Client expectations: Are we losing our patience?

In a service business like ours there are many opportunities for failure of expectations and client disappointment.  When people call into a veterinary hospital and they are unaware of the inner workings and complexity of the profession, they may think that having a doctor call them back is as simple as us sitting at our desk just waiting to return phone calls. In reality there are days when I never even see my desk or sit in any chair. 

Expectation is defined as, “a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future” and “a belief that someone will or should achieve something.”

I think the second definition is what gets veterinarians into trouble.  Client’s belief that something should happen the way they think it should happen.

Veterinary receptionists spend their day answering calls from concerned pet parents while they try to decipher the emergent from the ordinary.  They ask questions designed to read the minds of the clients on the other end of the phone, and without seeing the pet, decide how soon they need to squeeze them into an already packed schedule.  The doctors, working 10-12 hour days, are required to see patients that are ill, provide vaccinations, perform surgery, interpret radiographs, record everything -in detail - into computer charts, approve and write prescriptions, prescribe and dispense drugs, perform blood and urine tests, and then analyze and report those tests results to the clients.  These working doctors also have families and homes that they need to attend to.  At our hospital, we currently have two nursing mothers, who have to pump and store breast milk several times a day while keeping up with everything else.

Veterinarians and their technicians do what in human medicine would be done by a small army of people, and we do it all while the client waits.  When was the last time your human doctor called you back the same day, or reported your blood test results the next day?  

Our clients are most often very appreciative of our caring kindness, but sometimes there is a disconnect between what the client expects will happen, and what actually happens.  Then they may become angry either posting an ugly online review or hit us up with a frustrated phone call.  We hate that!  We are really trying to do our very best to make everyone happy, and an angry client is not our goal.

So, what can we do to help meet our client’s expectations?

We must improve our communication about the workings of the hospital and set boundaries.  Clients may get angry when we don’t do everything exactly the way they want us to, but if we communicate our boundaries, we let them know going in, what we can handle.  Clients don’t know that we have 8 other people to call, have a big surgery waiting, or have to run and pick up our kids from school in 20 minutes.  It is our job to communicate by saying, “Ms. Richards, I have only 5 minutes tonight to give you your pet’s results, but if we need longer than 5 minutes, I would be happy to call you again tomorrow so we can discuss further.”  Clients are thrilled to hear from us and love to spend time talking about their pet, so it is up to us to communicate our boundaries, and then have the mental strength to enforce them.  If clients get angry, we can calmly tell them that we are sorry that we have not met their expectations, however we are doing our very best for their pet.   Being honest with clients is the key to protecting yourself.  We need to take a lesson from our human doctor colleagues and train our clients to respect our free time so they understand what expectations should be.

It starts with honest communication by every member of the veterinary team to set the proper expectations.  Clients expect us to provide quality care for their pets while being kind and honest.  When they have unreasonable expectations about how we should schedule our time, it is up to use to set our boundaries and then let them decide whether they want to continue to work with us or move on to another caregiver.

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”―Henry Winkler

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”―Bill Gates

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast!  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Everything comes down to poo….

I was sitting drinking my coffee this morning, talking to my family, and trying to come up with an idea for the blog.  Both of my adult children were home and we were chatting about ideas concerning leadership, positivity, and self-improvement.  As we batted around these ideas, my younger dog Parker pooped right in front of us on my living room carpet.  He has been house trained for at least eight months now and never pulls this kind of stunt, but I recently changed his yard routine - I fertilized his backyard and have been taking him out in the front yard.   I guess he is thinking, you change my routine I poop on your carpet. 

As I cleaned up the odiferous mess, my daughter jokingly said, “Life be like that some time.” Then I added, “Everything comes down to poo.”  Referring of course to the “Scrubs – My Musical” episode that aired in 2007 featuring a song about poo.    If you have not seen the episode, look it up and listen to it on YouTube.  It is funny and so relatable to veterinary medicine.

The talk and laughter that ensued as we listened to that song again, got me thinking about how a veterinarian’s and veterinary team’s life involves a lot of poo - both literally and metaphorically.   If we can retain the correct attitude about it, we can remember to laugh and enjoy our job in spite of the fact that much of our job revolves around poop.   

Veterinary life is like puppy poop on your carpet.  A blog is born…

There are so many opportunities to deal with literal “poo” in our profession and we actually make some money as we deal with it.  We have the fecal smear, the fecal flotation, fecal gram stain, and fecal culture. We deal with dog poo, cat poo, rabbit poo, lizard poo and the ever so frequent bird poo on my white lab coat. 

Everything does indeed come down to poo. We also deal with a lot of other negative stuff (poo) daily.

Poo is inherently negative right?  Wrong!  Our thoughts about it can be negative.  Sorry, I keep using the “poo” as a metaphor and you are probably tired of reading that word.  What I really mean is, the negative thoughts that you choose about your day cause your feelings of stress and negativity.

You can choose to think about anything differently in order to experience better feelings.

When something happens, it is a fact.  It happened and you can’t change it.  You get to choose how you want think about it.  If you think the fact is sad or negative in some way, you will create sad, negative feelings in your body.  If you find a different way of looking at it, thinking a more positive thought, you will feel more positive about it. 

For example, a client’s dog is severely ill, and you don’t think you can save it.  That is a sad fact. You can either choose to feel helpless and sad, or you can change your focus to one of helping the client navigate the decisions that need to be made.  Focus on your talent for working with clients, not saving the patient.  If you can focus on the conversation and counsel the client and your abilities therewith, you will feel useful, not useless.  If you focus on what you can’t do, you will feel helpless. If you focus on what you can do for the client, you will feel helpful.

Remember that every veterinarian and veterinary technician has insecurities.  It is totally normal to feel negative emotion.  Just realize that the negative emotions come from your thoughts about any given situation.  You get to choose those thoughts.  Your brain is powerful! 

This is your life and you are in charge of your satisfaction.  If you are not happy, work to change your mind.  You may not be able to change your situation, but you can change your thoughts about your situation.

If you are experiencing difficulty seeing the humor in the “poo” in your life reach out for help. We all get stuck and need someone to help us out of our negative emotions. There are plenty of great therapists and life coaches (like me) that would love to help you get through it.  Taking care of yourself is always your first priority.

So, thank you to Bridget, Tristan, Scott and of course Parker for interrupting our blog brainstorming session to poop on the carpet.  You saved me some time by giving me a great example for creating positive thoughts. 

Stay positive this week!

“I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That means you're alive.”  -  Joan Rivers

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on the Podcast!  The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast. 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Are you smarter than a neurosurgeon?

Recently my Dad experienced a brain issue and was hospitalized for a few days. I had the opportunity to leave work to be with him at the hospital.  After his minor brain surgery (if you can call a brain surgery minor), I was spending the day with him and my mother in his neuro intensive care hospital room.  Because it was an intensive care unit, a parade of doctors and nurses attended to him regularly.  He was doing very well, but they do not put anyone on autopilot in intensive care.  At some point during this parade of health care professionals, a resident neurosurgeon arrived in his room to check on his progress.  The resident neurosurgeon had assisted with my Dad’s surgery the previous day and was stopping by to check on him.  When he entered the room, he greeted my Dad, who in turn introduced me to the doctor. 

My parents often introduce me to strangers as; “This is my daughter, Julie, she is a veterinarian.”  The doctor showed some polite interest in my profession because he is a dog owner. He asked me about my job – how did I like it - and then about how I thought my Dad was doing today.  I told him that I loved my job on most days and that my Dad seemed to be doing remarkably well after what he had been through the day before.  I then shared that my Mom and I were a little embarrassed that we didn’t pick up on my Dad’s symptoms earlier and get him to the hospital.  I felt that we should have known that something was not right sooner than we did.  My Dad had been showing some insidious symptoms for the past few days and none of us picked them up.  I was particularly embarrassed that I didn’t see it earlier.

The neurosurgeon laughed and said, “Let me tell you a story.”  He preceded to tell me that he has a middle-aged dog that sometime last summer started drinking more than usual.  She was losing weight and passing some urine that seemed a little sticky and strange. He told me that it went on for weeks with his dog drinking and urinating more and dropping weight.  He really did not know what was wrong with her. The dog had a huge appetite for water, but he just kept thinking that the water drinking “was because it was hot outside and the dog was drinking due to the heat”.    He said he finally decided to take the dog into the veterinary hospital to attempt to diagnose her problem. 

As soon as the veterinarian heard the symptoms and looked at the neurosurgeon’s dog, she told him that the dog may have diabetes.  As the veterinarian left the room to get her technician to draw the pet’s blood, the neurosurgeon said he sheepishly removed the hospital credentials - clipped to his scrub pocket identifying him as a neurosurgeon - and slowly hid them in his pants pocket.  He could not believe that he didn’t think of diabetes.  He did not want the veterinarian to know that he was a physician and he was quite embarrassed.

He told me, “Do not feel bad about not diagnosing your father’s condition because I couldn’t diagnose my dog’s diabetes.”  He said, “I will take care of your father’s brain and you can take care of my dog’s diabetes.”  I laughed and told him that I appreciated his story because it did indeed make me feel better about my lack of knowledge when it came to my Dad.  

By the way, I also had another neurosurgeon at the hospital tell me that he always wanted to be a veterinarian.  So, when you start doubting yourself and feel as if your job is not all that important, remember that you may be smarter than a neurosurgeon.

"I cannot do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do."  - Helen Keller

Dr. Julie Cappel