, that's a bad number for veterinarians. It is. And I think until I became a practice owner, I definitely was that associate veterinarian that was like, we need to take care of our team, we need to pay them more, we need to. And I still think there's a lot of places that don't pay. We won't take money out of the practice. Right. But I think the perception of, well, if you own a practice, a private practice that's privately owned, if you own it, and you're not paying $30 an hour to everyone, the perception sometimes is you're just raking in all this cash yourself. And I think I'm trying to dispel that myth a little bit. A lot of us are out here trying to really walk that line of, I want to pay my team-talk dollars so I get the best people and I keep them. But I also have to account for all these other costs that I have that are going up dramatically for me. If you are paying more the grocery store, I am paying more for inventory, I am paying more for everything, single thing that it takes to run my practice. And so that is a piece of the puzzle that gets missed a little. And I see a lot of people still associate veterinarian saying, we need to pay more. And that's the end of the conversation. Because I don't think you truly understand it until you're on this side of the thing. Well, I think it's just like anything else, right? If you come to your leadership team with a problem, come to him with a solution as well, right? If you come saying, hey, I really need to make more money. I'm willing to work additional hours. I like to do more surgeries. You know what I mean? Come to him with a solution. I want to raise my skill set so I can bring the practice more money. And then you can pay me more in return. All those things are great if you come to me and say that. I want to take on a leadership role and maybe handle the hiring and firing. I mean, there's things that you can do that can accommodate additional revenue if you just put your mind to them. Yeah, I think that the conversation is ongoing. And I'm glad we're talking more about it because it used to be no one really wanted to talk about any of these things, which is why veterinary medicine, honestly, we don't run our business as well because we don't share ideas and we don't talk about things. So just wanted to kind of, that was a lot of the conversations we had with practice owners on how to balance it all. I want to also add that we're talking in this bucket, right? There's also extremes. On one foreign, you may have practices still where the veterinarian makes a ton of money as the owner makes a ton of money and pays his staff next to nothing and works them like crazy and there's a hot turnover, right? And we do not support that. That's what I'm saying. So I think we need to make sure to be clear that we know there are practices out there that maybe should be paying their support staff more money and then not doing it. And there's the opposite where you may have owners out there that are just about to close your door because they're doing everything they can and probably not being smart business owners. So we're, again, towards the middle where the norm is talking about this. Yes. And this is, again, we are not experts. This is our experience as practice owners. And then talking to people this past week about their practices, which were very large practices and how they're also balancing it all and doing it. So I really appreciate all the perspectives. And then I think our thing is we have to bring it back and figure out what works for us. Yeah, I think if you don't take something away from these conferences, at least one thing that you can implement immediately, you're wasting your time going. Speaking of that, speaking of that. So we're at the conference and we're talking all these people and then all of a sudden you're like, I have an idea. And I'm going to be honest. This is my point. You got to come back and you got to implement something immediately. But I would be honest, in our relationship, I would say 80% of the time, I'm the one who's like, I have an idea. Like, hold on to your horses because this is going to be something that you didn't expect. That's, it's me. Right. So when you say it, I have like no clue. Are you going to be like, I need to buy a golf simulator? Are you going to be like, I find the vehicle like probably that as well? Those are two things that I need. But why don't you tell everybody what you, all of a sudden said we need to do with our renovation? I don't think it was all of a sudden, right? I mean, you and I have kind of been talking a little bit about this in the past. I mean, this, I do not know. I don't think that we've talked about this specifically. So a version of this. Okay. Okay. But just talking like you said, just the one-off conversations, podcast, etc. It became more of a realization that waiting rooms aren't a profit center. So why have them? So we have an area that is going to be a waiting room. We're now just going to wall that off and make another exam room. And the thought being that we can get people in if we schedule efficiently and move them directly from their vehicle into the exam room, have them seen and get them back out of there and not sit in a waiting room waiting, right? That's a dead space we can't make any money off of. So we've had to pivot a little bit and we're going to create a call center room and do away with the waiting room and have another exam room. So instead of having a reception area that was bigger, we took that down and we will have a little area for people to sit and wait. You have to like, take drop-off or something. Yes, or med pickups or but in general, we now have an extra exam room, which will allow us to get people into rooms faster, hopefully, and have them not be sitting in a lobby or a waiting room. And I will tell you from my perspective and I actually asked this question on social media like, do you guys think that we need waiting rooms? And a lot of people said yes, that's all they said. But a lot of people agreed with me of waiting rooms are accidents waiting to happen when you have dogs and cats, you can't have a separate area and you have those waiting right next to each other. It's also something that shows that you're not efficiently moving people through. If you have a large amount of people in your waiting room and you are a scheduling appointment type of practice, obviously if you're a walk-in, it's different. And it's just something that I think a lot of people are more comfortable in the room. And a lot of owners said that is I would much prefer to be put right in a room and not have to like, wrestle my dog in the waiting room when people are coming in and out or my cat be like nervous and scared. So overall for the pets, I think that it is better. And then if we can appropriately, like you said, schedule and communicate and if people want to wait in their car, if they want to come in, if they want to, you know, wait, we're going to have a back area with like an open area for dogs. If they want to wait back there, they can. But I think it's all in how you communicate what is going to happen and the expectation. And then I'm hoping. I know it won't go smoothly at first, but it's going to be a train ride. 100%. But I'm hoping once we iron out the kinks, it'll be a good experience for people. I think also this isn't an experiment for us, but it kind of is right. I think we want to figure out how can we place the boundaries? What can we do that other various successful practices are doing? And then how do we even take that to another extreme and create more efficient workflow, see more patients? How do you get more doctors into a, you know, smaller space, etc. So a lot of this is kind of a moving target for us. But the key is where it's going to make decision that if it's not the right decision, we'll pivot and keep going. Well, and everyone that we talked to about like, what would you have done differently? More exam rooms is always the answer. More exam rooms are more treatment or like a standalone dental space. Basically, a space that you can do more work in. And like you said, a waiting room is never been something that someone has said, I wish I had a bigger waiting room or lobby. And most people have said we actually moved into that space, made it smaller so we could add A, B or C. So I don't want to sit there and regret not doing something that we really think will work because we're scared it won't work. And I think we've always kind of functioned that way as a team. So the interesting thing will be communicating this to the team and kind of how it's going to work. It may know because I've already built a wall and removed it. So if they go back there, if they walked back there, they're going to say, wait a minute, this isn't. Well, I'm having leadership meeting today. So we'll talk through it today, but they already know that we want to change the flow a little bit. So I think that it's going to be interesting. But again, if you go to these conferences and you're talking to people who are doing things differently or have really large successful practices that they built from the ground up, you have to listen to them and take things away. Yeah, again, I'll say this a million times. There are those that are talkers and those that are doers, right? So I want to reach out and talk to those that have done stuff and replicate that because they've proven that, you know, I could think outside the box and we'll make it happen. And it works. Yeah. And this is real time. So we'll be able to keep people updated on, yeah, it was great. Do not do this. Do not do this. Okay, so this podcast is based off of questions. If you want to submit them, we have social media accounts at questions with Crocker, but we got a good one. And it's one that I think is very common in veterinary medicine because of the type of people that work in this profession. But at Adriana, who's a vet student wanted to know, how, what can you, what advice can you give to new grads who are struggling with perfectionism? I am my own worst critic and I struggle with dwelling on what I could do better rather than celebrating the good things. And this is such a common thing in our industry. And I think it is one of the main contributors to burnout. And so there are a lot of things you can actually do. I think one of the biggest things to realize is it's called veterinary medicine and practicing because no one ever is going to get a right 100% of the time. And realizing that is the first step. You have to let go of the idea of perfectionism. You have to let go of the idea that you are going to do all the right workup, diagnostics, recommendations, communication and an appointment is going to go great. You're going to help the pet. And if you just do everything right, your day will go well. The problem is we're dealing with animals and we're dealing with people. And neither of those things are predictable. And even when it comes to what the animals are dealing with, they don't read the book. And so the first step for me is just saying, I'm not going to be perfect. And that's okay because I am human. I feel like this probably is like you mentally going into golf, right? Like just try to go off. Let's try not to get. I'm just trying to get better each time. I'm trying to learn each time. Yeah. I think trying to be a perfectionist is a very positive trait. And it's probably a trait that got most people into the veterinary school to begin with. But I agree there is no way to reach perfectionism in this profession. And I could see where that would lead to burnout and stress and other things if you let it get out of control. So that is an area that you probably have to figure out. How do I take this that is kind of a strength, but also probably my biggest weakness and work work within the boundaries of that. And I think the way you do that is you constantly be learning and you constantly be growing your skillset and doing things. The big issue I see is when people are perfectionist, but they don't change anything. So they're perfectionist and they're frustrated because they're not having great client interactions yet they refuse to do any sort of communication training or learning about body language and things that they can do to help them get better compliance with owners or they're perfectionist, but they're having surgical issues taken a long time in surgery. Yet they won't go and say to leadership, I need some more help, I need some more assistance or I need to go do a wet lab or I need to go do a span neuter program or change their level of what is good, right? They may be redoing a suture 12 tons because it doesn't look pretty. And at the end of the day, it's still 80% better than anything else going out the door, right? That's a really good point. Sometimes you just have to get something done and it's not going perfect. Now I am a perfectionist when it comes to my incisions. Like I think that owner pet owners in the spot doesn't help this person asking the question, but I think pet owners judge us based off of like how something looks after a surgery. So I do try to take a little extra time, but... I would say they probably do not do that. No, they do. On like social media, people will post and be like, look at this incision. I mean, but is it bad though? I mean, I wouldn't say bad, I would say ugly. So I know this sounds weird, but there's certain suture patterns like with how you do it, it just doesn't look great. And yes, it is working and it's functional, but there's other ones where if you hide the suture into the skin and it looks like nice and beautiful on the surface, like it's less of an issue. So I will take a little more time and I am quick in surgery. So this doesn't take me a lot of time in general, but I will take more time to do like an interdermal pattern where you can't see suture when I'm done versus on the surface. One way is not dramatically better than the other, but I do think owner perception is maybe a little better for the one and also not have any come back in your sutures, but that is a no side. That is a no side and it is something that I've had patients that are critical and I will just staple it close and that. But that can also fill your cup, right? Yes. So maybe you take more time to do this and that that fills your cup of, I'm really good at what I do. Yes. And maybe you offset that with something else. With something else. I do think that with perfectionism, the reason sometimes that we feel the way we feel is because of like owner feedback or a review or something else. I remember having interactions with clients. And then when I was a newer grad veterinarian, when a transition to small animal, and they would go to check out and they would say like, you know, I really think I just want to see doctors so and so in the future. And I thought that we had like a great, you know, rapport and they were kind of like, her vibe doesn't work for me. And that is really hard. It's really hard to not take it personally when someone doesn't like how you communicate or like how you said something. And it honestly could be something as silly as like the other vet always, you know, talked about how great their dog looked and I commented that their dog was overweight and needed to lose weight. Or, you know, the other vet didn't really recommend preventative lab work. And I kind of talked about it and explained why it was important. And they didn't want anybody who is going to kind of talk about what they called unnecessary tests. So sometimes it wasn't something that I personally did. I had one lady in one time who said, you know, we've seen her a couple times and she's always been really bubbly and today she wasn't. And we just didn't really like that. And I was livid, honestly, because I kept thinking, one, would they ever say that about my male counterpart? Like he wasn't bubbly enough. And two, I'm not a cheerleader. I'm a veterinarian. So if I'm having a day where I'm not going to be is, and I will say I normally am very like, hey, how's it going? But if I had a day where I wasn't that cheery, maybe it's because I just came out of the youth in Asia. Maybe it's because I have a big surgery and I'm worried about it. Like, I'm still human. So that person, they didn't even say they didn't want to see me anymore. But I put a note on there that I don't want to see them anymore. Because every time I saw them from their own out, I would think about the fact that I had to put a show on for them. And that just isn't who I am. So that that client feedback really affects sometimes like our perception of who we are as people and as veterinarians. So I think there are some very tangible things you need to combat that feeling. One, I have a whole folder and it's all these wonderful letters and thank yous that people have sent me. And if I'm having like a really crappy day, I honestly will get that out and I'll read through the letters and I'll like remind myself of all the amazing clients and amazing pets that I saw. The other thing you can do is start to do work in gratitude. Katie Ford coaching, she's actually out of the UK, but she has some amazing tools. She's in veterinary medicine for retraining your brain. We know like if you think about with sports, you have sports psychologists that like retrain you how to think and how to deal with situations, it's the exact same thing. It's learning to focus on the good interactions versus the bad. And I would say majority of the time you have good at interactions in veterinary medicine. We just tend to focus on the negative. Yeah, so in policy per second, we use it on get very good advice. That following this person is probably a really good idea of perfection. Yeah, she is great and it's very veterinary medicine specific. So we can put her information in the show notes. But I do think that realizing that perfectionism is not attainable and then also that it's not healthy to always be focusing on the negative. And I heard some ridiculous statistic of like we are 80% more likely to focus on the negative and the positive, just so your brain is wired. So you really have to make like a effort to retrain the way that you think and retrain those neural pathways. And there's a true art to it and a science to it. And so from learning about gratitude, from working on it as honestly a team and as a person can be really helpful. I think also depending on what position you're in, especially you as an ER vet, you don't want feedback sometimes when a case leaves, right? So somebody comes in critical, you stabilize it, you're now off, you don't want to find out what happened tomorrow or 10 days from now, right? So I think sometimes understanding your job rule in that particular case of that situation and then moving on without you know, researching what happened or you know, thinking what could have done different is a big deal. Yeah, I mean, I learned early on that I think for me it's you only have so much control over a case and you only have so much time with it, right? And so if you obsess over what happened with that case and the things that are out of your control, it was a very difficult feeling for me. And so working in the ER, I absolutely either at the end of my shift, if I like had patients and I stabilized them and they were, you know, still kind of on the edge, I don't always go back and look at that record and see what happened with that patient. If they leave the hospital and they're vomiting in diarrhea and then I treated them and they left, I don't ever call the referring vet and ask like what happened with it. I tried to really focus on me, what I did, tried to understand that I did the best I could within the parameters that owner gave me financially and emotionally. And then I can't control the rest of it. And that is a personal decision. Some people do feel better doing follow up. But it was honestly more frustrating for me sometimes to hear about something that happened that maybe it wasn't the way I would have finished that case or I would have done something. And so recognizing those things that I guess trigger you and that make it harder for you to sleep at night is important and then kind of protecting yourself against that. Yeah. So I was going to think everybody has to learn what are those triggers and how do you balance those to best best your ability? And when you're starting out, so one of the big things is when people are starting out doing surgery, they're always worried about the worst complications. And at some point, a bad complication will happen. I've definitely had foreign bodies that the intestines have leaked and they've had to have another surgery. I had a spay early on, a big fat golden spay and she died a week after I did a spay. And I think there's other things going on with her because a week is a long time, but I still beat myself up to this day of like, what could I have done differently? So you have to realize complications are going to happen. And some people, you know, need to call that surgery the next day themselves and know what's happening with them. But there's got to be a way that you turn your mind off at night and you're able to rest and you're able to sleep and you don't obsess over it. I think that's where perfectionism gets dangerous is when you become so obsessed with the things you really can't control anymore or the things that are negative that you just spiral. And I see that happen a lot, especially with new grad veterinarians. So learning to retrain yourself, learning what your triggers are and avoiding them can all be really important. I actually made it where I don't get feedback from the ER all the time. Our management looks at like reviews, I guess, basically a bus and a lot of veterinarians want to see every single one. They want to see everything that someone said, I don't because whether it's good or bad, I don't feel like it dictates who I am as a person or a veterinarian. And if it's bad and it's honestly a lot of times something that was out of my control, it's just frustrating to me. And so I just told my leadership like, hey, it really doesn't serve me to see like every single one of these. And so what I want you to do is keep an eye on my MPS, which is my net promoter score, like how many stars people are ranking me. If I ever get low, then like, let me know if it feels like something's slipping. But if I'm staying pretty consistent and I am one of the higher ones in our practice, if I all the sims slipping, great. But if not, I don't need to know. I don't need to know about the great things and I don't need and again, that's not something everyone else has. But I have a pretty strong sense of like who I am. And I don't need those to validate me. Does that make sense? It does. I was going to say I don't necessarily consider myself a perfectionist. But I think I learned fairly early on that sometimes getting things done and accomplished is better than being perfect. Because I can get more stuff done the faster I move through, you know, my stack of papers, right? Yeah. So I could spend a ton of time doing something and making it absolutely perfect. But then there's 10 other things that I didn't get to and I'm losing money, right? So I think sometimes just releasing yourself of it's not, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's good enough to get the job done and I can move to the next task is a way that I'll kind of train my mind to be able to get more stuff accomplished. That's actually a great point. I will see that also with new grads is they'll have a case and it's like a sick pet and they want to figure it out. Like they need an answer. So they spend a ton of time trying to convince owners to do certain things. They have a lot of frustration. They are doing like a ton of research like in the moment and it's really hard for sometimes newer veterinarians to understand you are not always going to get an answer. And a lot of these things, especially in emergency, it might be that I rule out like three or four things that are the most critical things, but I still have a list of 20 possibilities and I still am going to say we're at this point. We could do all these other tests or you know, we treat symptomatically and we see what happens. And sometimes it is a gradual you treat, you see the patient response to something and then you learn a lot from that. But always wanting to know what the problem is can really really be an issue because your patients can't tell you what they got into or what they did or how they feel. The owners can only give you some of that information and then you have a you know, five, 10 minute physical exam that you're working off of. So with limited amount of information, you're not always going to have an answer and knowing that that's okay and that's normal can help a lot to fight the perfectionism. And if it's something not getting better, then they come back. But half the time in the ER, I am guessing I'm treating for like the most common thing and then I'm saying come back if it doesn't get better and they leave and I don't see them back. So I'm going to tell myself they did great and the majority of them probably did. I think that this is a really good question. It is something that everyone struggles with, especially because like you said, our personalities got us to where we are as veterinarians. But that can also turn around and hurt you a little bit once you actually get out and practice and you no longer have as much control over things as you did when it was just you just studying and that was it. Yeah, I mean, think as up until you graduated, you're able to do a lot of research to come to an answer, right? So you may spend hours and hours, but you can get to an answer. Yeah. And like you said, that may not be the case when you're actually practicing medicine. So you've got to let that go a little bit. You do. And I do think the more you work at it, just like everything else, then you'll actually get better and better at it. And talking to people also would be like my final tip. We are all struggling with perfectionism in veterinary medicine and imposter syndrome. So talking about it, learning from others and continuing to grow in that is important. And I mean, listen to yourself. I mean, you can you can listen to your internal self and say, I need to talk to somebody about this. Go do it. Yeah. Don't feel ashamed that because there's other people that have like you said the same same thing. And when you start talking people, they're going to be like, oh, yeah. I've been there too. Yeah. So again, we're not professionals. We are not, you know, mental health professionals, but definitely I am a perfectionist. And so those are the things that have helped me as a veterinarian. Hopefully that is helpful to you, Adriana and good luck in school. We're going to wrap things up because we got to get to work and got to do other things. Text from employees and contractors. That sounds fun. We're actually going to head up to the practice. So check out our new layout in the renovation. If you have any feedback for the podcast, we'd appreciate it. You can leave a review and you're hopefully good feedback on Spotify or Apple. If you want to send us questions, you can go to @questionswithcrocker on TikTok or Instagram. And we also can be seen on Facebook. You can watch us actually do this. I really appreciate you doing this with me this morning. Thanks for waking up. Being so cheery. All right. Thanks guys for listening and have a wonderful day.