Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet, welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. Really excited today to be chatting to Dan Tipney, Daniel Titney, who, I met for the first time about 10 years ago. Dan is an ex-airline pilot, we're gonna talk about that more also, the, one of the founders of Vet Led.

One of the, I think the real blessings of the last 20 years for the profession is people coming from the outside. As vets, I think we can sometimes think that we have all the answers, we can be quite conservative, we can gaze at our navels, so it's great to have people who come in from the outside and say, why are you doing it that way or is there a better way of doing things and, What I loved about Vet Led when we got together probably 10 years ago was the fact that, you know, there are mistakes that are made in in veterinary practise obviously and how well do we investigate those where of course the, the airline industry is probably the best industry profession, whatever you wanna call it in the world for. Looking at what went wrong because when something goes wrong it can be pretty catastrophic, I suppose we should start with Ryanair almost losing a er er one of their clients out of the window which was thank God he was pulled back in but you know, it's one of those things where small things going wrong, a piece of metal hitting the wrong place can be pretty catastrophic can't it?

Absolutely, yeah, and yeah, thanks for having me on, Anthony, and it's a, it's a pleasure to be back after, yeah, after nearly 10 years. Thank you and yeah absolutely, yeah, there's, I think there is some really fascinating sort of cross-industry learning, from aviation and yeah, that was a lot of what led to a starting vet led, really thinking a bit about the work that I've done within the, the human factors side of, of training, the, the non-technical areas of training that I was involved in, in with the, the airlines I worked in. You know, a lot of that, of course, yeah, is, is related to flight safety, but a lot of it comes down to human beings, how we function and understanding of how we function, how we interact, how we learn and the impact that has on flight safety, and yeah, a lot of that over the last 25 years has been found to be very relevant to patient safety in, in healthcare.

And what we've really sought to do over the last 10 years at VTL is. Is figure out what it is that we can learn, both from from aviation, from healthcare, but other areas such as sport and coaching and, and psychology and all these different areas and, and, and the the relevance that has on on veterinary practise. And so a lot of our work initially I think was based around non-technical skills, patient safety, how that links to quality improvement, the performance of teams, the culture of teams, the wellbeing of teams at a, at a very human level.

And over the years we've. I suppose branched out more and more into all sorts of different non-clinical areas of support and training and and yeah we'll perhaps get a chance to talk more about where that's led to beyond beyond the sort of patient safety areas alone and into into sustainability and and the relevance of climate science and climate change and and how it all pieces together. So yeah, it's been a really interesting journey and it's great to be back.

I think it's also very realistic, isn't it, because we can tie all these things together, you know, sustainability if you. Go out and spend time in nature, surprise surprise, your mental health improves, you know, culturally when you go into practise you're less likely to be snapping at people, you know all of these things come together and then to have a culture, you know, you've got a practise which says actually you know sustainability is important, the wellbeing of the team is important, we want to develop the team or, we just kind of work and kind of see how it goes and probably there'll be some sort of culture, it probably won't be the culture, You know I as the owner of the practise want, it'll be the, you know, it'll be the lowest common denominator culture so all of these things are, one of my worries across a lot of areas is when we go very siloed and we talk about a climate crisis where I don't think we have a climate crisis, we have an environmental crisis, cos it's not just about temperatures and and . Carbon, it's about catastrophic loss of biodiversity, you know, plastic, set to double in production in the next 20 years, these are the sort of things that we also need to change, don't we?

Yeah, absolutely, and I, I think that's why I've become so interested in in all of this. It's perhaps not a coincidence that I'm fascinated in human factors and understanding the cognitive function of people, our emotional response to things, how that relates to systems, you know, systems, whether that be a a veterinary practise system or global political systems because it's all about interactions of people and the and the systems in which they work and. And so it's perhaps no coincidence that I'm very drawn to, to that, whether it's the, the way it relates to flight safety, patient safety, and ultimately, yeah, the human impact on our natural world.

And so I didn't realise actually 10 years ago when we started Vet led with my interest in, in human factors that, that, that I would end up being so passionate about environmental issues, and in fact that's what led me to, to stop flying altogether, about 6.5 years ago and. Yeah, it's like the ultimate complex system.

I, I don't think it's any coincidence that a lot of people who I've met who are very engaged within human factors and patient safety in human and veterinary healthcare are also often very interested in environmental or climate issues as well, because once you start to, to take a sort of systems approach to things, as you said, you, you realise that nothing's in silo. Nothing happens because of 11 issue, and actually a lot of these things come back to a lot of the same challenges that we, we experience as, as people within, within the systems we operate. So I know that's sort of quite vague and touches upon a lot of stuff, but hopefully sets the scene for things that we can talk about because I do think there's a real, a common link between all of it.

And with all the environmental sustainability, there's also that social justice because we saw, you know, in the last week or two that, the terrible disaster in Nepal and Tibet, and it was really interesting 10 years ago also, or 11 years ago, Pope Francis wrote his encyclical Loud Outer Sea, which was very much around environmental issues and he said, you know, those people who are interested in the environment. It has to be connected with the cry of the poor because. We see immigrants now, you know, coming to the country illegally, and we have the slogans to stop the boats, but we have to ask the question why are those boats coming and you know.

When we start to reduce the amount of aid that we give to countries that are in distress, there is no surprise that people want to come to a place where they can support themselves and their families better. It's a really, yeah, it's, it's such a good point and social justice perhaps. Is the the common thread between a lot, a lot of the things that, that, that I really care about and I think there's a fascinating link between a few of the things you've mentioned and and stuff we've already talked about.

So I, I agree with you, what's going on in, in, you know, in Nepal for example right now is, is, is utterly, you know, awful and a lot of people have, have lost their lives. And, and whilst we can't absolutely say. Because of burning that bit of fuel, that emergency has arisen, we know that events like that are far more likely and much more likely to be more serious and more frequent as a result of, of what we've done to the world.

And rather than, as you, as you said, like when we start thinking about migration of people rather than looking at who's doing what, which is the people who are migrating it, the question is not who's doing what, the question is why. And that is the same mindset that we apply to patient safety and learning. If a patient receives the wrong medication.

It's not who did what. I mean, you can ask who did what, but the practise that continually just asks who did what and seeks blame as a primary response will not be the one that learns, will not be the one that supports the wellbeing of the team, and will not be the one that ultimately has a higher functioning, high performing culture. The one that is curious about why, why did it make sense to, to the people who were involved in that, that event?

Why did what they do make sense to them at the time, and they. The the practises who have got systems in place to support that mindset, that approach, will inevitably be the ones that learn more and perform better. And it's the same with, as you say, with, with, with migration, the question isn't who's doing what, the question is why are they doing it and, and what does that tell us?

Now of course when it comes to the, the global issues we're talking about, that is even more complicated, even though, you know, understanding complex systems like veterinary practise and why medication errors occur, that's complex. But understanding the contributing factors, which is the term we use rather than simple sort of root causes, what are the various, the multiple contributing factors towards that medication event. What are the multiple contributing factors to these people feeling the way they do so strongly that they are leaving their homes and it comes back to the same social justice piece and the thing that I deeply care about is, is that I suppose is, is, is compassion and kindness and so I think the reason that one of the things we've done a lot of of that led is around the way people treat each other.

So civility saves lives, probably our biggest campaign, the area we've done the most work in. Why do I care about that so much because for me, treating each other. Compassionately and responding compassionately if someone does something that we didn't appreciate, I think is just fundamental to our experience of the way we work and exist.

And it's the same reason that I care about climate and it's the same reason that actually I stopped flying. So it's fascinating how it all pieces together. And somebody said, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up, be kind, you know, and I think that's so important is that treat others as you would like to be treated would solve a lot of problems, wouldn't it?

I really think it would and. And sometimes the way that we would like to be treated may not be the same way that they would like to be treated. And if we have, and, and again I like the word and I've, I've really tried to stop wherever I can using the word but because I think there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a real sort of lack of nuance or or when I say lack, and that's not directed at anyone, I do think, I think that the, the way that perhaps the media is functioning in the, the, the political landscape is, is starving us of nuance.

So rather than the word but I'm trying to use the word and you know, and as well as recognising that. We treat people as we want to be treated. We also, and recognising that that may not be how they want to be treated.

So having that curiosity that says that even if, if I behaved in a way that I thought would, was, was kind and compassionate because behaviour is so subjective and so, you know, the perception of behaviour is really what matters, not the behaviour itself. If, if, if we can be curious as to why that person didn't appreciate what I did even though I thought it was a nice, a nice inverted commas way to behave. Then that actually takes courage because that, that requires us to be willing to ask ourselves to be, to be open to the fact that what we did didn't land well.

In the same way that with environmental issues, we've got to be open to the fact that we are all contributing towards a system which is harming the world. The vast majority of people that live in. You know, in the UK and in the global north.

We'll be doing things that are causing harm. And to acknowledge that takes courage because. There's a fear that if we go there then it somehow makes us a bad person and that leads to shame and that means that we're, that we are having to stop everything that we're doing in our, in our lives and, and it's like we don't go there, there's a, there's a form of like a bias, like a, a, like a cognitive bias that, that says don't, don't go there.

And actually if we do go there, we've got a much better opportunity to be a part of the, the solution in the same way that if we're willing to acknowledge that that thing I did to that person actually upset them. And I'm wondering why, and I'm I'm I'm, I'm genuinely interested to understand more about that. I think that's where you know in our team and I'm sure you've done similar we we did a lot of psychometric testing and so to make it very kind of obvious an extrovert and an introvert you would treat an extrovert in a different way to an introvert, somebody who likes to plan a lot, you know, if you run into a meeting and don't respect them by, you know, having an agenda or whatever then you know there are those things, so it's about understanding.

You know the personality of people as well, isn't it, and then we can hopefully, and we'll never get it right all the time, but I think also if we can, you know, apologise, if we can ask for forgiveness, if we can move on, you know, forgive each other is really important because this is where wars start over really, you know, small things and then they escalate. So it's a, it's a great point and I think culturally, because we spend so much time in work, I always say we, You know, and I probably don't get it, I know I don't get it right all the time, but. We spend so much time in work, it should be fun, or at least it shouldn't be the sort of thing that you have a pain in your stomach in the morning, getting up knowing you've got to go through 8 hours of hell, you know, to be able to do the basic things that that keep the house running.

Yeah, no, you're totally, totally right, and yeah, I think, I think that curiosity that you described is really important, you know, and and and there's a, there's a sort of messy reality that you described there, which is that. We can, we can do all the things that give us the best. I often think about likelihood, you know, what are the, what are the things that we can do that will give us the best chance of.

And then you can fill in the blank, and that might be going back to the example earlier, the best chance of successfully administering medications correctly without, you know, without error. It's not about saying how do we prevent error or how do we, you know, it's about how, what are the things we do that give us the best chance of having the outcome we want and the lowest chance of having the outcome we don't want, and the same is true with interaction. So, yeah, understanding our other members of our team through whether it's psychometric testing, whether it's whether it's through having.

Systems in place that that support teams to give feedback to each other more effectively and, and to receive it more effectively, those are all things that increase the chance that interactions are going to go well and reduce the chance they won't, but the messy reality is that sometimes they still won't. And sometimes we can do everything, as you say, with the best intention, and we can think we can understand someone and it still just doesn't land well and then. The opportunity is to use that as a chance to understand each other better, rather than.

And I think we, I think that takes some relearning because I think it's, we're still, again, we're sort of coming back to the nuance, it's, it's still I think generally a sort of black and white, right and wrong, you know, certainly within the work we do in civility, one of the things we've tried to really do is move away from this concept that something is either civil or uncivil. Something is either rude or it's not rude. You know, we're talking about something like that as categorical.

You know, so I've really tried to move away from this concept that when someone is in civil. Because that's not really true, that there's no such thing. There is the perception of it.

This person can have perceived that behaviour as incivil, but there's no such thing as fundamentally incivil behaviour because. If we have a situation where one person may perceive it as incivil or rude and one person may not, then is, is there such a thing as in in civil behaviour? There is, there is only really such a thing as the perception of it.

And that doesn't mean that that the person who perceives it is incivil, you know, their, their experience isn't valid, it absolutely is. And it absolutely matters. It just means that if we make it sound like it's either one thing or the other, then we're missing the fact that actually it's just a complex interaction of two people.

I think sometimes though there is absolutely, you know I was speaking to a young vet and she'd done her practise and and somebody had taken a dislike to her and would slam the door in her face. I mean that's uncivil are not right and obviously there's something going on in that person. Yeah, what are the what are the things that we would, I often say like what are the things where if you did have, I don't know if you had a, if you had 1000 people watching something and it's the sort of thing that 999 of them would all be absolutely clear that that, that was and that, that, that's actually quite rare though.

I think that's the thing we recognise when we talk about human behaviour is it's actually quite rare that that things happen where there is likely to be that, you know, and, and there are some things that also don't really come in the same category, some things that are more. Like that aren't really subjective at all. They're, they, these are things like assault or if someone is harassing someone on the grounds of prejudice because of race or gender or beliefs, those things either happen or they don't, and they generally, they, they shouldn't happen.

If someone throws something at someone in the middle of surgery, that just shouldn't happen. And so that's not really subjective. In front of people, you know, that so I there's very obvious ones, isn't there?

Yeah, I think it's just acknowledging that the vast majority though is subjective and so having recognising that complexity, that nuance and being open to, to that for me is more helpful than than trying to be categorical about something. And the same I think is true when we're talking about the broader issues of, you know, like cos some people might say well. You know, well, let's use my example.

I, you know, I stopped flying because I became uncomfortable with the environmental impact of flying. Does that, does that mean that I think that anyone who sets foot on a plane is, is bad and shouldn't? No, absolutely not.

It just means that I was uncomfortable with that. And it's a very complex issue that no one's gonna come up with an absolute equation for what's right and what's wrong and how we solve it. It just means that in isolation, I felt uncomfortable with the impact of it and so therefore I decided to stop.

In the same way that if someone didn't feel comfortable the way someone spoke to them, it's much more helpful to say, I felt, you know, after we spoke, I felt upset rather than saying. You were rude. At me, yeah.

And it's much more helpful for me to say I stopped flying because I felt uncomfortable with the impact of aviation rather than you shouldn't fly. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And so this ownership and this of, of what we do and why I think is often a more constructive way of communicating and I think that's again another interesting common thread, isn't it, between the two issues.

I'd like to go back to the flying thing because. Obviously you were an airline pilot, so you were flying quite a lot of miles every week, and when we first met I think you were still an airline pilot, but you were very much talking about the, you know, we can learn so much from mistakes if we're open to them and and the airline industry has been great at that. I, I remember the whole spate of accidents that the South Korean Airlines had and that was very much all around culture of he's the senior pilot, I cannot disagree with him even if he's doing something really stupid.

So obviously we can learn so much from that. But then it it kind of. When when did that kind of change happen that you were starting to go hm, either did vet led become kind of more full-time, so you obviously left and then did more of the vet led.

What was the sort of turning point that you went, hm. It's a really good question. I mean, I started flying, I, I wanted to fly since I was, about 6 years old.

My grandfather was a in fact this, this model above, this is the, the Havilland Comet, which is the first kind of jet, jet airliner from the 1950s. He flew in the, the Second World War, and he then flew, commercially, he flew that in, in the, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and my dad was a pilot as well, so I've always wanted to fly. And yeah, I'd been flying for a few, for, for a few years when we first met and yeah, I loved it.

And it wasn't even on my radar, honestly. I mean, all the things we're talking about were very much things I've always cared about, the sort of, the sort of social justice piece and what's drawn me to it, but, but at that point I hadn't joined the dots. And that's the way I think about it.

It's just that for me, for whatever reason, I hadn't joined the dots. And we started vet led about 10 years ago because I was involved in delivering human factors training within one of the airlines I work for. Rue, my now wife, a vet, who, you know, in the, in the, in when we were first, when we first knew each other.

We were talking a lot about the work I was doing in the airlines, the application of human factors in healthcare. My brother actually runs a company called Medled and we started Vet led and Medled at similar times. He delivers human factors training in, in, in healthcare.

And really the, the question when we started chatting about this about 12 years ago was, you know, what's going on in the veterinary space to apply this, and the answer at that point was, was really very little. And so we, we started Vet led with the view to just bring as much as we could, but. I was still flying full-time, Roo actually had another, another career in in in.

In other areas, and we started Vet led to, to, to just bring that message. We ran campaigns. The very first campaign we ran was called the Holt Campaign, which I think we actually did a podcast on about 9 years ago.

The HALT stands for hungry, thirsty, angry, anxious, late, lonely and tired, and it's really an an awareness piece just around the physiological and emotional factors that can affect our performance and our wellbeing, and we were just really trying to get that as a, as a something that people thought about and spoke about. If you don't get a lunchtime and you're not allowed to urinate during your eight hour shift, then there will be physiological effects about that. Yeah, exactly, and everyone knows that, but yet we knew it happened a lot, and so we also knew that there were plenty of examples, the work from, from Doctor Michael Farquhar, who is a, a great, someone who we, who from within healthcare who we collaborated with, was pretty clear that actually, although people know that when you actually have a mechanism for talking about it, stuff can change, and he noticed this within the, the hospitals he worked in.

So we really wanted to build it, and that was the very first thing we did. We ran a campaign. Really just to get that out there, not really knowing where it would all go.

And Vet-led built in over the years, and I then flew part-time for a while, you know, moved to flying part-time because I had the opportunity to do more of what we were doing at Vet-led. And I don't know exactly, I can't pinpoint the moment. I don't think it's a coincidence that it was around about when we found, found out that we were gonna become parents.

I, I, you know, so now my life, I'm not thinking about the next 50 years, I'm thinking about the next, you know, 90, 100 years. I don't think that's a coincidence. I also don't think it's a coincidence that my involvement in human factors, and the more I understood about it, the, the more I started to think about other things.

And I'll, I'll give you an example. One of the things we talk about a lot in, in human factors training is, is decision making. And the skills and the cognitive processes around decision making, and within that, one of the things we talk about a lot is cognitive bias.

And you know, the way I think of cognitive biases is they're like these sort of subconscious nudges that are happening at, they're always happening. Psychologists believe there's anywhere up to 120 different types of cognitive bias that are influencing our decision making. And there's about 10 or 11 that are particularly well researched within healthcare and within veterinary and aviation that, that are really important to know about because of how they could impact our ability to make safe decisions.

And one of them is known as, probably the best known as confirmation bias. Our brain's tendency to seek information to confirm what we we already believe. Or what we want to believe and to disregard all the rest, and, and I was spending several workshops a month delivering training to airline pilots and cabin crew members and engineers on topics around decision making and cognitive bias.

And I don't know, at some point, something happened where someone shared a piece of information with me about climate change, about the impact of burning fossil fuels and aviation. And I dismissed it. I basically said to them, well, yeah, but you know, aviation only contributes about 2.5% of global CO2 emissions and there's no viable alternative to, you know, to getting a long way, so we shouldn't really be talking about aviation.

And for some reason, having said it, I reflected on it, and I, and I realised that I'd done exactly that thing. I had done that thing where I had looked for the information to confirm what I wanted to believe and I I, I had disregarded all the, all the rest. And there's a fascinating example of an aircraft that ran out of fuel once over the Atlantic.

It was an Air Transat aircraft that was flying from Toronto to Lisbon in the 1990s, and they had all these indications that they might have a fuel leak. And the captain was saying this can't be true, not on this, this, this was an Airbus A330, which at the time was a very new modern, you know, computerised aircraft, and he kept saying it must be the computers, we can't be, we can't be running out of fuel. It can't be true.

So constantly he was asking the co-pilot to double check the figures, double check the figures, it must be wrong, it must be wrong. Looking for all the reasons to confirm why they don't have a fuel leak, because having a fuel leak is very inconvenient. And the first time the captain believed they might have a fuel leak was when one of the engines stopped.

Shortly later, the second engine stopped, and they just happened to be within gliding range of the Azores. I remember them gliding into the into the runway, didn't they? But the, the point really is that that that captain was looking for all the reasons to confirm why they didn't have a fuel leak.

And it became a huge learning point, and it was a case study that we used loads within our human factors training for, for pilots. So that, and in fact it happened to me once, we had indication that we might have a fuel leak. And I remember thinking, oh, confirmation bias.

I said to the other pilot, let's make sure that we look for all the reasons why we might have a fuel leak, not for all the reasons why we might not. And we, we did confirm that we didn't, but the, the point really is that for some reason I, I am, I, I, that example really stuck with me and I realised that I was doing exactly the same thing with the information that was being presented to me about climate change. And I thought, OK, well, what would happen if I looked through a different lens?

What would happen if I looked through a lens that wasn't being shaped by someone who has always wanted to fly, who is enjoying flying as an airline pilot, who is financially being rewarded for flying as an airline pilot. Imagine I was looking through a lens that took all that away and just was presented with the science. A consensus, a global consensus, a really strong consensus of science.

What would I think then? And I think combined with knowing I was kind of become a parent. And things that I, other things I cared about in the world.

Some dots just started to join and over a period of about a year I kind of learnt more and I became more uncomfortable with the trajectory of the airline industry, industry and and what they were proposing was, was, was going to. Mean that the impact of flying was gonna be essentially reduced to a. At a level that was within the limits that we, that we need to have a livable future and I didn't, it didn't sit right, and I, my decision was to stop in 2020, I got the option for voluntary redundancy during COVID.

And I didn't stop because I thought that's going to necessarily reduce the impact of flying, it just felt right for me. I didn't feel comfortable with it, and that's the point is that that was just the right decision for me, that not actually because it was a suggestion that we shouldn't do it. And that's, that in itself, interestingly, sharing that experience for some people, that sometimes actually lands and resonates as a way of planting a seed about.

You know, perhaps what they're thinking rather than telling them what they should think. And so yeah, I think it pieces together a lot of what we've been talking about, human factors, decision making. Why that's relevant for patient safety and decision making in veterinary teams, but also why it was a big part for me in terms of joining the dots between something that I'd always known about but had framed in a very different way.

It it's interesting cos you know I travel quite a lot with work and we've had our green discussion forum for the last couple of years in the south of France and I've, you know, managed to take, take the train. Obviously it still has an impact but it's less than flying. But I obviously do fly, I go over to VMX, each year.

The last year I was invited by Royal Canon to go to Australia to speak about sustainability. I know it sounds a bit paradoxical to the big groups, and I, I think for me, you know, the webinar that when we set it up, there was no online space, you know, in 2010 I went, To the BSAVA conference and I walked around the stands and said, you should be doing webinars and everybody said, what's a webinar, so that was kind of, you know, where we were in 2010, and I very quickly realised that we were saving thousands of miles, you know, off the roads, the airlines, you know, the airways and so on, and then we had COVID which obviously then just further sort of inflated that COVID, Past, people are travelling more, but at least we've started, you know to do these sort of things where we're meeting virtually, although, you know, To not make it too simplistic, then you've got data centres having to be created for all of the digital traffic, so, I think it's really interesting, one of the reasons that I set up the Veterinary Greens discussion forum, and one of the things I'm fascinated about, is I've kind of to a degree given up on politics, because it's so binary, you know, it's right and left. It's Conservative and reform and Labour, it's, you know, whatever parties.

And I think we have to get better at listening to each other and realising that you know, most things aren't black and white, that actually Conservatives can come up with really good ideas as can Labour. The more that we can collaborate rather than have bun fights in parliament er or in our, you know, in our own lives. So I've become a lot more fascinated, you know, Brexit to me was just a really stupid thing to do.

But it's then really important to listen to people who have voted Brexit and to try and understand why that's happened, I think that kind of fits in with your confirmation bias that if you can be open to other ideologies and other ideas and thoughts. It probably helps you to become, and you know I think in the end as you get a bit older, as a young person I was probably quite black and white, as an older person, you know, as you can see quite grey, you know there's more nuance in in situations, there's very rarely a right and a wrong answer. Yeah, and, and actually a lot of what you said that I, yeah, ties in with, with something else that I've become really interested in the last few years and actually has formed quite a lot of the work we've done it, it, it followed on from the Civility saves lives work we did and that's an area of which is known as nonviolent communication.

And it, it, it feeds into what you were talking about there really, really well. It's a, I suppose it's a, it's a practise, but it's also a framework for how we communicate based upon a real awareness of, of feelings and needs, and the needs is the really important one there, that we all share the same universal needs as a, as a human being. And if we can move away from the, the simplistic, you know, right, wrong, you know, what you think your, your interpretation of, of, let's say yeah, Brexit for example is wrong and mine is right.

And actually we can deeply listen to if someone did vote a certain way or make a decision a certain way or supports a politician, whatever it might be. If we can really understand what need that's meeting, what matters to them and actually recognise that we probably care about the, almost certainly care about the same things, we have the same needs, we're maybe meeting them in different ways. Then as soon as you can connect with someone else like that, it, it makes it so much easier to navigate the next bit.

So as it happens, I have become more engaged in, in politics because I do, you know, I think there is a place for it and I, and I agree with, with, with what you're saying that that the polarisation that is really not, not helpful and so when I'm. In any, any work I've I've actually been involved in political campaigning and one of the things I've, I've done is, is, is door knocking. You knock on someone's door and, and, and they, they share their view on, you know, whatever it is that you're talking about.

And instead of just saying, well, you're wrong, what you, what you can, what I've, what I've tried to do is just say, OK, that, that's really interesting, could you tell me more? And they tell you more and you ask them maybe another question, say, oh, and, and you might say something like, it sounds to me like what's really important to you is. So you're not necessarily talking about their opinion, you're talking about the thing that.

Seems to matter and then you might get it wrong, but if you're genuinely trying to connect and you're genuinely trying to understand, then they'll tell you if you're wrong, they'll go, well, it's not so much that, it's this, and you might go, oh, OK, I see it's this and, and does that matter to you because. And you ask enough questions and you get to a point where you go, huh, do you know what? I think we care about the same things.

I think we have a different interpretation of, of perhaps what's going on, but I really appreciate you sharing that. And that's it because I've now connected with that person even though you know I don't need to leave it with, you know, you're right, I'm right or you're wrong or. But if we can connect to people as human beings, and actually the same is true, the reason that we've brought the, the sort of concept or the, the framework, the practise of nonviolent communication into veterinary teams is cos the same process can be used for navigating conflict.

If someone does something that really annoys you, which happens to everyone in every team. Rather than, you know, what the hell are you doing, why did you do that, if you do that again, then I'll do this. The, the question might be, oh, I, I, I, when I, you know, we, we base it on observations, feelings, needs and requests.

We might say, hey, when I came in this morning, I noticed that the kit we talked about last night wasn't, wasn't ready. I'm feeling quite frustrated now because it's really important you know, I might then say it's, it's really the need might be, it's really important to me that, that we, that we, you know, that we run on time and could we please, the request might be, could we, could we please, you know, can you please help me to understand more about what happened and, and, and so we're. We're, we're framing our conversations as human beings based upon the feelings and particularly the needs.

So if we can connect with people in terms of like what what matters to you, you're trying to understand what matters, then we've got a far better chance of, of navigating that and actually getting to a point where there's a lot of common ground. And I think the same is true when it comes to talking about climate. Change and environmental issues and political issues and navigating conflict in veterinary teams and I, but again there's a, this is, I, I love the fact that so many of the things we're talking to come back to some common threads where.

The different things that we do at Vetled kind of come together, whether it's, you know, the environmental ones or the the team ones, and they all link back to these same principles. I'd love to perhaps finish off with when I was at COP 26, unlike our Prime Minister at the time, I didn't take a private jet, you'll be pleased to hear, I, I took the train from Liverpool to Glasgow, and, and I came across a game called Climate Fresk, played that, enjoyed playing it, it was, you know, a learning experience as, as much as I think I know quite a bit about this area. It's great to be open and to learn more.

I know that you're actually gonna start er doing more work with Climate Pres around the country, tell us a little bit about how that's gonna work out over the last, over the next er few months. Yeah, thank you, and again, it feels like a really interesting alignment to the work that we have done before and the stuff that I'm really interested in as well. And, and yeah, I suppose the, the, the, the link to the, the environmental stuff that we've been talking about.

So Climate Fresk is it's a tool, it's a workshop that's been developed over a number of years. It's actually evolved and, and it started in France. It was a, a, a, a, a lecturer and i and engineer who was teaching people, students at a university in France about climate science.

Developed an exercise using that eventually ended up with 42 cards that sort of pieces together the drivers and the mechanisms of climate science. So that starting right from the things that we do as human beings through to what impact that has through to the ultimate consequences. And you build this collage and it's done very interactively, so as a group of usually 5 to 7.

And you'll do it in stages and you'll build it and then the facilitators will come and sort of help, help sort of understand bits and you'll build a bit more. And you end up with this collage that you end up then, it's all done on a piece of, on a piece of paper that you can draw on, so people then draw on it and add words and add the feedback mechanisms and arrows and it's done over a 2 metre table. So by the end you've got this collage and so the word fresk literally coming from a sort of a French translation of this, this idea that you've created a, a, a a fresque, you know, the, the, and it's, it's that sort of, it's, it's an educational piece to, to help.

Understand the science, it's all based, all the information in the Climate Fres workshop is, is based around the IPCC, so the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And they're a UN body, they've been around since 1988. And what's fascinating about the IPCC is that it's a volun, it's a voluntary group.

They are all individuals from different academic institutions all around the world and they volunteer their time to sort of aggregate the data. Of climate science because it's so vast and they piece it together in these reports and all the the cards are based upon the information from those reports. So it's the chance to learn about the science, but then really importantly, it's split into three parts.

The first part is using the cards to, to, to, to understand that that science. Which even people, as you say, like yourself, and the first time I did it, I thought I understood a lot and actually there was a lot I realised I didn't understand when I did it, did it for the first time. The middle part is all kind of about reflection, so as a human being, you get to, it's quite heavy.

You know, you, you think about the ultimate consequences of climate change, global conflict, famine, and the impact on human health, just as a few examples. It's really heavy and you kind of, there's a, there's a, there's a period of allowing people to process that and actually sharing what's come up for them as a human being at an emotional level as much as everyone's comfortable with. Sitting with that before then moving into sort of an action process and that final hour or so depends upon who you're working with, what the objectives are, but you do something for the last hour that means that you go away with a sense of these are things that we can do, no one individually can solve this.

There are no just magic solutions. And yet there are things that we can all do that can help towards mitigation, which is reducing how much fuel we burn and, you know, how bad it gets. And adaptation, which is adapting to the reality that we live in a different world now where.

Yeah, in the UK the summers are gonna be hotter and drier and the, and they're gonna, when we have rain, it's gonna be heavier and growing food's gonna be harder, so we need to adapt to all that. And so it gives, so we always, the, the last part of the workshop is about action and we can adapt that depending on who we're with. And yeah, we, we as vet sorry as vet led are now delivering climate freshs workshops to veterinary teams and we'll base that, that last part on whatever, whatever is right for that particular team and so.

Something I really enjoy because it does seem to bring together a lot of all the things we've talked about. So yeah, that's, that's that, thank you, yeah, thanks, I'm glad you got the chance to do it, and I think everyone's experience of Climate Frisk is, is quite different depending on the, the context of, of, you know, where you do it and who you do it with, and all those things, but, yeah, I, I've certainly found it to be a really, really engaging, tool. Yeah, it's a very good educational tool and I think .

We need to understand more about climate, I think it's really important also we have our CBS on er psychiatrist, a webinar that we did all around so nostalgia, which is this, you know, environmental angst. I, I, I, I'm still kind of wanting to be a person who says, you know, we can turn the ship around, so I think it's really important, you know, hope isn't a noun, it's, it's a verb, it's, you know, how do we make up, how do we build hope. It has to be through action so that the action piece at the end is massive.

If we are, you know, we're with the Veterinary Green Discussion forum, we've rewilded 40 hectares of meadow. You know that's not a huge amount, but it's much better to light a candle than curse the darkness, so doing something is better than doing nothing and I think if enough people do that and you know we also call to account those people who, you know, are polluting and so on, then hopefully we can . We can all make the world a better place.

Yeah, I totally agree, action leading to hope rather than, you know, I think the word hope sometimes is misused that it just becomes this blind, meaningless, let's just hope for the best and, and actually, yeah, that can leave people feeling quite frustrated and but actually the, the, the more I, certainly for me, the more I've engaged with this whole issue, the more I do. The, the, the less anxious I feel, and, and that doesn't mean that I think I'm solving it all myself. I'm one of, I'm one of, you know, 8 a billion people, and, I do really believe that, that it takes quite a lot to get to a point where you're willing to go there.

If you can go there, then you can be really honest and open about the things that we can all genuinely do, and one of them is talking about it. I was fascinated that one of the climate scientists that I've had a chance to. Listened to and attend a few webinars with someone called Charlie Gardiner.

I, I once listened to a webinar and at the end got a chance to ask a question. I said, what's the single biggest thing we can do? Thinking I was gonna get some really intricate scientific response about reducing.

You know, carbon footprint and he just said talk about it because just a few stats that I find really fascinating. One is that in the UK it's about 3/5 of the population. There's, you know, over several years now it's been fairly consistent, you know, 3/4 of the population are concerned about climate change and, and want to see more action, to, to, to, to alleviate it.

So it's not everyone, but it is the majority. And, but only about 13% admit to sort of frequently or really ever talking about it. And the other number that's really important is 25, because 25% is usually seen as a tipping point.

Now that could be the, we, we often use that number because in a veterinary practise, if we're trying to get a team to embrace and better use something like a, a, a, a surgical checklist or, or what different things, if we can get 25% of a team doing something a certain way, often that's a tipping. Point where it can become embedded in the culture and then take, take hold. And the same is true with this, if we can get that number of people talking about climate change constructively from 13% to 25%, we could really see a shift in, in the perception of its importance at a government level from organisations.

So it's actually not that big a gap. Just need a lot more people talking about it more constructively, more of the time, and for me that is an action. We're doing it, we're doing and and it doesn't mean that we're solving everything by doing it, but it action doesn't have to be, well, you know, if someone goes away thinking, well, I've got family that live in another country and the only way of me seeing them once a year is by getting on a plane and the only action I can take is to, is to not see them anymore.

That's, that's not what we're talking about. Action can come in so many different forms. And, and I just think, yeah, is very important.

This is the importance I think of, you know what you're doing with teams, what we're trying to do with the discussion forum, it is very much around discussion, but to know and not to do is not to know, so the action is massively important as well. Daniel, it's been a real pleasure. I always love listening and chatting to you, we probably could have gone on for a lot longer around a lot of other topics, so maybe we need to do this again, but er great seeing you, if I don't see you before, hopefully catch up at London Vet show.

Absolutely, thanks, yeah, I really enjoyed chatting as always, Anthony, yeah, thanks for having me on. Cheers. Thanks Daniel, thanks everyone for listening.

Hopefully see you on a webinar or podcast very soon.