Trauma-informed care in veterinary medicine
Most people in veterinary medicine went into the field due to money(Just kidding), natural compassion, and a connection to animals. When you ask someone trained how they manage a traumatized animal they have many effective ways of calming the animal and understanding their behaviors as trauma, but what about their human counterparts, what about each other? How do we start using Trauma-informed care in all parts of your clinic?
What is it?
Trauma informed is the concept that people we are working with may be traumatized and we should run our business with this assumption. For the sake of this article I will be referring to trauma as any level of intense stress ( if you would like more about my philosophy around trauma click here.)
Let’s start with each other
Yes, you are all living with a heightened nervous system. You all work in a high stress environment and if you are a veterinarian you went through veterinary school which in it’s self has some trauma to it. High stress, high burn out environments can be like lobsters in a bucket pulling each other down. Here are some things that can lift each other up instead of pulling each other down:
Check-in: Not just a quick How are you doing because people just say good or fine. Really check in. “Hey, I saw you had some hard cases today. How are you doing?” “Hey, you have been off a little. Everything going okay?” “Here is a cup of coffee, yesterday sucked.” Trauma tends to isolate so building community pushes on this and helps us relax a little ( eventually)
Give Grace: When your colleague is irritable, it might be because their nervous system is screaming at them. Instead of screaming back or acting snappy at each other, allow them to take a 5 minute break to push a wall with their anger or take a stompy angry walk or whatever they need. Even if they snap back, “I am not irritable. They are just jackasses” Just say, “ Yep, and that is a good reason to take a break.” We won’t permit ourselves to take a break well, but other people making us can help. ( Full disclosure these are actual quotes that have come out of my mouth as well, especially the jackass one.) Understand we are all struggling and thriving together.
Practice what you preach: If you are in full-on trauma-informed mode to support others at your clinic, don’t forget to treat yourself well, too. Check-in on your emotions, build support for yourself, and do what makes you mentally well. People get permission to treat themselves when they see others treating themselves. Also, if you are the people-pleasing type, doing it for others will make you more likely to do it."
Learn about trauma responses so you can spot them: If you don’t know what trauma responses are, educate yourself so that you can spot them and support them. Ideas might be someone making more mistakes or seeming scattered, irritability, complaining more, moving slow or extra fast, signing up for too many tasks at once ( It can sometimes be a subconscious distraction), disconnection from the patients, not doing things they enjoy- the list can go on for days- infact I am writing a whole book about it.
********* What more support for your clinic to become trauma informed? Reach out. *************************
Handlers
It’s okay if understanding other peoples emotions and reactions does not come naturally to you. You may be better at doing this with animals than people; unfortunately, the animals come with a handler who is human.
Handlers also experience a large amount of stress when communicating with you. The cost might be stressful, as well as the health of their beloved pet. Heck, maybe they fought with their partner before they came. Unfortuantely, people are not good at knowing their own emotions and are prone to taking it out on people around them ( that gets to be you). It is best to assume all people are stressed ( that’s the idea of trauma-informed)
Here are some ideas for managing a stressed handler:
Validate: When someone is in a high stress level, validation can be a key component in relaxing their nervous system. It can be as simple as “ your right this sucks” or “ I see this is very hard for you.” It’s hard to argue when someone agrees with you, even if they are not giving you what you want.
Gentle: Use a gentle manner. I know this is easier said than done. I do not want you to lose your voice; you can still ask for what you need, but using a gentle tone while you do it can keep you from re-traumatizing the individual. Yes, this also means when someone is yelling at you, which means you might have to work real hard to do this, but it can establish a place of safety for them to calm down.
Regulate yourself: When you work on regulating yourself it is easier not to match the level of stress of the person in the room, which can allow you to think clearly and make the decisions necessary to manage the moment.
Treat them like an animal: Please don’t sedate them!!!!!!!! Think about how you would calm a distressed animal if you did not have a sedative and treat the human in this way. This takes some creativity because you have more available with animals that is not weird, but if you would typically let them be alone, it’s okay to leave the room for a moment and let them know you will be back in a moment. Make an excuse if you need to, “ let me go check on that.” If you would relax them by letting them smell something, maybe show the person some transparency with what is going on.
This is a brief article but maybe it can give you some starting points for building a culture of compassion and hopefully decreased stress.
