Mentorship Isn't Training

Handing someone a skills checklist isn't mentorship. It's a starting point! In this episode, our panelists dig into why the veterinary profession has long conflated training with mentoring, and what it actually looks like to invest in someone's growth beyond the checklist. 

From the value of having a mentor outside your direct chain of command, to why safe spaces to fail matter more than credentials, to the real cost of skipping mentorship altogether, this conversation challenges the way vet practices think about developing their people.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• AAHA Mentoring Guidelines

Host = Brenda Tassava Medina, CVPM, CVJ

Panelists:

• Dr. Tim Loonam, Chief Veterinary Officer at Encore Vet Group and Veterinarian at Grace Animal Hospital
• Dr. Dani Rabwin, Founder at Ready, Vet, Go!
• Melissa Mauldin, CVPM, SHRM-SCP, ACC, VP of HR at Encore Vet Group

Thanks for listening!

Website: https://encorevet.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/encoreveterinaryconsulting

Instagram: @encorevetconsulting

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/encore-veterinary-consulting

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

On behalf of Purina, I want to discuss two specialized diets from Purina, the ProPlan Veterinary Diet EN and EN Fiber Balance. The EN formula is designed for general gastrointestinal support, featuring a balanced blend of soluble and insoluble fibers to promote healthy digestion and manage GI sensitivities. It's ideal for dogs experiencing gastrointestinal disturbances such as vomiting and diarrhea, pancreatitis, gastritis and enteritis, and inflammatory bowel disease. On the other hand, Ian Fiber Balance takes it a step further with an enhanced fiber content specifically aimed at improving the microbiome. This formulation is particularly beneficial for dogs suffering from fiber responsive colitis, large bowel diarrhea, constipation, and diabetes. Both diets are crucial in managing GI health. To learn more, please visit www.proplanvet.com. Welcome aboard! You're listening to Flight Plan Quick Consults, your go-to podcast for veterinary insights that are fast, focused, and designed to elevate your practice. I'm your host, Brenda Tasma Medina from Encore Veterinary Consulting. Whether you're between appointments or heading into a strategy session, we've got takeoff ready tips, tools, and takeaways to keep your team soaring. So buckle up as we set a course today for mentorship is not training. Today's panel includes Dr. Tim Lunham, Dr. Danny Rabwin, and Melissa Maudlin. Melissa, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Hi, I'm I'm Melissa. Um, I am the VP of HR at Encorvet Group, and I have a background as working as a practice manager, multi-site leadership, and most recently became a certified executive coach through the International Coaching Federation. Thank you, Melissa, for being here today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Next up is Danny Radwin. Danny.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Hi, thanks for inviting me. I'm really excited to be here. I'm a veterinarian and I've been in practice for over 20 years. I'm a small animal general practice doctor. And a few years ago, I found myself as the formal mentor for a new grad. And through a series of events, it's it spawned an idea. And I launched ReadyVetGo, which is a mentorship program for new and early career veterinarians where I support new grads, early career doctors, and the clinics who have brought them on and welcomed them into their practice. We fill in the gaps that the clinics don't really have all of the time or bandwidth or resources to provide. We have a community for new and early career veterinarians, and it's just sparked some renewed joy in my profession after over 20 years. So happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

And much needed service as well. So thanks for bringing that to us today. You're welcome. And then someone who spends a lot of time mentoring and doing surgical training these days with new grads, Dr. Tim Lunham.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Thanks, Brent. It's great to see all of you again. Danny, it's a pleasure to meet you. I've admired your uh your program for a while. Um I'm the uh I'm the chief veterinary officer and director of university relations for the Encore Vet Group. Been practicing for coming up on 30 years this year, and I uh am a former practice owner, mixed animal practice owner, and I partnered my practice with the Encore Vet Group in 2019. I've been involved with students since very since the year I graduated. Uh, I was lucky. Um I come from a background in the Army Veterinary Corps. I'm a prior Army officer. The Army sent me through veterinary school, and I've been working with students, um, classmates and students that were the you know a year behind me at the University of Georgia as soon as I graduated. And I was trying to count up how many students I've had, and I've uh literally have lost count. So I'm I'm proud of that. As Brenda mentioned, we've been doing a really exciting program, working with new graduates and students through our externship uh program and a uh relationship we have with the Spay Neuter Clinic. So lots of uh clinical hands-on training and um trying to do the best I can to make every one of these students cry in a good way.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

So and we're sure that you're very effective there. Um, all right. So digging into our topic, which is mentorship is not training, um, I think it's one of those things where we just kind of lump lump it all together: onboarding, training, hiring, mentoring, and there's so much more nuance that goes into mentoring. So I'd like to start by hearing from each one of you and your special points of view. What's the difference between training someone and then truly mentoring them? Let's start with Melissa.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

That's such a great question, and it really is common to use coaching, mentoring, and training to serve the same purpose. We hear that a lot and we say, Oh, I'm mentoring them. When all three of those things serve a purpose, but they are different, they are unique. Um, training really is focused on teaching a specific skill set, a specific thing onboarding. This is how you're gonna do your job, this is how you're gonna enter an appointment in the computer, here's our workload, our office. It's really like that dedicated time frame to spend learning how to do a skill. So when I'm training somebody, I'm teaching them a skill. When I'm mentoring them, I'm helping them build a relationship. So it's more than teaching them the skill. I'm building a relationship with them, I'm investing in their future and their growth. Um, and I'm imparting wisdom to them, which is another difference, not just knowledge, but wisdom that only comes through years of experience in doing the job. So it's it's an extra level of um taking training to that next level and really investing personally into someone.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

Thank you for that, Melissa. Uh Danny, what's your take on the difference between training and mentorship?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

I think Melissa nailed it with the distinction. And I think the trap that we fall into as veterinary professionals is the training trap. I think it's much easier for many of us in our roles to fall into a training role. That comes naturally to a lot of us. You know, we know a skill. We have maybe somebody who's new on the team and we want to teach them how to do the skill. And really, that isn't what mentorship is. And I hear from new grads all the time who are struggling in maybe a first job, who are saying mentorship was provided, but I'm not getting it. Instead, what they're getting really is a clinical skills checklist. And then the clinic thinks I'm providing mentorship. And I think that's a real disconnect that we have because it doesn't include all the other things that Melissa was talking about. Wisdom, you know, supporting the whole human, thinking about their professional development, personal, and career development. It's also, you know, mentorship is collaborative and teaching isn't necessarily a collaborative experience. So, you know, I think Melissa really nailed it. And I do think that that is the trap that I do see a lot of clinics fall into. It just comes more naturally to us, and we don't necessarily have a clear understanding of how to provide the wisdom, the support, all of those things outside of a clinical skills checklist. And that's why I love that mentorship is such a hot topic right now, because we can really talk about it and we can talk about these things that are that are missing. Because when new grads leave their first job, as they are doing in a very, very high percentage, they're saying, I'm leaving because I am not getting mentorship. And yet when you talk to the practice, they're saying, but I'm providing it. And so there's this mismatch. And I think it usually falls into this distinction between training, teaching, and mentorship.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

That that is a really fascinating approach to it. Um, I think that we're all seeing that happen pretty frequently, and we're hearing it when we're talking to graduates who have been with a practice for about a year and then they're starting to look somewhere and it's like, wait a minute, you know, what what went wrong? What happened? So, Tim, tell me, you know, you you you work with students and new grads to teach them train, you know, surgical skills, other things, but how do you switch back and forth between that training and mentoring role as somebody who is uh a leader in your practice?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

You know, Danny and Melissa summed it up perfectly. Uh and uh I would add just to just to put the cherry on top, you know, this mentoring thing is a mutually beneficial relationship. Um, like Danny pointed out, training checklists. I'm gonna train this new graduate to do you know these five or six tasks, and then they can go on and make my practice better. When in fact, what we've got to do is this we get take care of that whole person, you know, personal, uh clinical, and career development in the in the individual. And it is hard uh to do training. Like you said, I get a um just this past week I had two students, they're rising, third-year veterinary students, neither of them had been through any type of uh surgical training in their in their curriculum yet. And so I was teaching them how to do space and neuters at this shelter. So it would have been very easy to give them a checklist, you know, make this cut, do this, do that. I had them learn those things on their own, plenty of YouTube videos, plenty of textbooks about that. And then when they got into the uh to the surgery suite, it was my opportunity to stand back and watch them do this, give them that safety net. Um you know, what I have a saying, it comes from my time in the Rangers, you know, we call it ETS, embrace the suck, and the students are really uncomfortable. They've never done something like this before. And I tell them, well, you won't be able to say that tomorrow. But I'm forcing them to use these uh skills and things that they've learned so far in school, make decisions on their own, develop that confidence, but to do it with a great safety net underneath them. I am right there. But I'm not I'm not telling them how to cut everything. And if they ask me questions, is does this look good? I'm like, well, you tied it. What do you think? And I, you know, forcing them to get into those positions that they're gonna be in as uh as new graduates. You know, we had two of our encore doctors, uh, both I was so blown away how how bright these students were. One was a Penn grad, one was a Cornell grad. Both of them had been out for three years and they were really struggling to spay a cat. Not that spaying a cat in you know 10 minutes is the standard in veterinary medicine, but they had all this knowledge in their hard drive, but they just weren't able to have the confidence um uh to make that decision themselves. I think, and this may be going farther than you want to know, Brenda, but I I think a lot of this is a leadership issue at the veterinary schools. Um having a bunch of initials that have your name, having completing completing an agency, just like our good friend, our mutual friend Peter Weinstein says, hated high-paid technician. Um, nothing disparaging against technicians, of course, but it's this, it's uh it's been able to think on your on your feet, knowing that you can um count on your education and being in an environment where there's a freedom to fail, but a safe place where you can fail.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Okay. I I I I think that that's a great valid point, and I love that uh approach to helping them build their confidence. And I think that when we think about mentorship and training, we've got to take it beyond just the new new new grad conversation. Um, you know, we think about the number of staff members that are coming through our practices and and they need the mentorship as well. And what I uh found when I was when I was uh hospital administrator was that if their trainer was assigned as also their mentor and trainer, it really just kind of defaulted to that training mode. And so I started I started separating them out, and they had a trainer who was very skilled and and could teach the skills within their department or their role, but then I always made sure that I assigned a mentor from a different department completely so that if I'm a CSR, I'm gonna be paired up with a technician who's gonna be my mentor, and their job was really to bring them into the practice from a cultural standpoint and to really make them feel comfortable and check in with them and how they're doing. And I found that those newer employees were more likely to open up to their mentor about maybe specific things they were struggling with than they would have been with their trainer. And so I think that uh, you know, that's one thing to think about in your own practices when you're thinking about training versus mentoring.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

I think that's such a good point, Brenda. And I think like the cross-role mentorship is really underutilized. Like you use the example of having a CSR be paired with a technician as their mentor. And I think that can happen across all the different roles in the clinic. And I also think, you know, it's so easy for us also to default into the medical director or the practice owner to be the mentor for a new doctor. But you can imagine the hierarchy and power dynamic in that environment. How psychologically safe of a space is it going to be if the person who pays your bills or writes your check is also your mentor? How comfortable are you going to be in sharing when you've maybe made a mistake or you feel very insecure about something? And I think for those of us, you know, doctors, we know that some of our best mentors have been practice managers and technicians. And so it's it's good. I like that invitation to think about it, you know, for at the hospital level. How can we kind of mix up groups without defaulting into the more traditional roles that we are used to seeing?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah, I agree. I love that. Yeah, it's it's so easy when you're the subject matter expert. I'm a CVT and I'm a great CVT. It's really hard to stay in that mentorship space and not teach and train. And you know, that can be really difficult. I love the idea of cross-collinating like that. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

And you were, uh Danny, you were an associate when you had your experience as a mentor, correct? You weren't the practice owner.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

So No, I've actually never been a practice owner. I've always been very, very interested in ownership. I mean, one of the best things my mentor, who was also my first practice owner, you know, taught me was opening up the books and showing me how the practice ran. So I've always been very interested in all of the business side of the practice, but never really, you know, desired to own my own practice. This journey that I'm on with ReadyVetGo. Um, being an entrepreneur now was not something that I set out to do. That was 20 years in the making. And so, no, I haven't been an owner. The way ReadyVetGo came to be when I had a mentee a few years ago was because the place where I had worked for over a decade, the owner was getting ready to move on and was selling his practice. And while he had always been the point mentor, for me included, um, he didn't really want to take on that role anymore. He was enjoying this next phase of his life. And he said, We're bringing on a new grad, and we need somebody that's gonna be more than just an informal mentor to her. And that's where he, you know, kind of invited me to be in this role. And I realized that it was just something that I loved. So I was an associate at the practice, and she and I had a really amazing, you know, mentor-mentee relationship. And so you don't, you certainly don't have to be um the practice owner or the medical director. And I don't know if this is off topic, but he compensated me financially. And I do recommend that we do that because I think there's this idea in vetmed that somehow because we were mentored, or maybe we weren't, but uh, you know, because we received mentorship early in our career, we're somehow obligated to give back to the next generation. And that isn't necessarily true today when so many of us aren't in a practice owner role. If I'm an associate doctor at a clinic and I'm taking time off the floor, you know, maybe doing something that's going to get in the way of my own production goals or my own efficiency, um, that there ought to be compensation. So that's just my little, my little side plug, um, you know, since you asked me about that role.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

I think that's a very important point and a very valid question. I'm sure a lot of our listeners have top of their mind. Melissa, from an HR perspective, what do you believe that that should look like?

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Um I think that's going to be unique in everybody's situation, and it depends on how much mentoring is needed, how much time is off the floor. Um, but it's definitely worth a conversation to see if um, you know, if I'm dedicating five hours of my week to mentorship, that's five hours I'm not producing. So what does that look like for me?

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Um so Tim, I'm gonna throw the second burning question to you. Um, you were so gracious you provided us with a link to the AHA guide to mentorship, which um we have in our uh podcast episode description below. So anybody can click on it and get access to that. But you've worked in busy practice for many, many years. So, what does effective mentorship look like in a busy veterinary practice that doesn't have unlimited time or resources to do this?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Well, I'll start with uh um with two of Danny's points. It's one, we've established that mentoring is is not training, it's beyond, it's it's the it's the follow-on steps beyond the checklist. So that the checklist takes time, and so does the mentorship. And I do agree that there should be some compensation, particularly if it's a if it's an associate in today's market where you know we're we're tracking production and and associates are paid that way. I'm gonna go to a higher level on this and say that it's really the practice leadership that establishes the culture. Um I I I and I'm not disagreeing with Danny, but that but you know, this profession has provided more for me than I ever ever imagined. And I do feel like there's something that we should give back, but we got to give it back the right way. And that is creating this culture with the techs, with the CSRs and assistants and and with the the young doctors, where we're we're we're making it better. Um I I I agree that just because it was hard for me, um, learning how to do this stuff on my own without a mentor that or you know, the doctors that I trained with at the University of Georgia, they stayed up well late at night and they worked 80 hours a week. I'm tired of all that crap. And I don't think there's a place for it. Um it's about it's about servant leadership. Um I'm again, I'm gonna get a little crazy on this one. I think the the problem uh is in our whole uh veterinary education system. Back to Peter Weinstein's point, just because you've got initials after your name doesn't make you a leader. Those people are highly paid technicians and they've gone through a process. I can't really blame individuals, but they've gone through a process since high school, many of them since middle school, when it's all been about getting that grade. It's all been about them. It's all been a narcissistic thing. And you can't change those habits from 16 to 18 years of education overnight. But if they get into a practice where where it where it's about serving each other, servant leadership instead of everybody's there to serve me. Um I'll just real briefly, we had a very bright uh associate in my practice um valedictory in everyone of his class, and he's gonna he just was around and he struggled so hard in our practice because everything he thought about was about himself. How am I gonna fix this case? What am I gonna do to do this? And he had all these great resources in our practice, licensed technicians, experience, and and he didn't really utilize that. And uh, you know, it was this kind of um uh he didn't overtly do this, but his his his mindset was well, I'm a DVM, I'm better. Uh and it took we it took a lot of lumps to get through that, to have him have the humility, which I think is the most important factor um in a leader, probably in a mentor too, to have the humility to take this input from everybody else. Because what that set up was this was this culture of training each other and serving each other to make the industry better. Now that might be a little higher level than you than you wanted, um, but it's again, it's more than just getting that checklist. It's it's having a place where where it is okay to fail. Remember, these veterinary students, it's so competitive to get into veterinary school, they're all used to being a student. They're all used to being at the top of the class. And then when they get into vet school, that bar gets raised even higher. And they are so afraid of looking bad. They're so afraid of failing. Um there's uh the students that I teach in in surgery at the Spain Eva Clinic. Oh, I jump all over them in a nice way whenever they say the word can't. I can't do this, I'm no good at this. Every time they say that, they've just convinced their brain that they're not good at it. So we eliminate that from their from their vocabulary right away. And we have a lot of fun when we do that, but it it points out to them, you know, that it is okay to not be good at something at first. And me as the mentor, I'm creating this environment for them to grow. I'm not gonna put my hands in there and redo something unless it needs to be done. I'm gonna make them redo it and they're gonna learn that way. And then, you know, I I had a a student say, gave me a hug yesterday and said goodbye. Um She was leaving to go on to her next enter externship. And what I told her was make you know, she was I'm she was so thankful for the experience that she had. And I said, Oh, I don't want you to forget this feeling that you have right now. So five years from now, when you're a practice owner and you're a famous veterinarian, you know, you gotta remember this feeling, how great it was to have somebody let you do this. So you can do that for the for future veterinarians.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, Melissa, you've worked in a lot of practices. Um how do what what does effective mentorship look like in those busy practices that you've experienced when they don't have unlimited time or resources?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Yeah, that's a great question because that's one you hear all the time. We're so busy, we're so busy. How do we train? How do we mentor? How do we find the time? And my answer is you have to you have to find the time. You have to make it. That time is not gonna magically appear. You're going to fill that time with other things. So you have to make it a priority. And you're either gonna put the time in up front, so coaching, teaching, mentoring up front, or you're gonna put it in on the back end through exits and turnover, burnout, and errors and mistakes that we have that have to be cleaned up. So you're you're gonna put in the time somewhere. So why not do it in a positive way and just set it up from the beginning? Just you but you have to schedule it. You have to schedule it, you have to make the time, you have to commit to that, commit to that's important and the return that it's gonna bring to your practice and to that individual is so important that it's okay that they don't see appointments for an hour a week. Like that's that is important to us, and you have to commit to that. Um, and you know, set up that meeting. If you're gonna do like a one-on-one mentorship, set that up once a week. You know, and it's not when we have time, let's see what time we have this week. Set it up as a recurring and hold that sacred. Um, if it's having them be having the person be in surgery with you for half of a day each week, they're in surgery for with you for half a day each week. Like it's we you have to hold that time sacred. There will always be something that feels urgent and more important that comes up. But if we allow those urgencies to overshadow this very important work of mentorship, um, we we'll pay for it later on. We're gonna put in the time one way or the other. I'd rather put it in on the front end.

SPEAKER_03 24:29

Yeah, you gotta break that cycle. I think that so many practices get it in their head that we're just too busy, we just need another person. They're not setting them or themselves up for success. And we've gotta we've got to pivot and change what we're currently doing to get off of that hamster wheel, right? Yeah, Deannie, what's been your experience? Busy practices, they don't have unlimited resources. How do they get this done?

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Just pivoting off what the others have said, I think the scheduling piece is imperative. Everybody has good intentions. We want to mentor, and when we say we want to mentor, we mean it. We're not being disingenuous. Um, but life gets in the way and clinics are very busy, so it needs to be scheduled. I agree. And then the clinic culture needs to support that, that we understand that this time is blocked off. And yes, Mrs. Smith wants to bring Fluffy in, but it's not an emergency and that can wait because this is our important time. I also want to point out there are external resources. You know, we cannot meet all of the needs of our teams all the time within the structures of our daily clinic. One because it is just too busy. And another is, you know, what I was sharing before that sometimes the that safe space to admit like our real mistakes or fears or concerns, um, there's just not a space to have that happen inside of the clinic. And so, you know, external programs exist. I created ReadyVetGo specifically for that purpose to help support veterinarians and their clinics with some of the non-clinical skills that, you know, there's just not enough time to address during the day. And also we have this safe space outside of the clinic. Like our program, it's it's a it's a peer group, it's mentor-led, but it's a cohort-based program. So everybody progresses through the program over the seven months together. And what happens is all of these early career doctors get into a group together and they realize something magical, which is that the challenges that they're having, which they think might be unique to their practice, are actually pretty universal. And so we know that turnover is significantly decreased for people who have gone through our program. They are bonded to their practices, partly because a lot of these things are normalized, that this is just part of the challenge of being an early career doctor. And so I think it's kind of two parts it's setting aside the structured time, having the whole clinic buy into it, and also utilizing the resources that exist outside of the practice to fill in those gaps. Um, you can use that structured time, you know, in the form of a mentorship agreement that's collaborative that both parties, you know, weigh into. And, you know, like Melissa was saying, maybe it's an hour a week that we're meeting. Maybe check in after a couple of months of that. Does that frequency feel good? Do we want to meet less frequent now that you're getting a little bit more confident and comfortable? It's a living document that's collaborative from both parties. And so that document can be created. And combining something like that with something like ReadyVet Go or another external program to fill in some of those gaps can be a good way to meet those needs and to make sure that people are getting the mentorship that that they need and that they're promised. And I, you know, the the ROI on all of that is, you know, just like what we were saying. I mean, it's gonna pay dividends because you can do all this work, but if they feel like they're not supported and they leave, then well, that's too bad for everybody.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

That's very sad. I love the beauty of the normalization piece that happens out of being part of a cohort and sharing experiences from different practices. I think that that's that's beautiful and worth so much in terms of the retention that is gonna happen afterwards. So thank you for for providing that to um our profession. I think a lot of practices could probably tap into that to supplement what they're doing in-house, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. And thanks for saying that. It's been, you know, it's just been such a joy when I, you know, get our survey data back at the end and I hear from practice leaders that retention is up. I mean, I just I always get a little bit teary because you know, I do love this profession so much, and I want to make sure that we can help support our team members.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Danny, I was just uh um interested in uh briefly, I know Brendan's got limited time here. Um we haven't talked about the responsibility of the mentee, of of what you know what what their expectations are, and I'd be interested to hear how that fits in with your program.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

I totally did not prompt you on this at all. You and I actually have never even met. I love that you asked me this. So when I built ReadyBet Go, it was a six-month program with six modules, six workshops, 12 meetings. It is now seven. And the reason it's seven is because after a year of doing the program, the feedback that I received from practice leadership was our mentees really don't know how to be mentees and they don't know how to take accountability of their mentorship journey. So I thought, okay, let me fix that. And so I looked around to see what existed, and I found that um the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon a number of years ago saw the same gap, and they were working with the Canadian VMA and they embedded into their curriculum a mentee skills training. And it was four years of curriculum embedded throughout the four years of veterinary school, basically to come up with another way to address the problem of turnover and mentor-mentee disconnect because historically we've really focused on the mentor. Let's train the mentors, and that's great. But what about the mentees? So this program existed and I adapted it. And I actually, module one in our program is all dedicated to mentee skills, where we basically are empowering the early career doctors in our program to maximize their relationship with their in-clinic mentor because that's the mentorship relationship that is super important. We are with them for seven months, but we're not with them all the time. And truthfully, the relationship they have on the ground with their mentor is the most important. So we talk about things like um setting goals and self-directed learning and how to communicate with your mentor, how to have hard conversations. We teach how to identify what type of feedback we like to receive and to share that with the mentor. So there are so many things that can be really taught about mentee skills, and I don't think it's brought up enough. I'm so glad you asked that, Tim. Um, I am editing a book for Wiley. It's actually coming out in September. It's called Mentorship in Veterinary Medicine, and we do have quite a bit about mentee skills and truthfully a lot of this other stuff that we've talked about in the last 30 minutes here. So I would love to know how you're addressing that with the the students that come through. Um maybe we need to do another come back with Brenda again. But I I thank you for asking that question.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

It's something I'm very oh well that's God bless you. That's fantastic in your program that you've done that because uh it's we all agree that the students, and this this goes for technicians too. You know, when when they they they all want to work into practice with mentoring, and then when I ask them, well, what's mentoring? I kind of get the deer in the headlights look sometimes. So it's so true. And many of them, again, looking back to how their education, you know, 16, 18 years of primarily didactic checklist stuff, you know, they're waiting for us to plug in a USB port and download all of our knowledge. And they have to take an active role in their own career. So good, that's great stuff, Danny. Great stuff.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Can't wait to see the book. I know me too.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Believe me. 20 authors and two years of work. I also cannot wait to see this book, Brenda.

SPEAKER_03 32:07

Well, thank you all for flying with us on Flight Plan Quick Consults, and thanks to our generous sponsor, Piranha, who's sponsoring today's episode. If today's insights helped you climb to new heights, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your crew. Until next time, keep your mission clear, your team aligned, and your practice soaring.