Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Chat. Today I'm delighted to welcome our guest Laura Plafo. For those of you who may not know Laura, Laura is IVC Eviden's group quality improvement director and is responsible for driving a culture of continually improving care delivery across 20 countries in Europe and Canada.
After graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 1999, Laura worked in small animal practises until 2007 before joining Vets Now, where she held a number of roles, the most recent being Professional Standards director. Laura attained her master's in advancing healthcare practise in 2019 and is the current vice chair of the RCVS Knowledge Quality Improvement Advisory Board. She has particular interest in improvement culture, client communication, and how QI improves team wellbeing.
Laura is also neurodivergent and an advocate for neurodiversity within the veterinary profession and the wider community. She also sits on the IVC Evidencia International Diversity and Inclusion Group. So Laura, welcome to Vett chat.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you very much. So at the Banave, our mission is to empower veterinary professionals to achieve extraordinary careers through education.
And to do that, we really believe it's important not only to support veterinary professionals with clinical content, but also to raise awareness in areas such as neurodiversity, which I know that we're gonna discuss today. So it's really great to have you here, Laura. To get started, could you tell us a little bit about, what neurodiversity is, please?
Yeah, definitely. So neurodiversity just relates to the different ways that our brains are wired, the different way that they work, and that can involve how we think, how we process information, how we move, how we communicate, and neurodiversity is quite often used as an umbrella term to cover. Alternative thinking styles such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, ADHD and various other, both acquired and developed neurological differences.
So neurodiversity relates to all of us as a population. Neurodivergent tends to relate to people who are in what we call the neuro minority. So, somebody who is autistic or ADHD.
For example, OK, brilliant, that's great. Thank you. And do you mind telling us a little bit about your story and how you came to realise that you were neurodivergent, please?
Yeah, absolutely. So I think like many people that are neurodivergent, I think it is quite easy to recognise early on that you have some significant differences from the majority of people in society. And without really any understanding of what neurodivergent means, or how any of these different neurodivergences can manifest, it is very easy to feel that you're just different, weird, ostracised, and it's difficult to identify your place in the world sometimes.
So, I got my first diagnosis in 2007 actually following a family bereavement when I was struggling a lot with mental health issues, but I realised that it wasn't necessarily just depression related to a bereavement, that there was something else going on. So I actually got a diagnosis then of bipolar. I'm not sure whether I still identify with that diagnosis or not, because that is one of the most common misdiagnosis for autistic women.
And last year, I got my diagnosis as being autistic, and I think this is a very common story that lots of people will relate to, who are neurodivergent, who get a diagnosis later in life, which is particularly common for women, is it tends to be very frequently associated with diagnosis in children. And I think there are only so many times you can sit through somebody else's diagnostic exam, listening to the questions they get asked and the answers they give, saying things like, Well, I do that. Well, obviously, they get that from me.
Or, well, everybody does that. And now, it turns out everybody does not do that. And that is a neurodivergent trait.
And I think sitting through that whole process, you then start to have some penny drop moments of, oh, actually, I think maybe. You know, this set of traits is a very good description of me and how I relate to the world as well. Very fascinating and so it, so your diagnosis came later on in life through your son being diagnosed with autism, yeah, and I think that's very, very common.
A lot of neurodivergent people that I speak to. The majority of people around my sort of age, so mid-forties, say that they got their diagnosis when it either their children or somebody else in the family or somebody that they were close to, they were supporting them through the diagnostic process and that's when they. Realised, I think for younger generations, hopefully that diagnostic process is easier and people are more aware and can get access to support and, I suppose, understand their own identity and how they show up in the world at a much earlier age, cos I think that can make things a lot easier for people.
Absolutely. And so how was that time for your lawyer when, you know, at work in particular? When you realised that you had and you got the diagnosis of having autism.
So I think I only got that diagnosis last year and I think it's taken me a bit of time to Process, not necessarily just the diagnosis. So by the time I actually got my diagnosis, I was 99.9% convinced that that was going to be the outcome of the assessment process.
But the, the assessment process, there's a lot in there about mental health as well, because being a neurodivergent person in a world that is not designed for you and in a society that is not designed for the way that you think and the way that you communicate can be very, very challenging and traumatic. And so there's very often a, a big mental health component to the diagnostic assessment. And I think it was taking time to process some of those things, and also.
There tends to be an element of looking back and thinking, well, you know, what might have been, what might have been different or easier if I had known this a long time ago. So I spent quite a lot of time processing that. And then also, I'd been thinking for a while after I had the bipolar diagnosis, and by a while, we could say 15 years or so.
I'd been thinking that maybe this is something I Could or should speak out about to raise awareness and help other people feel less alone and normalise some of these things. And that was when I decided that I was going to speak at BSAVA about neurodivergence, because it felt like, it felt like a good time. It felt like there was increasing awareness in the professions.
It felt like what BSAVA had done, particularly in having the keynote speaker, who's ADHD, it felt like a very supportive time. I've linked up with some amazing colleagues in the veterinary professions through doing that. So, I've never had this discussion with the majority of the colleagues that I work with.
I've always had the discussion with my line managers. But I thought actually it might be easier, and the timing felt right just to talk about it at a congress. Brilliant.
And how, how's this sort of feedback from that being that you've had since speaking out? Do you know, it's been absolutely phenomenal, so I've had a lot of people contact me from both within IVC Evidencia, some people that I work with closely, some people that I don't work with very closely, but also a fair number of people have contacted me on LinkedIn as well to say. That they were happy that, you know, we were talking more about neurodiversity.
It's getting out there more in the profession, more in the wider world, that they felt a lot of what we talked about on the day was very validating, and they felt less alone with a lot of things. And lots of people have just come to talk to me about the fact that they know that they're neurodivergent, but it's not something that they necessarily talk about publicly. But they felt comfortable sharing it with me and we've had some really good.
Conversations, it's been really positive and helpful, absolutely nothing negative at all about it. Oh, that's fantastic. Brilliant.
So on a similar note, what do you think veterinary teams can do to better recognise and support colleagues who might be neurodivergent? I think it's really important to, to do things like this podcast actually, and to raise awareness and to start opening up those conversations. And I think setting the scene of why this is so important is there is published papers that they reckon that at 15 to 20% of the population are neurodivergent, and that it is very significantly overrepresented in STEM professions, especially caring professions, and especially professions working with animals.
So I think we could safely say that 1 in 5 of our colleagues is highly likely to be neurodivergent. And as I've alluded to, you know, it can be very difficult in society dealing with things that you find very challenging and, you know, a society and social communication that just isn't, it's designed for somebody who is very different to you. So I think anything we can do to raise awareness and increase understanding is a really good.
First step, and then we can increase awareness of what neurodivergent traits might look like, and generally be open-minded about colleagues and act to help and support each other. Whether we think people are neurodivergent or not, I think is important to me. Absolutely.
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So could, are there any sort of practical tips that you could share for veterinary practises to create a more inclusive environment for, for, your employees? I think it's really important to be open-minded and supportive, generally, and aware of differences. And I think the more, what I found personally is engaging a lot more with the neurodivergent community and talking to people and understanding differences.
There are a lot of things that are very different in the way that people process information, in the way that they interact socially, in the way that they think about things and problem solve. And if you learn more about that, you can definitely be more open-minded and supportive of colleagues when they're struggling. I think having psychological safety, I know that's talked about increasingly in the professions, is incredibly important for all team members, but particularly anybody who feels that they are generally marginalised by society.
It's particularly important to feel safe, to speak up and to feel included. And I think supporting people's adjustments in work as well is incredibly important and just making it normal for, you know, if people need to use e-readers or if they have to have a quiet room or if they were ear defenders, just making that an OK thing to happen in practise and actually actively supporting other people. And really importantly, making the most of people's strengths because neurodiversity is a difference, it's not a deficiency.
And we tend to, as neurodivergent people have what we call very spiky profiles, which I'm sure some people will be aware of. So some really great strengths, but also some areas where there might be additional struggles or need for support. So I think making the most of people's strengths as well, and that thinking differently.
And I think I work in quality improvement and diversity of thought is incredibly important. And neurodivergent traits tend to be. Thinking outside the box, thinking very differently, taking a different approach to problems, and obviously that's incredibly useful, not just in quality improvement, but in teams in general.
So I think it's important not just to focus on. Where people might need to support, might need more support, but also to focus on what they can really bring to the team and maximising that in their roles as well. Absolutely.
That's really good insight. Thank you, Laura. How do you think the veterinary profession as a whole currently approaches neurodiversity in your opinion?
I think we're making real strides in the UK towards raising awareness. I think the work that's been done with the Mind Matters initiative is phenomenal and there's resources on the website that can give people a bit of an introduction into neurodiversity. And I think, as I said, the, the discussion at BSAVA having a full day at Congress devoted to neurodiversity and also a neurodivergent keynote speaker was incredibly powerful and was really engaged with really well.
There's been some amazing research by Kirsty Pickles looking at neurodivergent people within the professions, which is very interesting for people to have a look at and understand a little bit more. So I think we're definitely doing. Better, I think it can be challenging because when we look at traditional diversity and inclusion groups.
Neurodiversity isn't specified under the Equalities Act, so it doesn't always get included, or sometimes it gets included under disabilities. And as we've said, if we talk about the social model of disability, then, you know, a lot of people who are neurodivergent do identify as being disabled because the society they live in is not. Designed for them, but a lot of neurodivergent people also identify as this is a biological variation, it's a difference, and don't necessarily identify as having a disability.
So I think it's really important for inclusion where we can be included in diversity inclusion groups, ironically, but I think it's hard to, to always get that message across, because I think typically diversity inclusion groups tend to focus around the differences that are in the Equality Act, which is very reasonable. But I think that's something that we can definitely do more of. Brilliant.
Thanks Laura. So kind of just switching our conversation a little bit. So if we just look at our clients, how can veterinary professionals better communicate with clients who may process information differently due to neurodiversity?
I think this is a really, really important point. And, you know, as we've said, neurodivergent people can be incredibly vulnerable in society, and not every visit to a veterinary practise or engagement with veterinary professions will be stressful, but lots of them will be if animals are sick or ill or injured, that can be incredibly stressful for anybody, and that might be multiplied by somebody who's struggling with social communication differences or sensory differences at the same time. I think being really open-minded to what other people might be struggling with and just assuming.
That they're well intentioned and that clients are struggling. As a principal, can be really helpful communicating with anybody, actually. But I think, in particular, there can be differences in communication style that can be perceived as rude, because they're just very direct.
So I think assuming you don't even have to assume that somebody is, or maybe a neurodivergent, but I think just assuming that they may just have a different communication style, and working with them and to support them can be really helpful, generally. And the more you're aware of what different communication styles can look like and what distress in neurodivergent and neurotypical people can look like, I think that can be really helpful. And again, it's not to say that incivility or rudeness or aggression is acceptable, it absolutely isn't.
But I think there are some communication styles if we reframe what people's verbal tone can be indicating. Indicates that people need support and It can be difficult when we perceive that people being rude to get into that support mindset. And I think if clients identify as being neurodivergent and tell you about that, then that gives you also a really good opportunity to open up that dialogue of What might they struggle with and what might be supportive to them and, you know, what you potentially could do differently.
There is also a phenomenal National Autistic Society accreditation programme that you can get for practises, and I know there are some practises in the UK there's definitely one that does have that, and there are other practises that are looking into that, and that's around supporting autistic people specifically, but that if you look into That framework, it gives you a good indication of things that can be supportive for all clients, actually. I think it's a really good point that a lot of what supports neurodivergent individuals also supports everybody's mental health and wellbeing. But if you look at the framework of the award, it gives you some really good steers on what kind of things might be useful and supportive.
Brilliant. I know that's really interesting. Would you happen to know where people who are listening could find that framework, or is there anywhere that we could direct them to?
Maybe you could send us the link and we could pop it on our socials when this goes live as well. Yeah, absolutely. If, if people search for the National Autistic Society, it's got all the, the resources on there.
And I think some of the very big neurodivergent charities can be very helpful to have a read through. Resources and particularly listening to neurodivergent people and their stories can give a really strong, Indication of what kind of things can be helpful and also what kind of things can be detrimental. Brilliant.
I just wanted to ask, do you feel like there is a bit of a stigma around neurodiversity in the veterinary state at the moment? I think the stigma around neurodiversity generally within society, I don't know that there's any evidence that things are particularly better or worse within the veterinary professions specifically. But I think there is stigma.
Generally, that people feel about being different, in particular, and a lack of understanding, and I think that's where a lot of stigma comes from, is a lot of lack of education and understanding, and also lots of really strong, pervasive, unhelpful stereotypes. And I think this is true for a lot of diversity and inclusion. Discussions is that stereotypes tend to be really unhelpful, and that can really damage people's perception of when a behaviour is a bit different, where that might be coming from.
And also, if you talk to people, for example, about being autistic, there still tends to be this image in people's head of Rain Man and being a savant, which is, incredibly, incredibly rare. And the majority of autistic people have got a lot of different traits and different behaviours and. It can be unhelpful to have that sort of image stuck in your head, because then when somebody tells you they're autistic, you automatically go, Oh, well, they must be like Rain Man.
And, and again, stereotypes around ADHD tends to be hyperactive, badly behaved, small boys. And obviously, again, a massive stereotype, which is unhelpful to all the other people who are ADHD who present very, very differently from that. And sometimes they're not hyperactive.
Also come in all different ages and genders. So I think Reducing stigma tends to be around education awareness, but also around challenging some of these stereotypes and listening to neurodivergent voices and amplifying them where you get the opportunity to do that and using what resources are out there. Brilliant.
Thank you, Laura. And for anybody who's listening who might have suspicions that they're autistic, you know, what sort of advice would you give them based on your own experience about maybe speaking up or speaking to somebody? Is there anything that you'd like to share around that?
I think the diagnostic journey can be. A challenging one. It, and that goes for anybody of any age.
It can be difficult. There are very, very long waiting lists in the UK on the NHS at the moment. So Whilst I think pursuing a diagnosis is definitely the right thing for some people, it's not necessarily the right thing for everybody.
So I think that it's definitely very valid to go out and connect and read. Lots of information, like say from some of these charities to maybe connect with neurodivergent communities online or in person, or as you say, speaking to neurodivergent individuals can be very helpful and very reassuring, and within the neurodivergent community in particular, self diagnosis is completely valid and accepted, so. Because diagnosis is a privilege and it's not accessible easily to everybody.
So I think that's one thing to be aware of. As I've said, you know, processing my own diagnosis, it's something that you would be well advised to have a good think about before it's something you go for. And also to make sure that you've got appropriate support around that as well.
And again, getting support from other neurodivergent people, from friends or family, from professionals, if that is available to you, can be really helpful. And having a diagnosis has been incredibly validating and helpful for me, but it is also completely valid to self-identify and to learn more about the community and do things in a different way as well. And I think in terms of speaking up, it's something that I Felt I should have done for quite a long time and gave myself a bit of a hard time about it.
So, what I would say to other people is definitely don't do that. If you want to speak up and raise awareness, then I would have a chat to. Friends, family, maybe professionals about the pros and cons of doing that and have a good think about it before it's something you decide to do.
But 100% don't give yourself a hard time for not doing it because it's got to be right for you and it's got to be helpful for you as well as being helpful for other people. So, life is hard enough, is, is one thing I've learned without giving yourself an additional hard time about other things that you feel like you should be doing. So I hope that's helpful for people because as I say, it can be a bit of a A rocky road, but I think engaging with the community and getting support and, Feeling part of a community and fitting.
Meeting people who are similar to you actually, and they've got similar strengths and similar struggles and similar interests can be incredibly life-affirming and validating, particularly if you have always felt, Very different to the majority of people. Brilliant, Laura. Thank you so much.
We are, just out of time, but I just wanted to say a really big thank you. I've really enjoyed listening to all your insights. Thank you for sharing all your experiences, with our listeners.
Is there anything, else you want to share before we wrap up today? Well, firstly, thank you for inviting me. I think it's, it's been a real privilege and a pleasure to come and, and talk to you, and thank you for being allies to the neurodivergent community.
And that also goes to everybody who's listening to this podcast as well. I thank you for engaging and listening. And also a message to anybody who is neurodivergent or who feels like they might be neurodivergent, just to say that you're not alone, and things are changing and There's a lot more awareness out there at the moment, and things are getting better.
Oh, thank you, Laura. I think that's the perfect place for us to finish today. Thank you so much.
Really enjoyed the conversation. Take care. Bye.
Bye.
