Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's webinar. Before I get started, I'd just like to say a huge big thank you to Berrol for their sponsorship for tonight.
If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be able to bring you this webinar. So a big thank you to Biotrol for their support of this important topic. Little bit of housekeeping before I introduce our speakers.
If you are watching online, you can just type your questions into the Q&A box. If you're on Zoom, just move your mouse over the screen and the little control bar pops up. It's normally a black bar at the bottom.
There's a Q&A box. Just click on that, type in your questions into there, and we will keep all of those over to the end. If we don't get to, finish all the questions tonight, we will send them through to our presenters.
And ask them pretty, pretty pleased to answer your questions and help and guide you through it. Speaking of our presenters, it is my absolute privilege to introduce them to you. So, following her career as a drama teacher, Lizzie Dodgson began training as a student veterinary nurse in 2015, qualifying in 2019, and going on to become a head RVN.
And she has worked in a variety of veterinary clinics since. In 2023, Lizzie joined Biotrol. As an account manager, bringing her experience in animal welfare and health care to the field of biosecurity, she now works closely with charity and welfare organisations supporting them and improving their infection control practises while maintaining the highest standards of hygiene and safety.
Lizzie is a highly engaging public speaker with an experienced trainer known for delivering insightful and accessible education in biosecurity, and with her passion for mental health and well-being, she fosters a collaborative approach that has helped build strong, close-knit relationships with her customers. Lizzy is recognised and trusted expert in biosecurity, dedicated to improving standards and supporting organisations in safeguarding animals and human health. Together with her tonight is Gemma Cooper, and she's dedicated RVN who graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in 2013 and has since worked across various disciplines including general practise and emergency and critical care referral nursing.
For the past 2 years, Gemma has specialised in infection prevention and control, serving as the infection prevention and control nurse manager. Being responsible for maintaining protocols, staff training, and ensuring the highest standards of biosecurity for patients with known or suspected infectious diseases, Gemma works closely with veterinary teams to safeguard both animals and human health within the clinical environment. Beyond her clinical expertise, Gemma is a passionate advocate for mental health in the workplace.
As a certified mental health first aider, for the past 4 years, she has played a pivotal role in establishing a mental health first aider group during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic, providing essential support to colleagues during these challenging times. Ladies, welcome to the webinar vet, and it's over to you. Thank you so much, Bruce, thanks for such a great warm welcome and thank you everybody for joining us.
So Bruce has done a pretty great job of this, but we thought we would tell you a little bit about ourselves and kind of our journey to get here. As you've heard, we're both er registered veterinary nurses, different paths to getting there. I actually decided to retrain as a veterinary nurse after a pretty nasty accident where I was told I wouldn't walk again.
And, with a stubborn nature which I inherited from my father and a wonderful spaniel, Charlie, who passed away a couple of years ago, I basically learned to walk again, found my confidence again, decided that I wanted to, have a break from teaching and, move into working with animals. So trained as a veterinary nurse and Here I am now working for Bartrol, looking after animal charities and I think we were chatting earlier, both of us have kind of been at various mental health sort of burnout points and crises over the year, and we're really, really passionate about just kind of opening a clear channel and communication within. The animal industry, but particularly within veterinary, and welfare, I couldn't let the opportunity pass without introducing Bertie and Lottie, who are my little best friends.
Down at the bottom there, addicted to spaniels. It's probably a fair, fair comment, and I also have a lovely husband, Ben, at home who's very supportive of everything we're doing. So, as as Bruce introduced and Lizzie, I'm Gemma.
You can probably tell from my photos, I'm a little bit animal mad and like to kind of find the exotic animals here, there and everywhere. I've done a fair bit of, voluntary work abroad, that top right hand side is actually a lioness that we are about to neuter. Due to needing surgery, I have a world of love for my cat who does not reciprocate the favour.
But that is my little boy, Josh, at the bottom with his beautiful blue eyes. And he pretty much keeps me on my toes all the time. As Lizzie was saying, we've both been in positions where Mental health and mental wellbeing has been a challenge, and we've had to seek help and support from various, sort of resources, and it's something that I'm really passionate about as, as I know Lizzie is as well.
It's something that should definitely be spoken about, talked about openly, and, and yeah, hopefully you'll get some insights from our thoughts here. -huh. So first of all, we thought it's just really important to understand the term biosecurity.
I think within veterinary, we're all very aware of the amount of cleaning that goes on, but biosecurity is more than that really. It's, as it says on here, all procedures implemented to reduce the risk and consequence of infection with the disease causing agent. That can be a whole variety of things.
And tonight what we really want to do is just, draw that link between how we think clear communication, clear processes with biosecurity can improve mental health within our industry. We both have kind of ended up in infection control roles, different roles, but, similarly, I think have both seen how important this is and how, . How these two topics really, really linked together.
We're an interesting generation in that we've lived through, a global pandemic, and I think that's a very unusual point to be in. So we're all very aware of infection and the way that it's spread in a way that I think previous generations maybe haven't been. So we're gonna look at some of the things, around this today.
So there's a whole, Host of issues and challenges around this that we're gonna look at briefly now. I think policies and procedures, I know historically, even as a head nurse in practise, we probably had a folder somewhere that maybe someone had looked at once a few years ago, but often the policies and procedures are a little bit outdated or, you know, chemicals are changed due to price or whatever, and they're not always super relevant or accessible when you really need them. Biosecurity is really important.
It's needed in all animal health roles, whether you are a vet, or whether you're a nurse, whether you're a PCA, whether you're a kennel hand, even, you know, even in reception where you're not necessarily so hands on with the animals, there is, a need for awareness around this topic. Something I've learned a huge amount about since I've been with Biotro is not notifiable disease outbreaks. These have a huge impact, I think on mental health, .
Things like avian influenza are all the more common, all the more prevalent, I think in society and not even really seasonal anymore. It seems to be a kind of year round challenge. Even in private practise, we dealt with wildlife, on a regular basis.
I worked with a brilliant, exotic specialist at one point in my career, so we were dealing with all kinds of birds of prey. Even with colleagues that I'm working with now who are in the zoo world, I think seeing, outbreaks of disease and the impact of having to cull animals or lose animals that you're attached to, or even within the welfare world where they've had to cull and then staff have had to have kind of antivirals and that sort of thing, and just the cost of that as well is a big implication. We won't think about this in detail, but I think just disinfection routines, sometimes you just kind of grab a spray bottle, hope for the best.
You're not aware of, actually whether it's effective against the pathogen that you're concerned about, whether that pathogen is zoonotic or not, any of those, issues. PPE that's our favourite. I was a terrible nurse for not wanting to wear gloves cos it was easier to place a catheter without them.
More dexterity, and I have to say, doing the job that I do now and looking back, my biosecurity was not the best. Something that I have the great privilege of working on lots now is, standard operating procedures. We all have these, in our industry, and I think this is something we'd really encourage you if you are in a management role to.
Look at, to reconsider, is something that I'm really happy to help with in my role. I've done this with some of the big charities recently and it's been a real privilege to kind of look through them, to simplify them, and then to kind of support with training around them so that everyone's doing the same thing, and you've got that continuity of care. Why is it challenging in animal health environments?
I'm sure you can all think of a 100 more reasons that we could have put on this slide, but, these are some of the things that I think I come into contact with day after day. The efficacy requirements for disinfectants, I'd never thought about this before, so, within our industry it's actually harder to pass, a PT3 or an animal approved. Disinfectant through regs and through testing that is a human disinfectant, the things that they have to deal with from, you know, non-envelope viruses, protozoas, all sorts of different things, mycobacterias, etc.
It's really challenging, and I think working out what dilution you need, what contact time you need, whether your product even does the things that you need it to, whether you should be reaching for something else, not every practise is, as lucky as Gemma's practise to have someone that specialises in this and looks at this, as their job. I think the variety of species, I always say it's much harder to be a vet or a veterinary nurse than, to work with humans. Frankly, I would much rather work with animals, but, I think the number of different species that you have to work with that you have to understand and the different risks that they bring, and I think increasingly the number of animals coming in from abroad, etc.
The challenges are constantly changing. And developing. The unpredictability of each day, we all know that what's on the diary at the beginning of the day is not what's going to be on there at the end of the day, all the emergencies that get squeezed in.
Just that, yeah, you never ever know, do you? I think it's why I loved teaching and love veterinary so much that no two days are the same, but that does present its challenges, particularly within biosecurity. The amount of different areas you have to use it in.
And I think just, just being short of time, we're aware that everyone is, is so pressured and we often are quite time poor, I think, within our, within our industry. So those are some of the ones that I wanted to, just pick out and, and highlight as we kind of start going through here. I'm gonna hand it over to lovely Gemma to talk about some of the kind of mental health challenges that we've identified.
Thanks, Lizzie. So, Lizzy's already mentioned about the sort of biosecurity challenges, but actually. In general, as a frontline veterinary worker, whether you work on reception, a nurse, a vet, you will have mental health challenges forced to you.
And I'm sure everyone here is aware that the job comes with a quite a high emotional demand, no matter what element you do. There is direct exposure to trauma every day. You know, we have To deal with patients that are passing away, that are dying, you know, supporting owners through mourning, seeing animal cruelty is not an uncommon sight at the moment, unfortunately.
Financial difficulty, whether that's your own practise, whether that's the clients, having to support those clients through that to make those decisions. Infectious and zoonotic diseases, you know, we're seeing so many more patients coming in with disease that is potentially infectious and zoonotic to to our own staff and to our own members, to other members in, in their own family, you know, you might have clients that have small puppies at home, that have more than one puppy and It, it's a, a disease that can be spread and you're having to, you know, coax that owner and, and coach that owner through that situation. Expectations of others.
This is a really broad one, but there are so many avenues to this one. What do the general public view of your practise and you, you know, that's been a huge topic in the public eye at the moment is quite a negative view of vets, and actually we're trying really hard to work against that because that's not necessarily the case. The owner's expectations when they walk through the door of what they think you might be able to achieve and can you actually achieve that?
Is that realistic? Your practise, your managers, your stakeholders, what do they expect of your team? Is there a lot of pressure to perform?
Is there pressure to to hit targets? And then your own perception of your sort of pressure and expectations for your teams on yourself, you know, are you putting a lot of pressure on yourself and the members around you to, to perform to this really high level? Frequently having to deal with ethical dilemmas, you know, you might spend days looking after a patient that actually you don't feel you should be.
Is there a patient that you actually feel it's not fair to keep looking after this patient, but the owner really wants to give that one last try. Or on the flip side, you've looked after a patient for many days and you've become really attached to that patient and you want to keep going and the owner wants to keep going, but there's other team members around you that maybe don't feel the same and are putting pressure to consider that this isn't the right option. The feelings of personal needs being unimportant.
How many times have we stayed late after work because there's been an emergency surgery for a splenectomy or a caesarean that always comes through the door at 6:45 when you're just about to shut the door and turn the phones off. We've all stayed, and we've all done the extra mile. We've missed breaks, we've, we've missed lunches.
It can make you feel that actually, your personal needs aren't important and they're not relevant. And, you know, Not having the time to take care of yourself and look after yourself can actually be one of the biggest contributing factors to compassion fatigue. Time schedules.
I don't even know where to start. We all know how it gets. You can have a really lovely day planned out with 23 operations with your vets having consults booked beautifully with spaces in between.
And then the phones turn on at 8:03. And everything goes bonkers, or you have a member of staff that phones in sick. You suddenly become short-staffed and time strains, you know, biosecurity isn't necessarily the biggest thing on your list when you're trying to run around with 10 patients, a student that needs support, a manager that asks you to fill in your insurance forms, you know, while you're looking after a spay or a, a, a mass removal, you know, waking up patients.
It can become really pressurised to keep to time and get everything done alongside your day to day and then having pressures of, of having less staff or or extra items on. Mistakes, they happen. Everyone makes mistakes, especially when we're already tired or stressed or short staffed.
They really do create a lot of feelings of guilt and anxiety. They can cause a huge amount of mental burden on people. It doesn't necessarily even have to be the person that's made the mistake.
It can be the rest of the team. They might actually consider that it's their fault that you made the mistake, that they didn't support you enough. And then, The veterinary career careers as a whole, we tend to uphold ourselves to a quite a high standard.
Nobody wants to be seen to be making a mistake or to not be able to perform their job to their full ability. Actually having to stand forward and say, I'm really sorry I made a mistake can be a really big scary thing for all of us. I've had to do it.
We've all made mistakes, but it's really, it's hard to stand there and say, Do you know what, guys, I, I think I've messed up here. And that can cause a huge amount of mental health burden for people that either have seen a mistake happen or maybe have made it themselves. And then lastly is the effects, after effects of COVID.
We've all had to work through it. A lot of us have worked through full time, and some of us have had to be dealing with furlough. Both working through it and the after effects, I think are quite extreme.
I think Lizzie would agree, you know, we have owners that don't want to vaccinate anymore because they don't believe in the vaccinations after all of the publicity that they've had with COVID vaccines. And then you have the opposite of owners that are super keen to do everything because they're so terrified of disease and infections now. It's Lizzie, did you want to come in, sorry?
Yeah, no, you're fine. I think, and I think we've discussed, it spreads to staff and people as well. So there is that like pro vax, anti-vaxx within animals, and that's starting to have an impact, you know, on our animal populations.
I think, the figures are about like 40% of cats in the UK are now vaccinated yearly. But I think also some people have become very fearful. Of infection spread and disease, and some people have just become very kind of gung ho and you know, we've got through it.
And I think also just even like a residual anxiety, like as we were preparing for this, Jemma and I both said neither of us have really dealt with COVID. I think particularly the veterinary industry, the fact that we weren't key workers, there was a lot of pressure, you know, people couldn't send their kids to school, we weren't really desperately well looked after by, The world, let alone, within our, within our own industry. And I think a lot of the kind of nice bits of our job were taken away, and we were dealing with, you know, a lot of the trauma and euthanasia and death, but on a much, much higher scale, I know that had a real impact on me as well.
Being that person to have to say to an owner that they couldn't come into the practise when they're having to say goodbye is and As as a nurse specifically for me, you want to be that empathetic person to the owner and to the pets, and knowing that they can't be there, you take on that burden yourself and I think. We lived with that for years, and we did that repeatedly for years, and not having actually the support of anyone else when you go home, you know, a lot of people. I didn't understand that we had to do those things and we weren't classified as key workers, so that made a big contributing factor to not being classified in that way.
And you've, you've got such a big upheaval, and that's without actually, we've seen already the increase in mental health that COVID has actually had an effect on everyone globally. This isn't particularly just even from, from veterinary, and that's from people having to work from home, not having social interaction. We, we already know from Lizzie's previous slide.
Actually, in the workplace, there can be a lot of mental health challenges. Not having anywhere to release that or having someone to come home and have a hug with can be really, really challenging on top of everything else already. So Mental health challenges specific to biosecurity.
Anxiety and fear of daily exposure to pathogens, we never know what's coming through the door, and that can be whether we know it's an emergency or not, or actually, what is that patient carrying, you know, it could be coming in for. Hemorrhagic diarrhoea, and what we don't realise is it's carrying a bacteria on its skin that's actually zoonotic. It's not considered a problem because we don't know it's actually causing a problem for the patient.
You don't know what you're taking home. You know, you're looking after all these patients and for many people, they can either be immunocompromised or vulnerable themselves, or they might have those members in their own family at home, they might have caring responsibilities. Having that fear of, actually, am I safe to go home?
Do I need to take my uniform off at the door, in the porch, and then run through the house to try and get your, your uniform into the washing machine before your, your pets will come in and have a, a 20 minute cuddle with you as you walk through the door. That's actually quite a big thing, to have an anxiety of what am I taking home? Fatigue for people with care responsibilities at home, that's not necessarily just the elderly or people that have, care responsibilities with, with family members.
You know, that can also be with children and pets, babies, family members with disabilities. It can be a really, really, really heavy burden to carry when you're already incredibly tired from work. Trying to think about biosecurity of worrying about what you're taking home to those members of, of your family.
And then still be able to keep up the pace with trying to care for them. Fear of disease transmission, again, not just from. Patient to staff, but staff to staff, COVID for one, and then from patient to patient, you know, if you're watching things happening and thinking, oh gosh, actually, Have, have we done this correctly?
Have we protected that puppy that hasn't been vaccinated yet? Fear of noncompliance of team members, we've all been there where we've seen someone walk past it, touched the barrier nurse patient, definitely not wearing gloves or an apron, or they might have one glove on holding, holding the patient, they say it's fine, I'm not touching the rest of it. You know, we've all been there.
Do you feel comfortable to call them out? Can you say to them, actually, that's, that's not the protocol. That's not what we're supposed to be doing.
And if you can't, and you've seen it happen, that fear of, have they already done the damage? Have they already spread the disease? Have they already spread that bacteria?
What is the repercussions? Emotional toll of enforcing biosecurity. This is a big one for me because it's pretty much my job to do this daily, is enforcing the biosecurity protocols, you know, going around and being that person to say, Please, can you put some gloves on.
Please can you wash your hands? This patient needs to be a barrier nurse, and, and, you know, there's a reason behind that. Sometimes being the person to say, Please, can you put a pair of gloves on?
Or, please can you wash your hands? Please, can you remember to do this? Isn't always well received.
And it's scary, you know? Being a nurse, trying to walk through practise and say, Please, can everyone listen to me? I want you to do XYZ.
It's, it's scary. It's anxiety inducing for anyone, I think, let alone someone that, for me, myself, has anxiety. And being the person to do it over and over again can be really taxing to say the same thing over and over again and see people not do it.
It can be Quite heavy, and also you can get quite frustrated and then you feel that you're not doing that, that job properly and that you carry that home. Guilt or grief when protocols fail or lead to tough decisions. So, you know, when an outbreak does happen.
Do you sit there and think, was that me? Did I make a mistake? Did I see someone else make a mistake and not call it out?
Where have we slipped up? Is it the practise? Is it us?
Is it actually something that we couldn't have couldn't have stopped at all? You know, those questions go round and if, especially if the outbreak leads to. Quite a nasty.
Ending or having tough decisions of having to euthanize a patient or A ward or like Lizzie has said before, in, in shelters and things, you know, that can be huge for a charity or an organisation to have to say goodbye to such a large number of animals. It's incredibly taxing on the people that make that decision, and also for the people that may have felt that they have led to that decision having to happen. We thought it would be good while you're getting really depressed and reaching for another glass of wine to look at some of the positive impact of when biosecurity goes well on mental health.
So one of the real joys of my job is, kind of working with people and having been here for nearly 2 years now, and kind of seeing the positive impact of the training that we've done, the protocols that we've put in place, etc. And I think when everyone. Is on the same page, they know what they're doing.
They've got a clear kind of pathogen profile or they know what to do for, you know, they've got a parvo puppy. This is what we do for this. We've got a dog with Giardia, this is what we do for this cat flucalii, whatever it might be that it's a really clear outline of what to do.
I think that gives an increased sense of safety and control. And it also means that whether you are on the kind of gung ho side of I'm not worried, I've got a good immune system, or whether you're on the really anxious side of having vulnerable people who are vulnerable yourself, there is a safety and control in knowing that you're looking after each other from that aspect. One of my favourite things to this day, even when I'm just at the vets as a punter having my dogs vaccinated, is seeing.
Animals go home. I just love that moment. I'm a sucker.
I always get a bit weepy. But seeing that moment where, dogs, I think, particularly because they show their joy so outwardly, but that joy of them being reunited, with their families or, you know, seeing animals in rescue who've had a really tough time and really been let down by people being rehomed. Actually, if we've got poor biosecurity in place, that is gonna prolong that process.
So when it's done well, animals can recover more quickly, they can be rehomed more quickly. As we kind of touched on already, the confidence in the reduction of personal risk, so the reduction of, zoonosis between staff, from animal to people, from animal to animal, even simple things like your, your touch points, your door handles, your light switches, that get forgotten, your kennel latches, etc. Actually putting something in place that means that at the end of each day those are dealt with, I've seen from kind of poor swab results pre PSS visits and everyone really panicking to saying, well, have you considered doing this at the end of the day before you close up, or have you considered these points around your rescue centre?
A huge difference. It sounds very simple, but I think that is the joy of really good biosecurity is actually it's not complicated. It's not rocket science.
We're not teaching you to do a nucleation or something like that. It is, it is really, really simple once you've got it clear, and I would say kind of reach out for help with that at any point. And I think the reduced disease risk for animals.
So, one of my lovely customers who we kind of reached out, getting ready for this, webinar, they have just kind of had the worst season. I think it's a really tough time in in veterinary, and welfare for everybody at the moment, but they have this year put, had to euthanize more animals than they've ever would expect to do in a full year because of. Disease transmission, because of the number of, like pregnant mums coming in who haven't been vaccinated, part of it being kind of spread for one reason or another, and that does have a really big toll on those teams.
I'm thrilled that they're kind of reaching out for help and support, something really passionate, I'm really passionate about giving. And helping where that's kind of why we're, why we're doing this today, because both of us, I think, feel the same, but, when it's done well, that, that risk is reduced, and I think sometimes you don't see the positive benefits. It's very clear to see when things go wrong and when things are going right, everyone's just like, well, it's no problem, so, you know, we're fine, but it is, it is really important.
I thought it would be helpful. To look at a case study. So this is a real life story.
We've had permission, from the rescue to use this. So this, gorgeous boy is a dog called Charlie. He was, brought into a rescue, as a stray with a number of different issues, clinical issues.
Clearly he's been really let down, by people malnourished, etc. He was in rescue for 7 months. Dogs do get pretty down, I think, when they're there.
I saw it definitely in hospital and private practise when when animals are there for a prolonged period of time, they do become depressed. I think, they're much more sentient often than we give them credit for. He had a combination of clinical signs, lots of kind of Vague gastrointestinal issues.
Eventually after some testing, they realised that lovely Charlie had, GRDia. Now this team were doing everything right, they were cleaning, they were disinfecting, they had an animal approved disinfectant, but actually what they were using was not appropriate for protozoa. So they reached out to us at a conference and we said to them.
He needed to use chlorine tablets and basically Charlie was infecting himself or reinfecting himself through his kind of water bowls and food bowls and enrichment. And within a number of weeks, he had become the dog on the right. It's hard to believe that those two are the same dog and he has now joyfully been rehomed and is just living his best life and being loved as he always should have been.
So I think lessons learned from here, don't be afraid to ask for help. We're so proud, aren't we, and I think particularly within veterinary we do have a tendency to be real perfectionists, we don't want to. We don't like to necessarily ask for help, I think it's something we're gonna talk about more as we go through, but just fostering that openness between different practises, between welfare and veterinary, between first opinion and referral.
And I think also just consider your biosecurity protocols and opportunities for improvement. It's never gonna be perfect, but they can be really simplified. So you've got a clear, do you know what, we've tried this for, for 4 weeks, even if you haven't got a full clinical picture, which let's be honest, we often don't.
Even if you haven't got that, actually we've tried this for a while, it's not working. Maybe we need to bump out what we're doing in terms of biosecurity and try something different and just see. If that works.
It's just a little quote from them, they were so happy that after almost 7 months, he had basically was clear from Giardia and just transformed. So scenario two is unfortunately not a personal scenario that I've actually lived through myself, but I'm fairly certain that. Most people here would have been in a scenario either like this or something similar, .
Setting the scene for you, multiple feline patients in a ward or a kennel area. So, you know, we've all been in in practise where we've had more than one cat in, all in one area or one room, same for shelter and for rescue, you generally have all your cats together. They can be day patients, they could be long term inpatients, they may be, you know, have multiple different comorbidities, they don't necessarily all have the same problem.
And You know, the day it happens, your nursing team gets busy, maybe glove use isn't always up to scratch, maybe hand hygiene has slipped here and there. But generally speaking, everything's going relatively well. On day 8, our lovely patient Fluffy, please excuse my, my names.
I'm very sorry. I didn't want to select any particular people. On day 8, Fluffy starts to sneeze with nasal ocular discharge.
So you bring this to the vet's attention and say, you know, I'm slightly worried about this, what shall we do? And your vet advises you to commence isolation protocols. So you remove that patient from the ward, so they're placed into an isolation or into a segregated area on their own.
You clean down Fluffy's kennel, you clean all of the ward. You make sure that everyone is barrier nursing while they're doing this, and there's no possible contamination left. Everything that may have been touched whilst Bluffy was in the, The ward has been cleaned down as much as physically possible to make sure that you've got no problem of transmission.
And then 48 hours later, unfortunately, Snowy, again, sorry for my name, becomes really poorly and needs quite extensive care on top of her comorbidities that she's already got. So what happens now? Anxiety for the staff that have looked after Snowy is going to be seriously high.
Is it their fault that that patient is now really poorly? Is it their responsibility that Snowy is now really sick and may not pull through? The anxiety for the staff that are looking after Snowy now, so it might not even be the same people that were in when Snowy was originally poorly or when Snowy wasn't poorly and potentially became contaminated.
These staff have burden of, they need to make Snowy better because it might have been the hospital or the practise or the shelter that may have resulted in Snowy getting poorly in the first place. They can feel a sense of responsibility to make sure that Snowy gets better. Worrying concern for other patients.
So, you know, if you've got more patients that are in the ward that may still become sick, or patients that are coming in that you may know personally, you may have had a bond with, or actually just generally are patients under your care, you may be really concerned about are these patients going to get sick? Are we gonna have an even bigger outbreak problem? And then actually knowing what went wrong, you know, where did we slip up, how did this happen?
What happened, where did we miss the protocols, where did we miss the biosecurity that led to Snowy picking up this, this outbreak. It can be really, really stressful to not know where you went wrong so that we love, everyone loves to fix things, especially if you're in veterinary, that's why we're there, we, we're here to fix the animals and make them better. And not knowing how to fix it and not knowing how to make it better.
It's maddening, you know, it's like trying to find the lost sock, you just can't. It's, it's impossible. Can we go to the next slide with you?
So lessons learned, what do you do from here? For me, team meetings is a really big thing. So hopefully at this point, Snowy and Fluffy are fully recovered and have gone home, but what do you do going on from there?
Talk to your team. So having meetings to allow discussion around current events, past events, or even concerns for the future, having an open culture and able to discuss that and let people bring concerns forward, you know, have you noticed that hand hygiene's starting to slip? Bring it to your team meeting and say, actually, do you know what, I think maybe we might need just a team reminder to wash our hands a bit more frequently between patients.
Or actually, do you know what, glove use has been really struggling cos we haven't got any gloves around the examination table. We need to move where we've put the gloves. It can be really, really interesting to get an overview of everyone's kind of ideas on the problems.
That maybe you haven't thought of yourself, you've got a really big team. Is it just your ideas that count? No, you know, everyone's ideas can be really, really beneficial.
Incident investigations are really, really, really helpful. It's not a blame game, it's where did the team go wrong, where are the pitfalls, what can we do to do better next time. It's not calling someone out to say you did something wrong.
It's how do we make this better and prevent it from happening again. An open culture to share concerns. Be able to come forward and say, I'm worried about this.
You have to have security in your team, whether you're a manager or whether you're, you know, a newbie that's only walked in two days ago. You have to be able to come forward and say, actually I need to ask a question, or I'm worried about something that's going on with this patient, or I think I might have made a mistake or I didn't wash my hands, you know, be able to go forward and say. This is what I'm worried about.
Training on biosecurity protocols is where Lizzy is paramount to me, but you know, we all do it. This is what we do all the time when you're trying to train other nurses and other vets and PCAs, reception, you know, actually training your teams to have. Confidence in what they're doing, knowing that they understand the infection control protocols, they know what what they're doing and why.
Can actually give people a huge amount of confidence and security to know that they're being safe and they're keeping their patients safe as well, and it just limits that mental health burden or mental wellbeing effects from these sort of outbreaks. Building confidence, it's hard to sort of say, please can you put your gloves on, please can you wash your hands? It should be anyone.
Can say that to anyone in the practise, and I mean that in terms of, there can sometimes be a hierarchy within practises or, you know, shelters and hospitals and this is just widespread across everybody. But it shouldn't matter who you are, you should be able to go to someone and respectfully and politely, please don't call people out rudely. But you should be able to go to them and say, I'm really sorry, I have just noticed you've been touching fluffy.
Before you touch Snowy, could you just wash your hands? It shouldn't be an insult, it's just a reminder. And then finally is acceptance.
With all the will in the world, information, training, biosecurity protocols, you could have done everything to a T, and sometimes these things still happen despite you doing everything you can. And I think it's really important to be able to say to your team, you know what, we really We did do our best this time. And it might not be that there's a pitfall.
You might not have fallen down. It might not be evident as to what has actually happened. And having to accept that can sometimes be a bit of a, a bitter pill to swallow, that there isn't a reason that you can fix this time.
But that is still a possibility. And being able to say to your team, do you know what, we did our best this time. It should be enough.
We want to talk about some kind of strategies to mitigate mental health strain, particularly within veterinary, lots of these are transferable to. To any industry, I think, but we are, yeah, we're really keen that hopefully this webinar just opens a dialogue within teams, even if you go in and go, I listened to this webinar, it's really interesting. Maybe we can talk about like one thing that you took away within our next practise meeting or or whatever it might be.
So I'll let Gemma talk you through some of the kind of leadership actions that we've thought about. So I won't go through all of them because I think some of them are are fairly self-explanatory, but. One of the key ones for me is open communication and transparency.
We often will say, hey, how are you? And someone would say, yeah, I'm fine, and then you'll carry on walking through the corridor. But actually stopping to say to someone, actually, how are you really?
Making sure that when you do that you have the time to actually hear their answer, and if they're not having a good day, actually spend the time with them and give them that sort of support. But sometimes people actually need to be asked twice. You don't always wanna put your burden onto people that actually you're having a really bad day.
When someone sort of stops you and says actually you know, how are you really, you can feel that they care and they actually want to know and feel a lot easier in terms of opening up. Open culture is really, really key and have being aware of your staff limitations actually what is reasonably possible for your team. The management, whether you're, if you're in a managing position, actually being open about your feelings and being able to say, do you know what, today was a really tough day.
It makes you human, you know, they, your team don't always expect you to be the big hero that has all of the answers all of the time and is never phased by anything. You're not a robot, you know, you can say to people, you know what, I found that really tough today. How, how did you find it?
Are you OK? Caring is a strength, empathy is a strength, it isn't a weakness to say to someone, I found that really tough today. I'll hand over to to Visy to go.
Yeah, I think, Gemma and I are both wired quite similarly. We've we've discovered whilst preparing for this that we talked earlier about how actually you need all kinds of different people within your team, like if everyone was super sensitive, which is definitely the end of the scale that I sit at. You know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't work, but actually if you had none of that within your team, it's why, it's why we are such a great profession because I think there's so much richness in personality, and culture, you know, strengths and weaknesses, but.
But allowing that time, and often we are really pushed for time, and I think even with that, you know, how are you really doing if someone is really struggling and you haven't got time to sit down for half an hour, whatever it is, even just saying, do you know what, can we just, can we book in a coffee or maybe we can take lunch together or or something like that. And I think incorporating that into, into your culture, whether that is in welfare or within veterinary, wherever you might be kind of leads us on really nicely to the team support side of things. So I think.
Making sure that there are mental health resources available, pointing people towards counselling, good ways to kind of manage their stress. There's some brilliant resources there, that life Samaritan's mind, there are loads of really good kind of more specific ones for sort of bereavement, miscarriage, fertility issues, whatever it might be, and some there that we flagged specific for. For students, but I think even just having stuff before it gets to that point.
So knowing, knowing yourself, what is it that kind of fills up your cup actually, if you're at kind of 30% emotional capacity and someone says to you, oh, could you do cover an extra 4 hours because so and so's called in sick. If, if you haven't got the capacity to do that on that day, it is OK to say no. It's tricky when I know we're all kind of stretched at the moment, and I definitely was, I didn't ever want to kind of let anyone down.
I'm a natural people pleaser, but I think that was to my detriment actually and probably ended my nursing career, kind of sooner than it would have. I'm in a really privileged position now where I still get to use my qualification and I get to still work with animals and. I think probably make more of a difference than I would have if I'd stayed as a head nurse in an individual practise, but I think it's really important to know.
What fills you up. For me it was always going for like an open water swim in the summer. I could just get in that lake at 5:30 or, you know, sometimes 6 o'clock in the morning before I did a late shift or whatever, and that just sort of washed away all my worries and I kind of felt better or even, you know, talking to your family and just saying it's really tough at the work at the moment, we're really stretched.
Actually some evenings it'd be really good if you could just shove a pizza in the oven or put the kids to bed for me or I just need to sit here and not talk to anyone and watch, you know, some rubbish TV to just, you know, kind of get myself back together ready for the next day. And I think really importantly, regular debriefs and peer support groups. So I think making time within your practise meetings, within your, training, you know, if you've got a lunch and learn booked in, even if it's on.
Tablets or whatever it might be, actually putting in an extra 15 minutes or cancelling one consult on that day to just say, how's everyone doing? Anything you want to raise, you know, suggestion boxes, whatever it might be, and giving people the space, . To do things, so I think one thing that one of my practises, the first practise I worked at were brilliant for is, I'd been through a kind of considerable trauma and I finally got some counselling for that.
It was nothing to do with work, but they were really good in kind of adjusting. My shift pattern to allow me to do that for a number of months. And I know that I put a strain on, on the rest of the team, but it's something I will value forever and it's helped me to kind of move forward and I think manage other people that I work with more effectively.
So I'll just finish up by mentioning operational adjustments. So these are things that you don't have to be in management to put into place. You can bring them up to management, you can design them and then bring them to your practise, .
The same with welfare and with shelter as well. And streamlining biosecurity processes. So for me personally at the hospital here, we have a traffic light system, which means it's really, really clear, red is isolation, orange is barrierness, green is go ahead and go wild within reason.
But you know, once you diagnose something in a patient or even if you think it's suspected. People don't have that ambiguity of what do I do? It's very clear on the wall there for them, it's written out in red, orange and green, and you can't really go wrong.
And then resources for my management aren't there. So we've all been, unfortunately, and I'm sure most of you have been unfortunately, on night shifts. I say unfortunately for me, I'm not good with nights.
And 3 in the morning, you have a patient come in that you know has PAO and you just think, my brain doesn't function anymore. I'm too tired. I don't know what to do.
Not having someone there to be able to help you can be really scary, but actually if your protocols are available and your resources are available for when this patient comes in at this time, this is what to do, step by step really clearly, it just alleviates any of that stress and that sort of constant burden of feeling that you haven't done enough or you might have missed something completely eradicates it for that team member as much as you physically can. And then lastly is, don't be afraid to ask questions, you know, speak up, speak for yourself as well, you know, advocate for yourself, advocate for your team members, and for your patients as well. Please don't be afraid to sort of come forward and speak up.
Yeah. Future of wellbeing, I think we've kind of talked about lots of this, but as we're kind of wrapping up, we really want to encourage a culture of respect and collaboration between clinics, between private practise and welfare charities, between manufacturers and the people working on the front line. It's something I really love about my job is being able to go and deliver training to different places, putting protocols together.
I think just. Taking one thing away from this webinar, what is one change you can make to improve your own mental health. We want our workplaces to be as brilliant and as positive as possible, but ultimately, we are the ones kind of in charge of ourselves and we can't control the, the pattern of our brains or our hormones or kind of when things go wrong, there's lots of extraneous factors, but there are things that you can do to improve your own.
Kind of well-being and mental health. And then what one thing can you implement within your workplace or your sector to, to promote, well-being there. We've got some great resources here.
We've touched on some of these already. There are loads more out there, but I think these three will always point you to somewhere more specific if you need it. Gemma and I have both, used Vet Live ourself, and they are brilliant, whether you're having issues with management, whether you're having problems at home, it doesn't matter, they're there for anyone within the veterinary industry and never be embarrassed to call.
But you also don't have to be at a complete crisis point to reach out to them as well. And if anything, I would say just go for it and if you don't want to ring them, you can send an email, which I think is, is really, really helpful. Just a moment to pause.
If anyone's got any questions, there is a chat or question facility, to, to put anything in there. We are always happy, for you to reach out to us, at bio to if you've got questions kind of after this webinar that you suddenly think about that you can't, post through this platform, but, just please do. I think we've got a few minutes, so do you pop anything in there, and we hope that it kind of.
Cheers you up as much as this, this lovely pup is looking happy. Finally, thank you, thank you so much for being with us and for supporting this topic. We hope it has been, really useful for you.
We're really committed to our biotro to, training. There's a, a thing here for two hours, free CPD which goes into more kind of biosecurity. Detail on safe and effective use of of disinfectants and kind of what to use, where and when.
We also have a whole host of kind of pathogen profiles and things that we that we post on our LinkedIn. So, do you give the company a follow on there as well. And yeah, I hope it's been really useful for you.
Big thanks to Gemma as well for, for joining me in my little passion project. Guys, that was absolutely fantastic. So much to think about.
And if you wouldn't mind going back to the slide with the, the help on, I know Dawn has posted links in the Q&A box, or in the chat box as well, to VELife and Mind, and, also to yourselves to buy a troll. There's a link on there. Both to the company website as well as to your LinkedIn profile, just to make it a bit easier for people to follow you and to get that two hours of CPD.
But a huge big thank you to Biotrol for sponsoring tonight. We have got loads of comments coming in from people saying, thank you so much for putting this on. It's really appreciated.
We appreciate Biotrol bringing this topic to us. Thanks to the Presenters. It was absolutely fabulous.
And it just goes on and on and on. So guys, you've done a fantastic job. And you know what?
Creating awareness and Gemma, I think it was you that said, bringing it out in the open and starting to talk about it is really what we need. I, I come from a different generation that you do, and it was always just shut up and get on with it. And, we did.
But, yeah, we need to do something about support and suicide rates in the profession and that, and, opening up that discussion and, I loved your comment about how you're doing. Now, how are you really doing? That is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
So thank you for your time tonight. We really appreciate it. We do have one question for you.
The person didn't give their name, but they've gone ahead and asked, how do you manage the demands of high throughput in clinics where there is a need to observe minimum contact time for disinfectants for them to be fully effective. I think this came through, Lizzy, when you were talking about charities. So, so I think I mean, I think there are ways that you can do that.
So what I will say, I mean I can speak about our, our biotroll products cos that's what I know. But for example with parvovirus, you can use a lower dilution rate of like a 2% with a 30 minute contact time, but actually if you increase that to 10%, the contact time reduces down to 5 minutes. And parvo's quite tricky to kill.
So actually most of your bacteria and stuff is killed within 1 or 2 minutes using a higher dilution rate. So generally, For consult rooms, or if you have got a super crazy day, a really high turnover, actually there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to have a couple of minutes to let that, let that have an effect. And there is a residual residual effect with contact times as well.
But I'm happy, whoever that is, if you want to contact us, I will email you with much more detail. Yeah, I think that's a, that's a good point. If anybody's got any questions about tonight's webinar, remember that we have recorded it.
And it will be up on the website, the webinar vet website by tomorrow. No pressure on the technical guys. But, you can then go and listen again.
Or, as I said, Dawn has kindly put a lot of links in the chat box that you can follow as well. And, contact the folks at Byrol. They will help you.
And as Lizzy said, they can give you more details on high pressure situations for you with dilutions and changing and, and just little tricks as you've seen tonight, there are lots and lots of helpful things that have come out of the webinar. There you go, there you go. We have loads more comments coming through.
Brilliant ladies, such an eye-opener and how it can affect mental health. Thank you for your time. That came from Megan.
There are a lot more that are coming through with huge praise for you guys. So, I know, you were a bit nervous to start, but you've done a fantastic job and it all worked out well. So thank you for your time tonight and once again, thank you to Berrol for their sponsorship.
Lastly, I'd like to thank everybody for attending tonight. It really has been great having you with us, and I hope this will stimulate enough thought to open those conversations, and, to reach out to those 3 fantastic organisations up on the screen, and there are many more, but those 3 can point you in the right direction if they can't help you. So thank you for your time tonight and last but not least, to Dawn, my controller in the background.
As always, thank you for making things run smoothly. From myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's goodnight.
