Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet, welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chats. I'm really fortunate, I, I love LinkedIn, you know, I've met so many really great people through LinkedIn, and Chad Brown is another of those. Chad is a veterinary surgeon.

I'm gonna let him tell us a little bit about his story cos it was really fascinating. You know, starting to interact with Chad on LinkedIn and then seeing how much, sort of in common probably the story is as well, somebody who likes to, change and pivot, I think is the, is the word that's popular nowadays. So Chad, thank you so much for coming on, really appreciate your time, I know how busy you are juggling so many balls, but er perhaps for those people who don't know you, give us a little potted history.

Sure. So thank you, Anthony, very much. I, I, I've met so many people through LinkedIn as well.

Actually, I just started really getting involved and engaged in LinkedIn approximately 7 or 8 months ago, and I'm just so, so flattered that there's been so many people that have reached out and it's been so great. A little clarification. So in America, if you call yourself a veterinary surgeon, you've, you're a board certified, surgeon that you've done a residency and everything else.

So, so I am in America. I'm in Iowa right now, but, so I am a general practitioner, a regular, well, I shouldn't say regular, but a, but a doctor of veterinary medicine only, general practitioner. So I, I Really, I work with a lot of surgeons here in my current capacity, that are board certified surgeons, so I did want to clarify that a little bit.

I think just Chad, we, we had, I think it was George Bernard Shaw said the, the British and the Americans are separated by a common language cos of course it's veterinarians, we say we're a vet. You know, we often say in the UK we're just, you know, we are a vet, which obviously in America has a completely different meaning, so language is so important and there are differences between the two cultures, aren't there? There are, aren't there?

So, yeah, my background is, and, and again, thanks for having me on the show. So, I am a veterinarian. I graduated veterinary school in 2001 and, from Purdue University.

I went back home, you can probably hear the Appalachian in my, in my voice, and so I am from West Virginia, and so really close to the western part of West Virginia where southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky all connect. It's called the tri-state region. And so, I, I graduated and I went back home and was gonna be, you know, my plan was I wanna be a mixed animal veterinarian, but, they didn't have any mixed animal veterinarian, positions, and I come from an agricultural beef cattle background.

And so I took a small animal job because I wanted to be back home. And so, you know, after that, you know, after about 6 months in, I, I started a, a, a large animal business on the side. And I, I told, our students that all the time, our veterinary students that, you know, you can make jobs, even, you know, you, you don't have to wait until you're comfortable, you know, until you feel ready because a lot of times you're not.

So I started a large animal business just out of The back of my truck because I was really wanting to scratch that itch and that was my background and that was my interest too. But, so I did and did that for about 6 years. So I was a small animal practitioner and that, and so I decided, well, I think I'm gonna buy, I wanna buy that practise, that I was working at the small animal practise and kind of transitioned it into a mixed animal.

Well, we didn't agree to the terms of the contract from it. And so, to be quite frank, when I told him I didn't want to buy the practise, he actually fired me. That day.

And so, so I had to start my own, and I was, it was really one of those fortunate occurrences. So, I went out and started my own mixed animal practise, found a, a building, and, and we kind of refurbished it and, and made it into a mixed animal practise, 50/50 and grew that for 7 more years and was very fortunate that I had a large staff, 3 veterinarians, a bunch of, a bunch of, wonderful qualified credentialed technicians. And 3 things happened.

So I, at that point, I was about 15 years of being on call 24/7 and a 50/50 practise, and a local college had asked me to help start a vet tech programme. And the truth is, is that I had already been really kind of interested, getting interested in academia. I'd already been doing some, some educational work at Ohio University, which is a, which is a university that's close to us in their equine studies programme.

And I really valued veterinary students and veterinary technicians. They came to do externships with me, and, I just loved having them around. I just loved it.

I loved teaching. I loved, you know, I, I don't know if I've met a vet yet that didn't love to teach students, in some capacity, but, but I loved having them and, and I really, really got interested in veterinary technicians and what effect and you know, what. Positivity, just how they made practises better, more financially better and, and, and efficiently, better.

So I got into that space. I went to a local college, asked me to start a vet tech programme. They had a, you know, a, a grant, and so at the same time, interestingly enough, The veterinary technicians that worked for me at my practise, they actually bought my practise.

The veterinarians that worked for me had no interest in buying the practise. So in West Virginia, you didn't have to be a veterinarian to own, and that was, that was in 2016. And so, I was very fortunate to get a, a vet tech programme off the ground and accredited, in West Virginia.

And, you know, it's still going, it's still there. I was there about 4 years and then an opportunity came to, lead both of the, both of the accredited programmes at Purdue University and they're veterinary nursing programmes. And you know, if, if you're in the field of veterinary nursing, Purdue University is, is paramount, in, in my mind.

It's always ranked in the, you know, both of them, the online programme and the campus programme are consistently ranked. Top, you know, out of the 217 programmes that are out there or in the top 5. And so that was a wonderful experience because I got to, I got to lead a team of an, you know, a community of online educators and a community of on-campus educators.

And so two different ways to teach, veterinary technicians, but we made an impact. Both at our teaching hospital, you know, locally as well as, as globally, we had students in 18 different countries. We had, you know, probab probably 1200 students, in the programme at the time.

So then, as I was, you know, kind of in the last few years of, of Purdue, I started Noticing myself missing clinical administration. I didn't miss clinical practise, but I started working with the hospital director over at Purdue University and just got interested in being a hospital director. And so I said, you know, I think I'm gonna be, you know, she had asked me some information about vet techs and.

How we can recruit them, retain them, over in there. And so got interested in that space and, I was so fortunate that the, the people at Iowa State University had reached out and, and just said, hey, would you apply for this position as a teaching hospital director for the College of Vet Med? And I've been here for a year and a half.

Yeah, yeah, and so way different world. So now I'm in the clinical world again and, and really what lent itself well to the position that I'm in was that I have an academic background and a clinical background, and I'm a mixed animal veterinarian because we are a, you know, this teaching hospital is large animal and small animal, so that's the veterinary route, if that's, if that's what you're, you're interested in now. It's fascinating and I, I think for me, I think you share that same passion of how important, you know, again common language different language, we, we call them veterinary nurses in the UK you call them veterinary technicians, how important they are to run a, you know, a practise and great to see, also in America that there are these entrepreneurial nurses who will go in and, You know, get involved and buy practises or be partners in practises as well because if, if it's just vets, it's like a, you know, a an accountancy firm, if it's just accountants, you've got to bring other skills and I think one of the advantages of corporatization is we've brought in, really clever people from other areas because, I think as vets sometimes we think we can do everything, whereas, you know, we, we clearly aren't skilled at every, element, we can learn things, you know, we're, we're usually pretty smart people, but actually the smartest way is to get people in who are cleverer than you to do those things that you haven't spent 20 years learning about, isn't it?

Yes, it is. And in this situation, the, the veterinary technicians that did buy my practise, they were able to double the size of it, you know, and, and double their income pretty, pretty quickly, actually. And so it was, it's really encouraging to see how well they're doing.

They did stop seeing large animals, which was, was disheartening to me and, and caused some, you know, I had a lot of large animal clients that, that suddenly didn't have a vet. And so, but for, for them, that was the move they wanted to make and, that we're still good friends and we still communicate all the time. And so it's just been, a, a great part.

And as you, as you can see, you know, the last 10 years of my life before here, it was dedicated to veterinary technicians and, and how important they are, and that, that feeling is still very strong in me that it's my contention that a lot of the problems that, that plague veterinarians, you know, with overwork, burnout, you know, financial stress, everything else actually can be. Not eliminated, but really, really addressed if we address the problems of veterinary technicians. Because if we have a very strong credentialed veterinary technician force, it actually makes all of those other issues go away.

If we're utilising technicians to the fullest extent of their scope of practise. Then, then doctors don't have to be doing as much as they need to be doing. And so that's always, that's been kind of, you know, where I've landed.

I still, I still tell vet students that all the time of just how important that is, and they really, really, really need to, I, you know, familiarise themselves with all of the things going on with, with title protection, with scope of practise, and, and, and utilisation, to the fullest extent of their licence. Just wanted to go on, go back to the, the vet tech teaching, and you know, obviously I kind of started a lot of the online education in 2010 when I went to a conference, heard about webinars, brought those in, to the profession, you know, before really people knew what a webinar was. Obviously, you were talking about having an online course and you had 19 different countries, and of course.

It's so good that you and you know, I, I've been able to educate vets and nurses from all over the world because UK and US, you know, some of the best veterinary teaching in the world, by taking it online, you democratise it cos you make it affordable for vets in, you know, developing countries to come to the programme. You've obviously then got the campus-based system. What did you find looking at that, you know, how, how did that, what sort of er vet techs, vet nurses did that create?

And do you think, you know, with the benefit of that er knowledge and experience that maybe hybrid is, is a good way to go as well, so even with a campus-based course, there is certain of it that can be done, particularly with younger people today who are now more used to working remotely. Yes, yeah, that's a great question. So, so I, I was at, you know, at Purdue, we, you know, the director of the, of the vet, they've, they've changed it.

They've since changed it back to veterinary technician programmes, was in a unique position because you were director of, of both of these programmes, and in a way, they competed with each other, you know, especially for, for, for applicants. So I'll start with the benefits, you know, of our on-campus of a campus programme. Now, Campus programme can be most of the veterinary technology programmes, technician programmes are delivered in community colleges, but at Purdue, we were a 4-year bachelor programme where the experience we could give our students was a Big 10 university experience, and, and, you know, they could come in and plus a bachelor's degree would open doors, could potentially open doors outside of.

Clinical practise that an associate degree wouldn't open. And so that was a big part of, of Purdue in itself. The campus programme itself, there's a lot of positives to it because our students would be with our, they would get consistent levels of education from instructors that, that, that was their job.

They were academic instructors, so they were, they were trained in those areas. And then they had exposure to the teaching hospital and that was a lovely thing because That is, that doesn't happen in, you know, on remote programmes where a student at a campus programme like Purdue's, now, now again, community practise colleges are a little different, but, but what was the, the brilliance, of a Purdue plan was that our students would, rotate through the services of the hospital for small animal, large animal, cardiology, surgery, oncology. And by the time they graduated, they had exposure to all of those different specialties, which made them very, very marketable, not only in general practises, but, but with that.

So, there's a great, there, you know, that's great, and, and, you know, selfishly, we liked it because the technicians would actually stay and work in the teaching hospital after they were done, which teaching hospitals really struggle with recruiting that techs. Now, the online programme. It's something that I really got behind.

The campus programme had restrictions with space and limited structure, resources right there, but there were no limits to, to an online programme. And, and one thing I identified pretty quickly was that you needed educators. That were devoted to online education because, so I separated the teams.

Both of them were, were actually, you know, we had some instructors teaching in both programmes. And the truth is, is that I believe that, that to do one or the other, you need to concentrate on it because there's a skill set to teach online education. And so, we doubled down on it.

We completely redesigned the entire curriculum and the, the, and, and all the courses. That was a, a $700,000 overhaul, but we made it, you know, PDFs and PowerPoints just don't work for today's online work learner. And so we worked with Purdue Online to design these courses that for these students and You know, it's brilliant because it is a, you know, it's, it's a programme that can be taken while they go to their own, you know, while they go to work, they don't have to relocate, so they can work the whole time, take their classes asynchronously at night or in the mornings or whenever, and there's no limitations for where they live, you know, like you said, so we can have this outreach, and it is.

Significantly less expensive, but, you know, it's an associate degree, it was an associate degree programme too, but lots of positives about it and, you know, for me, the end goal was I wanted to, to have as much impact as we could, you know, I, I thought I was very proud of the. Brand. I think Purdue Veterinary nursing is there in as many different areas as we could, we could send out our teaching and our instruction and our curriculum.

I think the better and, and my goal was more credentialed veterinary technicians because there is a tremendous shortage of them. So that's, that's kind of the, the difference, with both of them, but I doubled down on, on the online because You know, you could, you, you could really scale it nice. Well, it's leverage, isn't it?

Yes. I think also, you know when I went to vet school, I didn't go to vet school to get a piece of paper or a degree, I went to vet school to become a vet and to be good at the job when I got out, and obviously you know when we qualify we've still got a lot to learn, but I think if you have that mentality of being a lifelong learner, you know, within a veterinary degree and even now, you know, with slightly different interests cos I'm not practising but I'm doing a lot around sustainability and stuff like that, it, it's, It's so important to have that sort of lifelong learning mentality and to learn, you know, as you've said in your blog, which I want to kind of go into as well, is, You know, when we fail, we kind of, there's no really such thing as failure as long as you learn from it because, you know, it helps you with the next project and I would imagine, you know, both of us can look at our lives and see areas that we've failed at, but if we hadn't, if we'd succeeded at everything, we wouldn't quite be where we are today and who knows that might be better or worse, but. You know, failure is usually the time when you grow more than when you're smashing it out of the park, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, the term growth mindset, was coined by Carol Dweck, in her book, you know, a few years back, and, and, and before that, you know, I, I, I always kind of had a growth mindset and, and it was great to hear that there was actually a term for it later. But yeah, I guess I, I have been fortunate to, to be able to just Take risks, feel the fear and do it anyway, you know, and take calculated risks, and if it doesn't work out, boy, those are the things that, that you really learn lessons from. When I look back at the 25 years of, of veterinary practise I've had the biggest lessons, and, you know, I guess in personal life too, would be the ones where, oh, that did not go as planned.

And so learn a lesson from that and, and don't repeat it, because you're, you're exactly right. If we succeeded all the time. I don't know if we would grow at all, but, you know, another part of that is, is, is that I, I guess I've always felt comfortable being uncomfortable, and, and so, you know, that, that's, that's hard for some people sometimes to, you know, to go into situations where you might not be the most prepared, or, you know, and then you just need to learn as you go.

No, yeah, the growth mindset is something that I've embraced, you know, and in veterinary medicine, you know, many of our students have a fixed mindset, where they want to perform, and, and if they do not do well on, on testing or, or anything else like that, they take it very hard, you know, because of, of this just binary scale, you know, pass, no pass. Confidence can disappear very quickly then and then it makes it more difficult, whereas if you realise that there's bumps on the road. You know, and, and there's still that humility there, but you, you kind of don't expect that arrogance that you're always gonna succeed, it's sometimes it's good to get a knock to realise, you know, as a human being we will make mistakes as vets, animals will sometimes die because we didn't get the right diagnosis or we did something wrong, and I think being able to admit to our mistakes is.

Is really important because, you know, one of the ways that gets struck off as a veterinarian in the UK is lie, you know, about what happened. Right. So that integrity side I think is a really important part of the job, you know, when you sign a signature on a certificate, you've not backdated it, you've not said that the animal hasn't had antibiotics when he's had them.

You know, we have in the UK there are cases, you know, that we have to have that integrity cos it's a noble profession at the end of the day. It is. Talking a bit about the blog though cos I had a little nose through that, and I think it's also, I, I don't wanna use the phrase, but I'm gonna use anyway, home, homespun wisdom, you know, it's that kind of, as, as one gets older and one has these knocks in the road and learns from life, I, I've really enjoyed reading them that I think that one of the more recent ones was, you know, we're we're all in a race, and I think our society now, you know, encourages us to go faster and faster, and I think this is where a lot of the stress and the burnout comes from.

In that unless we're doing something, you know, we're, we're human doings rather than human beings, being a human being, where you're just being, is, is not sufficient, you have to be doing something. Yeah, so, you know, thanks for bringing up up the blog. This has been a passion project of mine.

You know, I have a history of, of side businesses with e-commerce, with, with real estate, you know, in the past, but I wasn't, I wasn't on a side project now. And so, you know, with my job, I I felt like, you know, all the, you know, I, I didn't engage with students and they would listen and ask my questions, and this has been over the last 10 years when I'll talk to students, and they said, you should really write a blog. You should, you should do this.

I think it'd be valuable. And then, you know, my, my wife said the same thing. And so I said, well, I don't know if anyone would listen to me, but, but I just turned 51 and I do have I don't know, you know, a career that has done a lot of different things.

And so I call it career capital, is, is what I call it. So I, I've built up all these experiences and gained all these different characteristics and skill sets that have led me to where I am today. And so, I thought to myself, well, sure, I, I want to do that.

And so I tried to, I think what you're thinking is kind of folksy Appalachian type wisdom, you know, that's my background is, it's, you know, we are hard workers and we, we kind of communicate with radical candour. I guess as, as, you know, the book says, so radical candour, I encourage it here at the hospital all the time. Just, just tell me the truth, you know, I'd like to hear.

So I decided to start blogging as a passion project. Certainly nothing, nothing geared toward monetization, but really just started to love it. And so I have a blog and then I, I post on LinkedIn and a lot, just my thoughts, and it started out, you know, just me talking about leadership.

You know, the lessons I've learned because believe me, I make mistakes, daily. I try to, you know, if I can avoid it, I can, but, but my goal is, is that I could, you know, pass along what I've learned so that others don't make the same mistakes as me. In these different positions that they may be an associate vet or a medical director, a teaching hospital director, or, you know, what, whatever it may be, but, but leadership and careers, you know, I, I think I can, I'm not a specialist in, in a career counsellor by any means, but, but I certainly I want people to feel fulfilled in their careers, and there's a lot of things I've learned in my life about what, you know, what makes a fulfilling career and what doesn't, and then try to help, help others identify one of those pain points that you might be able to get over and you might not.

So careers was something I was really interested in and then the, you know, the, the operational, the, the financial part of things, but But lately, I've just kind of, you know, re-geared my, my blog towards, I wanna write about what I wanna write about. I'm still gonna write about those, those things. And so, Anthony, this is my public journal, is what I kind of, you know, this is forcing me to journal, forcing me to, just get my thoughts out there, and I have just loved it and can't believe the doors it has opened.

And, and I'm just incredibly humbled that people are even reading this, so. Yeah. Well, it, it's also cathartic, and I think to, to journal and to write is, is, is really powerful.

I suppose to, to kind of finish, I'd love to get your perspective on. You know, and spent a long time in your career teaching students, both veterinary nurse, vet tech, and veterinarians. Where are we at?

With them now, what, what's the, how do we make sure that we're preparing people for a veterinary career, which is, I don't know, I'm gonna use the word vocational, it was certainly what I was, I wanted to be a veteran when I was 8 and I loved the job and very much connected with and understood the hard hours that you'd have to work and the service that you were giving. Are we still, are you still getting the sense that we're vocational, and are we, you know, at university level, picking the right people to stay in the job, and if we are, how do you think the kind of burnout and the loss of vets, which I understand is happening in America in the same way that it is in the UK, maybe some ideas of solutions from perhaps what you've seen happening in Perdue and and Iowa and other places. Sure, sure.

So, you know, the goal of any academic, you know, there are 3 missions to a college of veterinary medicine, and that's to, to educate students, to do research, and then to provide clinical service. But, but in terms of teaching, our ultimate goal is to educate and prepare career-ready veterinarians for first day practise, and be continuous learners. So the things We're seeing that, that we've had to pivot a little bit with is we're trying to, to add to the curriculum more things around non-clinical skills, business acumen, personal finance, things that are stressful to, to new students with maybe a high student debt burden.

And so really preparing them financially for contract negotiations and giving them that language. I teach an entrepreneurship class here in practise management at Iowa State, and it was just really well attended, and I think really liked. So that's one thing, communication skills and you know, getting them prepared for You know, getting out into the real world and you may get a one-star Yelp review, and so really putting them in situations, in the curriculum where they do feel that bit of pressure in a low stakes environment.

I think that's something that, that veterinary schools are, are really looking to do now, because we don't want them leaving the profession and, and many of them leave clinical practise soon after they start, and I believe that there's a role that colleges of vet med can play in that, in that role too. And so, the other one is, is corporate practise. You know, a lot of practises now are corporate practises and just exposing our students to maybe that little difference between how corporations are run versus private practises.

And I think that, that, that career exposure, you know, is a little bit, is important as well. I think technology, technology is a big one, especially with, with artificial intelligence, and, virtual reality, 3D, you know, all, all of these different things. So most practises, 40% of practises are using AI in their practises.

And so I believe there is a role to the College of Veterinary Medicine that we. Expose our students to AI throughout the curriculum. It's embedded places.

Now, now, it's taking a while for, for some universities, and again, I'm not on the academic side of Iowa State, but just getting them exposure to the various types of AI that's used in practises, you know, for instance, things like AI. Transcription software that is used in practises so we're trying to get that into the teaching hospital right now and, and, and, you know, things like that and, and responsible use of AI and, you know, not just blindly following the, the results of a, of a chat GPT search, but really kind of making it apart because they're gonna use it. And, and so, you know, they're gonna use it either in practise or whatever and so a responsible and ethical way that we can have them use it in, in learning and then make sure that they're able to use their own knowledge to verify that it is accurate or not.

And so those are. Well, no, those are things that come right to the top of my head. In terms of veterinary technicians, something I'm very passionate about that I think all veterinary schools should be doing right now because of what I told you earlier, is that I do think even if they don't have a vet tech school in their college, I think we should be educating our students on the biggest issue, our, our veterinary students on the biggest issues that plague veterinary technicians.

And if they are prepared and they know what, what veterinary technicians are, are dealing with, and what they want and, and their utilisation and everything else, I actually think that that would be a very good use of some of their curriculum time, even if they just had lecture one lecture a semester about it, about the various issues. So anyway, those are just right off the top of my head. I could name 6 or 8 more, but, but yeah.

That's brilliant Chad. Listen, it's been really great to speak, it, it's so good obviously to have met you on LinkedIn, but you only get so far on LinkedIn, so to actually go virtually face to face has been fantastic, and who knows, hopefully one day soon we'll get to meet er properly face to face as well. I can't wait.

Chad, thank you so much for all the great work you're doing, you know, particularly with vet nurses, vet techs, we love our, our vet nurses at the webinar vet and our vet techs as well, er, and really appreciate your time cos I know how busy you are, so thanks for coming on the, on the call. Alright, thanks Anthony, I'm so, you know, really, really loved being here. Cheers, thanks Chad, and thanks everyone for listening.

Obviously I hope to see you very soon on a podcast or a webinar. Take care now.