Beyond Burnout 3-Part Series // Part 1: The Hidden Reality of Veterinary Leadership Burnout

A recent VHMA study found that 48% of veterinary practice managers are considering leaving their role. That number should stop us in our tracks — but for many practices, the warning signs go unnoticed until it's too late.

In Part 1 of our Beyond Burnout series, we get into what burnout actually looks like in practice managers before they hit the wall. It doesn't always arrive as a dramatic breakdown. It shows up as cynicism creeping in, patience wearing thin, and a growing inability to be fully present — for your team or your family. We unpack the buildup of compassion fatigue, the loneliness of being "at the top," and why so many managers are burning out under the weight of expectations that no single person was ever meant to carry. If you're a practice manager, a leader, or someone who works alongside one — this episode is worth your time.

Host = Brenda Tassava Medina

Panelists:

• Julie Squires, CCFP, CMLC, Rekindle Solutions
• Susie Crockett, CVPM, Director of Practice Management at Noah's Animal Hospitals
• Josh Vaisman, MAPPCP, CCFP, Founder and Lead Positive Change Agent, Flourish Veterinary Consulting

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:10

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SPEAKER_03 2:12

Okay. Well, it's really good to be here, Brenda. I'm Julie Squires. I am a master certified life coach. I am a certified compassion fatigue specialist. And I work primarily with women veterinarians. And as leaders, I help them navigate through, you know, the challenges that again either equal burnout, the invisible workload that, you know, they find themselves in. And I do that through groups, one-on-one work, and excited to be with you all. What a great panel. We're great to have you.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Next up is Josh Vaseman. Welcome, Josh.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Hey, thanks for having me here. Um, I am the founder of Flourish Veterinary Consulting, where we essentially help uh veterinary professionals and organizations and teams put joint fulfillment back in their careers through science. Uh, I'm also the president of the Julie Squires fan club.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

I think I'm the president of yours, Josh.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

No, thank you. That's very kind.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

And one of my favorite friends from Indy, Susie Crockett.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Hi, thanks for having me on this topic. I am super excited to be here. Um, I am Susie Crockett. I am a Purdue graduate with a degree in organizational communication. And I am a CBPM since 2009, an active member of the VHMA. I am the director of practice management for an independent group of clinics in the Indianapolis area, and I oversee eight locations, four different disciplines. And so I talk to my managers regularly about how to handle all the things that come flying at us very quickly in veterinary medicine these days.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Well, thank you for being here today, Susie. So this series, and I shared this with all three of you as we were preparing for um the podcast, the series was really sparked when I received in my email inbox the VHMA practice manager burnout study at the end of May. I didn't know that they were doing this study. I thought it was fabulous, um, but it really sat with me in terms of, oh my gosh, we need to talk more about this. And, you know, the headline findings I think are just impossible to ignore. So with those findings, we found 69% of practice managers reported feeling emotionally exhausted by their work. 67% feel physically drained at the end of most work days. Nearly half reported difficulty recovering from work stress during time off. And 48% have considered leaving their role due to the stress or burnout. So I, you know, this is just a big, huge topic. So I'd like to ask our panelists, and I'll start with um Josh, what does burnout actually look like in veterinary leaders because they real before they actually realize that they're burned out? Because I think a lot of times they've reached this point where they've been on that track for a while, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Um, I think it's a wonderful question. I I also found the results of that study quite eye-opening and sobering. Uh, and I'm grateful that you're giving us an opportunity to talk more about it. Um, I can tell you about my personal experience with it. I think it probably varies a bit from individual to individual, but I went through a pretty extreme case of burnout that resulted in like a near mental breakdown uh several years ago. And when I think of like the the precipice point, the the point where I kind of you know crossed the threshold and it became blatantly obvious to me and others that I was there, uh, there were signs many months before. Uh some things that I can, you know, uh share personally. Um, when I started at that hospital, so I was the managing partner in this practice and I was the on-site hospital director. When I started at that practice, I implemented this like open door policy, like many of us do. And I like quite literally removed the door, physically removed the door from my office to really encourage people to come in. And I remember like the first few months I was there, I shared my office with uh uh one of the prior doctors, and he made the comment to me, Josh, I don't know how you do it. Every time somebody comes in here, you stop what you're doing, you give them your full attention, you make eye contact. Like, how in the world do you do that? And I remember at the time, like when he asked that, thinking, like, I mean, that's just kind of how I am, until I thought back to the months before this like really epic, kind of obvious moment and realized that I had stopped doing that. That people would come into my office and you know, I would be working on my computer and I would not make eye contact with them. I would try and continue doing what I was doing, and I was short and terse with them. I sent a lot of signals like I don't have time for you, you know, which is not really who I am. But when I think back on that, like I had I noticed that months prior. Another one I can say, you know, the the physical exhaustion thing, I I got to a point, like my wife was really concerned with me going to work. I had a 75-mile commute to work. And I would, even after a full night of sleep, like you know, eight solid hours of sleep, I'd get into the car and I'd be 10 minutes up the highway falling asleep at the wheel. Like just going to work actually had this like physical response in my body that resulted in me like literally losing energy and and getting exhausted. So I think it's like shifts that we can look for, uh, changes in behavior, changes in reactivity, uh, you know, um generalized exhaustion, changes in appetite, like these are all indicators that that something is awry and we should probably pay closer attention.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Thank you for that. And thank you for sharing your personal experiences as well. Julie, what about you? What are the signs before they even know it?

SPEAKER_03 7:59

And Josh has such a compelling story to tell, right? That that I think really is um eye-opening and very personal. And, you know, I managed to practice for a very short stint and short enough that I didn't find myself in the space of burnout. But I work with so many either practice owners, practice leaders, and or practice managers that find themselves in that space of, you know, the workload, it's not just the day-to-day tasks. It's because now what's happened in the workforce is now we've also dumped on the whole mental health issues to a practice manager or to a practice leader where they feel responsible for their team's mental health and well-being. And yet they're ill-equipped with that because, you know, that's not what, that's not their job, that's not their role. But yet that becomes such a big part of this. So that adds to the workload. And it's such a workload that feels, I think, futile sometimes because, you know, they they realize that they can't do much more than listen. And to Josh's point, you know, there's there's a there's a capacity limit to how much you can actually listen. I I think that what starts to happen that I see is that folks really start to start doubting themselves and believe that they're not making an impact and that, you know what, somebody could manage this practice better, that they shouldn't be in leadership. So they start really um doubting themselves and perhaps also becoming a bit cynical of like, you know what, like this is just uh it's too hard of a job for one person. We're we're like a fish swimming upstream.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Absolutely. And it's interesting that you say that because I think a lot so often we we fail to recognize that we can't do the the whole thing. You know, there's just so much that we take on our plates. And I I when Josh was talking, I was thinking back to when I felt most burned out. And thankfully, what came out of that realization and really taking stock of how I got to where I was was realizing that I needed someone to complement my strengths and weaknesses to really help me, you know, move this practice forward because it had literally doubled in size in you know, a fairly short period of time. And um, I ended up hiring an HR director because of that. And what a difference. I mean, it's just and you know, we we have to see that before we can really stop to take care of ourselves sometimes, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Well, and it's funny when you said compliment, I was thinking compliment with an I, but you meant compliment with an E. And I think both of those are important because that's the other part of this. It is lonely at the top. There is no support, there is no one complimenting you, there is no one telling you that you're doing a good job, and that's important. We all need that, we all need that validation. And it is yeah, it's isolating. So complimenting with an eye, you know, is also missing, but with the knee as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Susie, what does burnout look like before they realize they're burned out?

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Um, I it's really interesting because I do a lot of speaking on burnout, and um, but we start with compassion fatigue, and because I think burnout is completely avoidable if we can catch it. And what pre is a precursor is compassion fatigue is one of them. And so an increase in that compassion fatigue, if I see that in an employee or a staff member, um, that's a sign they're headed, they're headed to burnout real fast. Um, but Josh mentioned something that I had thought of too. It's it's a decrease in our lack of patience. Um, and it's a decrease in our ability to be empathetic. Empathy is a bucket that can run dry. And I think a lot of times we're empathy is crammed down our throat as something that we have to have and we have to do with our clients, with our staff, with our family, with everybody. And we're like, I just don't have anything left because it runs out. And those things I see change in people. They're they're not as kind, you know, and they don't mean to be. They're not intentionally doing it. It's just, it's subtle, subtle changes that you kind of see. And they're the excitement's not there. You know, they they come in and they're they're more anxious than excited about their day. Um, and so those are kind of the telltale signs that I see in practice on a day-to-day basis that I know, hey, I've got to do some management here and getting them back on the right path.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Thank you for that. Thank you. I I want to go back to the study because I was shocked at the 48% of practice leaders are cons have considered or are considering leaving their role, leaving the field. So, why are so many talented leaders considering leaving these management roles? And what are the warning signs that maybe the practices are missing that they need to pay attention to? Josh, let's start with you again.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I think the short answer to the question, Brenda, is that we we have a um a uh preponderance of unsustainable expectations for many roles in veterinary medicine. And to you know, to Julie's point of how lonely it is at the top, and to some of what Susie was saying there too, practice managers in particular tend to be in very isolated roles where the expectations and demands placed upon them are far in excess of the resources they have to deliver on those demands. And when that persists over time, of course, the result is going to be burnout. Uh, so I think that's probably a large reason why so many managers are at least thinking about it. Now, uh that question in particular was interesting to me because this is um we're attempting to kind of predict turnover or attrition, uh, but it is not actually directly predictive of future attrition. We know that from a lot of the research and you know, organizational science, when when we ask people about their their thoughts of turnover, that doesn't necessarily uh result in actual turnover, which means that there are a lot of practice managers that are probably thinking about leaving but don't.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And so what happens over time is we can start to see the shifts in them. You know, Susie and uh Julie really talked about this very eloquently. We can start to see the shifts uh early on in their uh role, in their position, there's probably a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for the work that they do. As the demand in access of the resources persists over time, inevitably that person loses that enthusiasm. Now, that doesn't necessarily look like a reduction in performance, it's just a loss of enthusiasm. They're still delivering on the things we ask of them, they're still getting the job done, they're still showing up on time, they've just they haven't quite quit per se. They've just lost the fire, right? That is an early warning sign that we should be noticing that probably we're we're asking way too much of this individual and and they're gonna need some of the load lifted.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Thank you for that. Because I think this is important for our listeners to have very definitive things to work to look for. And I think that's a that's a really good one. Julie, what about you? Early warning signs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Well, I think to jump off of what Josh was talking about, about when the demand exceeds the resources, what ends up happening is we start feeling as though we're ineffective. And nobody comes to work wanting to fail. Nobody comes to work wanting to leave at the end of the day going, wow, uh, you know, I didn't accomplish anything or I'm a failure or I didn't make this place better today. Like that right there, like nobody signs up for that. So that to me is also an early warning sign of people that are, if you listen to people and you're listening to your leaders and listening to what they're saying, and if they themselves are voicing, communicating a lack of belief that they are making an impact, that they are having um, you know, that they are they are experiencing successes or that they feel ineffective, right? Like that's something you really want to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Thank you for that, Julie. Susie, you know, you've got nine managers working for you.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Listen, I do. And I is exactly what Julie said. I'm like, yep, I had that conversation. I had a manager who said, maybe I'm not the person to lead this team anymore. And I said, whoa, there we, here we are. Here's we here we are. And I need to give more support and give you more resources for that. And so let's make some changes. Um, because that is the feeling is that nobody does want to feel inefficient or ineffective at their job because they have a passion for what they're doing. They got into this role for a reason, and it's to have a happy, healthy culture and good practice and and and do something good for the industry and for the patients that we care for. And so when we lose that shine and that drive, like we're like, what are we doing here? But I also was thinking about Josh's story about um why so many people are are leaving. And as I think about the conversations I've had with colleagues, I think it's not feeling like we can show up for our families. So Josh says his wife's concerned about him driving to work. A lot of the managers have small children. Um they may not be the major breadwinner in their family. And so there's a lot of stressors that even going to work create for their like, what am I working for? Um, and so I think those outside pressures kind of push that as well to say, maybe this is just not the right moment for me to continue on this path. Um, because like Julie said, the the the reward doesn't make sense anymore. Um, the risks are too high. Um, the overwhelm is overwhelming. Um, and so I think that that's a huge factor with why people are maybe wanting to leave.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Great insights, great insights. I think that um you you're on to something there because I think that's that's what all of the work-life balance talk seems to gravitate towards is how do I balance being a really great family member, have a great relationship, be a great mom, be a great parent, and then still be a great person. And I wonder how much of this we're just we're putting on ourselves. You know, Josh mentioned, you know, they're highly productive, they're still doing doing everything that's asked of them, but how much of this pressure is being um coming from within versus outside? So thank you all for being here. I can't wait for part two. And thank you to our listeners for flying with us on Flight Plan Quick Consults, and thank you to our generous sponsor, Purina. If today's insights helped you climb to new heights, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your crew. Be sure to tune in next week as we tackle part two why managers feel trapped between teams and leadership. And in the coming week, keep your mission clear, your team aligned, and your practice soaring.