Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Vet Chat, and today we are going to be looking at human factors. Now, if you'd have said this as a phrase to me 3 years ago, I'd have been waiting for you to finish a sentence after saying human factors. I'd be going, OK, human factors, what?

But fortunately today we are joined by very much experts in the field from the team at VetE who are doing fantastic things in the profession and making leaps and bounds in in all sorts of aspects of, of personal journeys across the profession but also professional journeys across the profession as well. So we've got. Kat Oden, who is a vet in practise, but is now predominantly involved in vet led and and with with a young family has seen all of the trials and tribulations that that veterinary life throws into the mix, over the last sort of 6 or 7 years of growing her family.

And Dan Tipney, who, to many of us will now be. A household name, if you've been following journeys of various different groups across professions. And Dan is one of the shining examples of veterinary sectors who who look outside and go to to expertise from other industries, but not just transferring the bits of information from them, actually really drilling down into the application.

To the veterinary profession. So guys, it's brilliant to have you and to have a conversation, from my perspective, I'm really looking forward to just understanding human factors a bit more. And I just wonder if I can start with you, Dan.

Plain and simple, for anybody who is listening, who hasn't heard the phrase, human factors in veterinary science, veterinary medicine, veterinary practise, what is it? Yeah, and it's, it's, it's the first question and it's, it's, it's strangely not always the easiest question to answer, and the way I always say it is I've got a 12th version, I've got like a 1 minute version, I've got a 10 minute version, I've got an hour version, I've got a day version, or I've got a week version. But the, the, like the 12th version is literally, it's, it's exploring the gap that exists between possessing clinical skills and knowledge and achieving the outcomes that we want to achieve.

So that gap that exists between the two, it's exploring what that contains. So that's communication, teamwork, decision making, impacts of emotions on, on our ability to, to, process information and, and, communicate, thinking about limitations such as memory and attention. So it's everything that fills that gap between possessing clinical skills and knowledge and achieving the outcomes.

So that's, but you know, if I was to just try and do it very, very quickly, that's what I'd say. But if I was to just elaborate on that a little bit more, I would talk a bit about sort of the journey that I've taken to, to get me to here. So my original background is in, is in the, the, area of sports, so I was, I was a rower, which, which, which might mean more to some people than others, but effectively it's going backwards in a boat.

But as a, as a rower when I was like 1213 years old, I was, I saw it as a very simple thing. I saw that the technical things you needed to be fast in a boat, which is to have good technique. Almost imagine this on one hand in your left hand, good technique.

To be, to be, you know, strong, so you can make the boat go fast, to be fit, so you can keep the boat going fast. And I thought that was it, right, cos that's technically all you need to make to win, to go fast and to win as a, as a rower. But quite quickly it became apparent that it wasn't that simple, and that if you just simply trained harder and just focused on those things more and more, you got injured, you got ill, you know, and if you weren't thinking about the impact, the emotional impact of the perceived pressure of competitions, you'd turn up on the day and you'd be tense, and again that would affect your ability to do the to to to do.

And the communication with your, your, your teammates and your coaches and your physios, all this stuff matters, and it's not just about having good technique, being fit and being strong. And so as an athlete, for me that very much became a focus, and particularly as a coach when I was coaching other athletes, that was where I started. Let's look at you as a human being first of all, are you well physically?

Are you well mentally, you know, are you understanding the emotional impact of, of the pressure at events? Are you communicating well with, with me, with your teammates? All these things fundamentally that apply to you as a human, and then, then we can talk about the technique, the fitness and the strength, because actually that's relatively easy in some ways.

So it's the gap that exists between having those technical things and achieving the outcomes. I then went into the, the profession of aviation and in initially went in for the same reasons that I liked planes, right? I liked flying planes, I thought it was cool, particularly big planes for me, that's just what I wanted to do since I was really young.

It's like a bit of a childhood dream, you know, it's like. You know, it just, just seemed cool. So I, I, I liked, I liked that I, you know, all the, all the technical things, again, imagining them in the left hand, you know, it's knowing how to fly a plane, it's knowing about wings, it's knowing about hydraulics and and engines and you need those things.

But I didn't realise I joined a profession that had a really good understanding of the gap that exists between those things and achieving the outcomes. And what I mean by that is that, you know, accident investigations, you know, ever since the 1970s and these black box data recorders. Which ironically are bright orange, give us the, the, the ability to understand not only what happens when things don't go as planned, which is, you know, a, a gentle way of talking about accidents, but why they happened, and what they found, I think, to their surprise in the is the vast majority, up to 80% of accidents in aviation, weren't caused by these technical things, you know, so basically what I mean by that is people did know what they were doing, and the aeroplanes were working well enough.

They were happening at 75 to 80% of the time they were happening because humans were human, because of communication, because of impacted emotions on decision making, because of the use of language, because of our limited attention and memory. So aviation got an opportunity to understand that very thoroughly. And, and I got the opportunity within that profession to, to, to deliver that, that training that was, that was quite well understood by the time I got involved.

2 pilots, two cabin crew members, two engineers. I then got an opportunity to deliver that in, in, in a sort of human healthcare environment. And, and, and spent the last 4 years at vetE applying those principles to, to, to how, you know, to, to the veterinary profession.

So sort of describing that journey for me is a way of explaining what human factors is, it's exploring that gap that exists between possessing technical skills and achieving outcomes. Now, as a, as a, as an athlete, it's about technique, strength and fitness. As a pilot, it's about knowing how to fly a plane, knowing about hydraulics, knowing about engines and wings.

And as, as a vet or a veterinary professional, as a veterinary nurse or a patient care assistant, whatever role we're in, it's about having the clinical, the, the skills that we need that are pertinent to that role. And ultimately delivering the care to the patients, and everything that exists in the gap between the two is human factors. And so that's the sort of maybe the, the, the 5 minute version, and then you've got versions that go from there.

It's interesting, isn't it, cos it's all the, basically the springs that hold everything else together. And, and I think, you know, when you look at that, you realise what a huge component of our day to day lives as vets, and as nurses, and as you say, as you know, animal care assistants and everybody else in that veterinary ecosystem, you know. There's different factors to, to everyone's day, but actually.

You know, we work in a, in a properly high stress environment and you know, much as though people will perhaps controversially, I say this, you know, give a lot of things lip service, and it's one of my biggest frustrations with the profession is, oh, you know, we're doing this and we're doing this, where actually very rarely is there positive directional change in these things. Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting to to think about that, isn't it, because as vets we kind of get so focused on our clinical skills, our techniques, the, the, the things that we do on a day to day basis because that's what we're doing, and that's what we see, but actually realising that we are humans first. And we are, we are vets, but we are humans as well.

And so the factors that limit every human being, a pilot or a doctor or somebody working in another safety critical industry, those factors are going to, impact us. And the problem is in our profession, if those factors impact us and they impact our patients. And so what we want to kind of communicate is that it is really important to think about human factors because like the outcome is patient safety.

And that's something that we're all passionate about, we can't deny that, you know, we're all in it to deliver really great clinical outcomes. So it's really worth looking beyond just our, our clinical skills and and techniques. And obviously Kat, like, you know, you're, you're a vet, you know, I, for me it'd be really interesting to get your insights, you know, as a clinician and and someone who's now gone through that process of having a family and then sort of doing, going back into some clinical work as well.

Obviously, you know. 67 years ago, human factors in in in the veterinary profession, you look at it and kind of go, you what? But of course now you're at the end of a journey where you've been, you know, intrinsically involved in bringing those things to the profession.

How do you see a difference in knowing and understanding what those factors are in your ability to deliver your clinical skills personally? I think having that awareness that there are so many different things that impact our performance in a veterinary setting is so important, . We, we're all kind of, we know that we don't perform as well if we're tired, but do we, make any changes accordingly?

Often not. I think there's a danger in our profession as well, of having this kind of slight superhero mentality that, the more stressed out you are, the better a vet you are, because the busier a vet you are. And, you know, questioning whether that's sort of acceptable.

And actually saying that there are solutions and, things that we can do that, that mitigate against these things that are gonna potentially end up in error. Yeah, I know you were asking about sort of the change over the last 10 years or so. I think what we're seeing is that kind of our, our generation of vets are aware of these things, but it's all quite new to us.

Whereas, some of the work we've done with, the universities is that the human factors topic is out there. It's coming out in the new generation of vets that are coming out are much more well versed in this sort of language, but they're graduating into a field where, you know, the bosses are not so well versed in it. And so, to effect real cultural change, You know, we as I really want to get the message out there to those who are sort of 1020, 30 years out into the profession that this is a really important topic and you know, our clinical outcomes are affected as a result of what we do, regarding human factors.

Yeah, and I, I think, you know, it's funny isn't it, how, how the outcomes of, of clinical cases actually affect us personally. And, and I, I, I never used to consider myself to be somebody who would be, would be impacted by that, but I think actually, and, and strangely I was having a conversation with, with another er colleague who's a couple of years more graduated than me yesterday and was saying actually. The burden of what we're doing seems to increase, the more qualified we become.

Perhaps that's the expectation that we put on ourselves, that the expectation that owners, Put on ourselves, but of course, you know, one of the most important things for us to consider, and, and it's really not hardwired into many vets, is actually ourselves, you know, I, I don't know many vets that very much put themselves at the epicentre of their sort of clinical and personal universes, so, you know, what steps can we take as individuals. To be able to say, right, OK, look, you know, unless I am. Doing this, this and this, I'm not gonna be functioning.

So I think that's, that's, yeah, it's a really interesting point sorry, K, obviously we, we can, we can sort of share this one probably. So, but I, I just had a quick thoughts on some of the things that you were saying over the last few minutes as well, because I think the really interesting thing about so much of this is that. Sometimes when we talk, when you, you know, when when you sort of, if we have, when we do sort of, training sessions, workshops, you know, if we, if we're doing it over a sort of half a day or full day, one of the first things we'll do is just stop and with everyone and actually effectively ask everyone, well, what does a good day look like?

What are the things that contribute towards a good day? Totally openly, you know, not, not leading it in any, in any way way at all, just saying, you know, what matters to you if you think about a good day, what are the things that contribute towards that, that might vary from one day to another, which affect you your team's performance. And you know, the sort of things that people talk about, you know, you, you know, absolutely unanimously, having asked that question, you know, probably over 200 times to veterinary teams, but also to healthcare teams, to aviation teams, the answers don't change.

You, you wouldn't be able to tell if I showed you a selection of answers from, from pilots, cabin crew members, from healthcare from from veterinary. They're they're, they're all exactly the same, because people are people and they say the same thing. Which is they say that they need to, you know, that they need to be getting on with the people around them, they need to be having breaks, they need to be, you know, people's mood and attitudes that matter, you know, what you eat, how rested you are.

Things that, and the thing is, you look at all this list of stuff, and it looks really obvious, right? It looks like stuff that you think, well, yeah, we know, we all know that. We know this isn't, this is not new to us.

But the, the point is that just because something's obvious. That we know it sounds obvious that we have to, we have to communicate effectively and that we need to be in an environment where, you know, particularly junior members of the team can raise concerns if they have, you know, if they've got something they need to share because it might be that they're a piece of information that could potentially save a patient's life. That sounds quite obvious when you say it.

It sounds obvious to say at the beginning of the day, even if it's looking like we've got a really challenging workload, we've got to really stop and think like how are we gonna. Make sure that we get whatever breaks we can, not because we're lazy, but because it actually really matters in terms of our ability to look after patients. A lot of this stuff sounds really obvious, but the problem is, as human beings, we're not naturally governed towards stopping, pausing and considering these things.

One of the reasons we've become such an, you know, developed species is because we do things, we do things, we do things. We, we, you know, we, we, we solve problems, we analyse and. We we're not particularly good as a species at actually pausing and just you know, thinking about these things, but what we're learning as the world's becoming more and more complex is that we need to do that more and more.

So one of the things that human factors is is is about is coming up with processes, systems, but also a language and developing norms where it's it's normal to do these kind of things. And helping deepen people's understanding in terms of why we do it. So we're not just gonna sit, you know, sit down at the beginning of each day and plan when we're gonna have our breaks because we're lazy or because, you know, because it's just nice.

I mean, yeah, it is nice, but fundamentally we need to deepen the understanding and really, really, you know, engage with the science behind why we're doing it. And then we need to, you know, really all believe in the power of what we're doing every day because everything that everybody does in a team influences what other people see and therefore what they do. And therefore that will influence what somebody else sees and what they, how they feel, what they think, what they do.

That is culture, that's over time, that is culture and and and it's really having conversations and empower everyone to believe that everything they're doing all the time is contributing towards a culture where it's normal to have those. Conversations to consider our potential limit our potential physical emotional limitations, to use checklists to have briefings before procedures, to do what, you know, all these things that sound really obvious, but we just don't actually do because we get carried away in our, in our sort of you know our doing mode. And so that for me is kind of what what we're trying to achieve here.

I think also we, we kind of as vet led, see that there are, there are different groups of people who might be looking at human factors. So there's those who are actually on the ground, you know, your day to day veterinary practise nurses, vets, PCAs where perhaps there's tools that are available that they don't know about that help support, us to perform well. So that might, like Dan, Dan mentioned there, the, the briefings, the handovers, training in how to do those things and how to do them right.

You know, we're all aware of Checklists these days, but are we using them right so that they do help us to mitigate against error. But then there's another kind of group of people who are maybe sort of a little bit more engaged with these things and want to make what sort of changes to a kind of organisational level, where you, you know, you've got the The power to, support a number of veterinary practises within a group, and really affect sort of real cultural change across the group. You know, and that sort of background to.

To everything that we do is sort of, it's all based around kind of culture, you know, all these things in terms of performance and patient safety, will only happen if we're in a place where, the workplace culture is supportive, where we can speak up if we make a, make an error, where we can speak up without fear of retribution. There there was a, there was a big study done with Google at one point, and they found that the best performing teams were not just those who, had the best technical skills, but those who felt really psychologically safe within their workplace, so they could speak up without that fear of retribution. And those were the best performing teams.

And obviously one of the things that you've both alluded to is culture. And one of the things that, from my point of view, personally, I, I struggle with is that as a profession over the last 20 years, we've become 75% to 80% corporatized. And the knock-on effect of that is that now, whilst we are a, a profession that is at its core, has a clinical outcome, because if we don't have positive clinical outcomes, then, you know, ultimately we don't have a profession.

But we're also now a profession that is very, KPI and OKR are driven, so for those of you that don't know what KPIs, they're key performance indicators and OKRs or objectives and key results, and these are things that, you know, are very much set in place and they've sort of stepped down from the corporate world into the clinical world, which, you know, many of us consider a dangerous thing because actually, you know, are we recommending. Appropriate treatments and so on and so forth, because actually we have to hit numbers. Now that to me is has always been a very ethically taboo question, but does, is there any evidence, perhaps Dan, you may be better seated on this one, of, of sort of application of targets having an impact on human factors.

It's a yeah, it's a really interesting question. So I think I mean I think as you started the whole, the whole sort of section this question based around the sort of topic of culture, so I want to kind of try and link them together. But I think the risk with human factors, talking about targets is that it can become, it can feel too much like a boxing exercise.

But the reality is we also know, and there is, you know, and again, without the I wouldn't say there's a necessarily a strong indication from the evidence that I'm aware of that shows that you need to have, that you need to be focused on a specific number, for example, you know, the, that, you know, we need to be receiving this many safety reports, near miss reports. Month to be safe, or we need to, you know, but we, we also have an idea that practises, you know, when you, you can look at something quite specific like the use of a checklist, you know, you can, there are ways you can measure something like that, which would mean that, yes, you, you could you could observe how people are using them. You could effectively, sort of assess that.

And you could then find out how often it's being used and the You would get an indication of the likely impact of that, of that checklist. But the reality is with a lot of this stuff is it's not quite that simple, and it's quite subjective. And, if you, if you try to, to, to manipulate it too much like that, it can start to feel, like a, like a kind of box ticking exercise, particularly when they, they, they sort of form part of a sort of corporate environment.

So I think we've got to, we've, you know, what we, what we've sort of learned from the, from the aviation space is that, you know, you've got, there's got to be a certain amount of trust that. If we identify the fact that 75 to 80% of accidents are primarily attributed to these human factors, that although in, you know, as, when, when we put steps in place to address them, you can't always measure them directly with, with, with sort of in a numerical sense. There has to be some sort of faith that actually, if those are the things that are primarily are primarily attributed to the as the cause of these events.

Then there has to be some sort of belief that that that improving our abilities in those areas is going to make a difference. What we're seeing is a very similar picture, you know, the evidence we've got from healthcare, although there's less evidence from the the veterinary space, the evidence we are seeing is painting a very similar picture that the vast majority of, of adverse events are not caused by a lack of clinical skills or knowledge, and that they're actually caused by or primarily distributed by, you can never, I don't believe in the idea of a kind of root cause. Yeah be one root cause, but you know, we, we know that the vast majority are, are primarily attributed to a number of factors, the majority of which are usually human factors.

And so it's having some faith that if we take steps to actively improve our ability to have, you know, to, to communicate openly, to raise concerns, to, to attend to our own physical needs, then we, then, then I think it's, it's having that. Belief, and getting a balance somewhere between sort of, you know, using, sort of, you know, KPI style targets, but also developing a culture where we, we actually trust that this is, this is just really, really important from the evidence we've got available to us. But I think that's a bit alien because almost everything else within practise, and certainly this was the case in healthcare, almost everything else is entirely.

You know, sort of more numerically, you know, evidence based. And so what we've gotta do is say yes there is the evidence, but we also gotta trust that not everything can be, can be numerically proven in a con in a highly controlled way. And that's a bit alien, and I think that's one of the things, that's one of the reasons it can be challenging, because what we're doing is we're, we're having to approach it with a slightly different, mindset, and I don't know if that's something that you can relate to at all.

Yeah. I guess the challenge, is that we're, speaking just like with the human healthcare side, we're speaking to a profession full of scientists, as I am myself. And, when you can't necessarily pin, like, really hard data on it, that, that can be tricky.

But I think what spoke most to me, when I was first looking into human factors, was this fact that between 70 and 80% of error is due to human factors in, firstly, aviation. And then that figure transferred into human healthcare. And then with the data that is coming out of early studies in the veterinary profession, we're seeing the same number coming out another time.

And, you know, as a vet myself, you know, if you're thinking that, of course, I don't want to make mistakes. I don't want to make make errors. Then I need to look at this because 70 to 80% of the time, any errors that are occurring are not due to my clinical skills.

That's something that needs to be looked at, on an individual level but also on a, on an organisational level. So how do you look at. Sort of impacting on, on a culture in a, in a profession.

Cos that's, you know, vet led are very much looking at at leading, you know, a charge, you know, a positive charge on, on, you know, creating positive cultures in workplaces and creating, you know, positive changes that, that impact on not just clinical outcomes, but also, you know, personal outcomes, and I think, you know, it's an incredibly strong and needed area to do that, but. Where on earth do you start? I don't know what your experience is, then of, different practises.

I obviously you've been into very many different practises. But there's a huge spectrum, isn't there, of culture within veterinary practise. There's some great places out there, you know, I can think of plenty of wonderful places to work.

And then there's some places where it's just not right. But it's not necessarily to do with individuals. And that's, that's kind of where you're coming from, I think, isn't it?

That culture is slightly hard to put your finger on exactly how we make it good and what makes the change, because it's really multifactorial. But it is, it is that sort of background to everything. Because if you have a poor workplace culture, Then it's going to impact on everybody's performance day to day, be that on communication, on, relationships between different members of staff in the workplace, and thus, you know, how they perform and, the safety of the patients under our care.

Dan, I don't know if you wanna pick up I think it it it so when I talk about culture, there's there's a, there's a kind of few starting points, for me, because it is this, this just, this wilderness of a topic and it's just one of those words, it's like one of those words that's so easy to chuck around and be like, oh. Yeah, the culture, OK, OK, yeah, we kind of, I, I feel like it's that sort of that thing that, you know, for the last few years more people have started to acknowledge and accept. OK yeah, yeah, OK, I, I appreciate, probably isn't it a thing and it's important, but beyond that, like, and we all get that sense that we kind of know what it.

What it means and what we, we feel like we know what it means, but it's very hard to actually describe. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best quite quickly to try and to try and sort of explain how I start with this. One is that I try and explain culture in, in two ways.

In one way, it's one of the most complicated things you could ever talk about, because if you think about it on a wider scale, like the study like anthropology, like in culture on on a sort of human so more society sort of based study, you know, it's incredibly complex. You you look, you start to look at different . Different nationalities, you know, and sort of the cultures that exist within different arts and how we've, how societies and, you know, cultures have developed over time, the, you know, sort of the history of the human race.

It's incred it basically involves considering almost everything that's happened in the world because everything's affecting everything else. So on the one hand, it's incredibly complex and dynamic. And you could do a a PhD on just one tiny element on the topic of, you know, anthropology or or the study of sort of culture.

But on the other hand, particularly if we're thinking about organisational culture, it's also incredibly simple because it's the sum total of what everybody does. And I just wanna say that, you know, it's the sum total of what everybody does or is doing in a given moment. Because if you ever sort of talk to someone, you know, you sort, you know, they, they describe a feeling they got from a culture.

You, you talk about, you know, well, you ask them, you know, what gave you that feeling, you know, I, I've got a friend who, who works at the Mercedes Formula One's team. Anyone that's involved, you know, knows anything about Formula One or sport, but Mercedes has been incredibly dominant, is that, you know, . Becomes sort of historic, you know, absolute, you know, record breakers in terms of what within the realms of Formula One.

And a friend of mine, when he started working there, just said, oh, by the culture there, he just said it's just unbelievable. I was like, well, what do you mean by that? You know, he broke it down, it wasn't just a smell in the air.

It wasn't just like some sort of form of electricity buzzing around. You know, that's the feeling we get, but we don't get that feeling from nowhere. We get that feeling from the behaviours of people, whether they're subtle or whether they're very obvious.

And, you know, I think, you know, and, and without going into detail of the sort of behaviours that that influenced how he felt when he walked into that, you know, Mercedes headquarters on that day, that's what we're talking about. So yes, it's incredibly complex, and what, what we do is influenced by our values, our beliefs, our personalities, our experience, the message we're getting from leadership and from, you know, those are influencing what we do, but it's what we do. I say, you know, we, individually and collectively, that is the sum total of that, that is the culture.

And there's a very, very sort of starting point, really empowering everyone to really believe that everything they do all the time is contributing to culture because I think sometimes we can feel a bit powerless in a sense that, well, you know, what can I do about culture, but it's a bit like, you know, the sense that, you know, what can I do about glo, you know, but, you know, the political situation in our country, you know, what we can vote and OK, our one vote might not feel as though it makes a difference, but that doesn't stop us from doing it. And you know, with culture, you know, you are contributing equally towards that, that culture in your team, whether you're in a team of or you're in a team of 150 in your within your practise. And So really empowering and believing everything you do all the time.

So there's one sense that it's what everybody does. The other, the other side of it, of course, is the leadership and the message which is coming because that's going to be influencing what people do and it's gonna influence the sort of permission to, to do certain things, you know, whether it's, whether it, you know, making it OK to, to, you know, have conversations around, making, you know, people having having their, you know, just I'm picking up on topics that we've already talked about, so about having breaks, about. Sort of creating sort of flatter hierarchies or authority gradients within teams, getting that sort of sense of permission from that those leadership roles is very important, but that's actually, that's actually all that's needed if if if if we if you can work in an environment where there is that sense of.

Permission, that sense of encouragement, the rest of it all happens from within a team. And and but again that's all gotta come from a belief that everything everybody does all the time is contributing towards that because what you do influences what somebody else sees and and what we know about human behaviour is, is, is, is that actually the behaviour of others, this is really important, the behaviour of other people influences our behaviour more than anything else. You know, in groups, you know, yes, our personality, our experiences, our, you know, our own values, yes they do influence our behaviour, but not as much as the behaviour as others.

So that's why your behaviour and everyone's behaviour matters because it's influencing what every other people see and it's influencing the culture in that moment. And the other thing is you can never just have one culture, you know, a corporate certainly cannot or a practise cannot just have a culture. You can have some, you can have some sort of underlying values and underlying messages.

The culture's gonna vary from day to day depending on the groups that are there and the people that are there. And again, so within your group, within your team, within what you're doing on a given day, you can influence inverted commas, the way things are done around here. And it doesn't mean you have to undermine things and try and reinvent the wheel, but it does mean that you can, you can, really consider the impact that you are having.

And I know that that sometimes sounds hard to sort of almost engage with because it's, it's still quite a, a big concept, but those are, but that is the, the reality of you know, what we're what we're dealing with. So it's, it's, it's encouraging teams, giving empowerment, giving a sense of, of, of . Sort of value in, in everyone's actions.

It's, it's believing that actually there is no one defining culture and that every, every, you have subcultures, you know, and that's a good thing because you can't just have one way of doing things, for all teams in all moments. That's something that really, and, and something that for me, I've always, always been a huge fan of it and you know, we speak to, So many vets and nurses who, who feel faceless in an organisation, and that, that has, you know, a negative effect on mentality sometimes, but actually, you know, nobody is faceless within their own microcosm, and you know I'm, I've always one of my hugest passions is having, you know, an, an impact on an area where you, you are involved. And your impact, whether it's on one person, whether it's on a puppy, whether it's on a kitten, whether it's on a nowhere, it doesn't really matter how big or how small that impact is, it's, it's the, the size of that impact on the person who's on the receiving end of it, and I think, you know, that is whether it's making someone a cup of tea, whether it's giving someone a cuddle, whether it's giving someone 5 minutes of complete space.

You know, I, I think everything is, is of different importance in different circumstances to different people. But, but I mean to me. It's something that, you know, is, is, is not insurmountable.

It surely can't be insurmountable across the profession. But, but where, where does vet led see itself going with with this sort of, you know, obviously integration of human factors into the, the profession, you know, what, what, what's the endgame? Well I'll, I'll sort of start at a fundamental point and then I'll let cat cos there's there's different ways of talking about it, and one of them is, one of them is gonna, a big part of this is talking about, at, at the moment at least, he's talking about the conference next year because it's, it's, you know, the one of the big challenges is just normalising conversations about this is actually just helping to, to raise an understanding of what it is, why it's important for this profession, and that.

What the conference is, is really, really trying to achieve. So I'll let, and I'll let Cat talk about that a bit more in a second. But in terms of that led more fundamentally, you know, we are a team from various backgrounds, and we came together because of a conversation between, originally between myself and and Rude, who, who we both know very well.

And when we first met. Ru had, you know, had, had, as a vet had really struggled to get into practise because of a sort of a fear of mistakes, of a, you know, a fear of getting it right. It wasn't necessarily a lack of confidence in in her clinical skills and knowledge at that time, but it was a fear that she wasn't gonna be able to perform in the way that she wanted to.

And at the time didn't, didn't feel as though there was anywhere to turn for that, you know, to, to, to, to identify and address that. And when we first met, I was involved with human factors training within aviation. We were both involved in sports.

I was a sports coach and she was an athlete, and we, we just started having a lot of conversations around this. And we got involved, you know, with talking to people that we knew who delivered human factors training within healthcare, and, you know, psychologists and, and, you know, ultimately a few other other vets. And we formed a team that that essentially offers support to individuals through, you know, and it could be through 1 to 1 coaching, which is one of one of the things that that that Ru does quite a lot.

You know, but, but a lot of it is, is working with teams with practises or with groups of practises. It could be offering training and offering workshops because starting conversations around this, deepening understanding and starting to learn practical tools, whether it's learning about specific non-technical skills, about how we can communicate in an appropriately assertive way, learning about our decision making process at a cognitive level, learning about how we can notice and and and acknowledge and and manage our emotional response. To, to unexpected events in, you know, in practise.

We can do that. We can go and support teams, but also it's about the ongoing support, with, with, you know, and a lot of practises now, you know, growing number of practises have people within their teams who are looking at who are overseeing clinical governance or patient safety in different ways. And a, and a lot of the time what we can do is offer support there to, to help, to help them, because those are difficult roles to be in.

And we can, and we can offer. Either train the champion type sessions to to develop people within teams to to champion this, as I said culture comes from within teams. So, so we, we, we, we can, we can do that.

So really it's a, it's a variety of services, sometimes it's training, sometimes it's support, sometimes it's coaching, but it's really about utilising our combined skills from, from the sport, from, from the aviation, from the healthcare, from and from within the veterinary profession, from psychology to to help teams with this, all these things that fill the gap between having the skills and achieving the outcomes at a very human level. And a big part of that is now, you know, how do, how do we, how do we get that message out there in a, in a, in a, in an effective and wide, you know, sort of, you know, to, to a wider audience. And that's where this conference comes in.

So I'll let Cat talk a bit about that and maybe pick up on a few of the bits that I've just touched upon there. Yeah, so getting that message out there is, is one of the challenges and one of the reasons we really were quite keen to come on here and talk about it. But we are also at the time, at the same time, we're starting in the, stages, early stages of planning this, fresh.

Human Factors conference. It's the first time that it's been done in the veterinary profession. So that's exciting and challenging, at the same time.

But it's all, it has been seen in other professions as well. So, we, you know, we see these conferences happening in oil, aviation, human healthcare, and the, the sort of the linking factor between all of those things is that they're all safety critical industries. So we're looking forward to bringing this conference to the veterinary profession.

We're bringing together people who are already really engaged with human factors, people who are researchers in this field, both in the veterinary profession and out with it. But also, this is absolutely for people who are totally new to this, I've never really heard the term human factors before, but it sparked an interest. Or if you're really well versed in the topic as well, then that would be equally suitable, cause we'll have content for sort of both levels, of understanding.

So, obviously you're running the conference next year. There's a lot of. A lot of angst and tension in the profession at the moment with everything that's gone on in in in 2020, and you know, there, there's a lot of people who are very, very tired, who are, you know, sort of pulled from pillar to post and, and facing challenges in their workplace.

Why is it something that, that people should engage with? I think it's something that we can really not afford not to engage with. That, that sounds a bit, a bit grand to say, but particularly at this time, where there are, like you say, so many more challenges with practising under COVID restrictions, the stresses and strains that that brings to each individual and each group as well, at a higher level.

We are under such strain that we are more likely to, to make mistakes, more likely to have stress on that workplace culture that we were discussing. And so, to have more of an understanding and more tools to apply to our individual practise settings, that can help us to sort of mitigate against, adverse events happening or support our team in a way that is going to be helpful for them practising, in the current setup. Those are all really important things for us to, to have in our kind of veterinary toolkit.

And I think obviously, Dan, you've seen, I guess in some respects you've, you know, have having the, the experience you're doing in aviation. You were involved in aviation at a time when human factors had already been a part of that profession. Now, looking at sort of your involvement at the veterinary profession, obviously, you know, you guys are trailblazers.

When it comes to, you know, that, that integration of, of human factors and understanding of the processes in the veterinary profession, but in that, in that period of time since launching Vettled, what, what positive experiences have you had that, that show you that this is something that, that, you know, can and will, you know, have a positive impact? I, I mean, yeah, I think what's really exciting is that it's, it's, it's actually the rate at which it's, it's being adopted, you know, you know, you, you said, you, you mentioned it yourself, Ben, you know, 3 years ago, if you'd someone had sort of said to you, you know, what is this, you'd have, you'd have, you'd have, you know. Sort of maybe stared at them blankly and, you know, and said, well, I'm a human being, aren't I, we all have factors, don't we?

And that's kind of a, you know, and understandably because it's. On the face of it, it, it seems like the sort of thing that, yeah, of course we all know about, but actually it's, it's very quickly becoming better understood that this is a science, this is a this is a field, this is a study in its own right, and the value in it, clearly from, from what we see in other professions is absolutely enormous, you know, the impact it's had on flight safety, on patient safety in in the healthcare space. I mean, just looking, you know, if anyone gets a chance, the clinical human factors group from some of the work that Martin Bromley's done within healthcare as an example, just looking at some of the examples, some of the case studies, of the impact that this stuff's had.

And you, in, in 3 years, you've said it yourself, you know, the, the, the, the rate at which it's being adopted. We talked earlier about cultural change, traditionally, cultural change takes a generation. We can look at loads of examples of that, whether it's, you know, sort of the drink driving culture within, within the, you know, on the road network in the UK.

And, and the same applied to actually the embracing human factors within aviation. You know, these things usually take a generation, so that it's, it's only once people like and Kat mentioned it earlier, that people who are, you know, the grads who are coming through now are hearing about this at the beginning of their careers, a lot of them and are gonna take that forward. And by the time they're in decision making roles and the people coming through grads in 20 years, are also hearing about it, the culture is inevitably gonna change in this area.

But the other thing is that it doesn't have to take a whole generation, you know, it, it can happen much quicker than that. And you know, that's the, for me that's the thing that's been exciting about this is it's, it's, we've seen such a rapid engagement with it in, in, in a matter of less than 4 years with the, the, the, the sort of early adopters from some of the corporates from some of the big referral centres from. You know, so many people that we've worked with and you know, you're seeing that.

So the rate, and it's a relatively small profession as well compared to, you know, in some ways compared to to aviation or or healthcare. So we've got the ability to make change much more quickly. And I think, you know, that for me is the is the exciting thing we're we're seeing that engagement.

And, you know, I think we're quite quickly gonna get to a tipping point where this is expected. This is, this is gonna become an expectation for anyone in practise that if we want to. Deliver our best performance that we have to address these things rather than it being that thing that some of us know about and we might, we might consider.

In healthcare, it became a little place it did at one point become very much a box ticking thing. We've got the opportunity for it not to be that, and I think that's what we're seeing and that's what's exciting. And I think, you know, we are a global profession and I think something that, you know, again the joys of, of the various different social medias and and you know, a lot of digital conferences now is that, you know, you see the same pressures and the same.

Cultural behaviours across veterinary professions and and practises all over the world. So, you know, this this has global implications not just for vets in the UK and nurses in the UK but but also, you know, all over the world, and I think that's the great thing of, of living in a digital age is that we, you know, we. Have this huge global footprint.

So Kat, just, just to sort of wrap up, how can people get engaged with vet led? You know, obviously we've heard from Dan that a lot of younger vets are getting exposed to this early on, but how can they engage with VettE and how can they hear more about, you know, the human factors conference? Yeah, great.

So, we are running this conference on the 26th of February next year because of COVID. Obviously, it will be a virtual conference. It's a day-long event, with multiple streams there.

So if you want to find out a bit more, do get in touch with us. You can email us. I'm sure these things will probably go in the show notes, won't they?

But you can email us at [email protected].

We've got a website www.fatla.co.uk.

But also do follow us on social media. We've got various platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. And there's a veterinary Human Factors community, that we run on Facebook as well as our main vet led Facebook group.

Guys, that's awesome, it's, it's really good to chat, thank you for. Doing positive things. And you know, it's obviously, you know, we're all aware that when you're trying to cause huge behavioural change across a huge profession, you know, it, it's slow going to begin with, but we can already start to see that momentum building, and, and it takes people.

To spearhead that. So, so thank you to the whole team, obviously, you know, you guys are, are just the er the, the appointed representatives for the podcast this morning, but obviously, you know, there's a bigger team behind you, and thank you to everybody for doing that. It's great to chat, and I shall look forward to the conference in February.

Thanks very much, Ben. It's great chat. Thanks, Ben, nice to chat as always.