Creating Wellbeing and Building Resilience in the Veterinary Profession

Author: Olson Sonja A.

Edition: 1

Number Of Pages: 228

Details: Product Description

A Call to Life aims to help veterinary caregivers increase self-efficacy, decrease unnecessary suffering, and increase sustainability in their mission to support animal health around the world. The veterinary profession is powered by dedicated, bright, and selfless individuals. Unfortunately, the long-standing and dysfunctional culture in classrooms and practices around the world expects veterinary caregivers to be ready to sacrifice everything – their time, their health, their personal lives – in the name of being deemed qualified and ‘worthy.’
Integrating real-life stories from a range of veterinary caregivers with evidence-based theory, practical activities, discussion and reflection points, and insights drawn from the author’s own experiences, the book empowers veterinarians by showing that they have the ability and the control to choose a healthier way forward for themselves and for their profession. It describes how to:
Normalize the conversation around mental and emotional health challenges in caregiving environments
Discuss and collaboratively create systemic solutions that promote healthier ‘ecosystems’ for vets to work within
Develop the skills of reframing, mindfulness, and self-care strategy implementation supporting holistic veterinary well-being
Collectively choose to shift the framework of professional conversations towards psychological safety, optimism, and purpose-driven experiences.
Creating Wellbeing and Building Resilience in the Veterinary Profession: A Call to Life uniquely combines shared experiences (personal stories) with academic research into the contributing factors of compassion fatigue and how to counter these. Normalizing the conversation in the profession, it provides a wide array of possible solutions to build resilience and to shape a culture of collaboration and support where caregivers can flourish.

Review

Sonja Olson, an experienced Emergency Clinician, veterinary mentor, and health and wellbeing trainer of veterinary teams, shares her wisdom, her breadth of experience and knowledge on the topic on wellbeing and resilience in this book. She also brings to life the voices of her colleagues across the globe. By doing so, she normalises conversations around vulnerability and mental health. Sonja “talks the talk” and “walks the walk” and without ego, will show how you too, can have a long and fulfilling professional life and keep a personal life too. This book brings to the reader both knowledge and experience that is useful to those studying and practicing in the veterinary profession. This will be a valuable addition to veterinarians, veterinary technicians, veterinary nurses and veterinary paraprofessionals.
Dr Vanessa Rohlf, BA(Hons), MCouns&PsychTh, PhD, Counsellor, Psychotherapist, and Research Fellow
This is a great book for the vet community. It’s chock full of models, resources, questions, practices and personal anecdotes from those on the front lines. We all want to feel seen and heard, that someone understands us, and Sonja does a great job with that, normalizing the experience of the reader. I especially appreciated the understanding and compassion for what clients are experiencing, which might also help for us to understand why they sometimes say and do the things they do. Part textbook, part self-help, this is the ideal book for any veterinary professional.
Julie Squires, Certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist and Certified Life Coach, Rekindle, LLC
Dr. Sonja Olson’s passion is helping veterinarians thrive, and she is at the forefront of a grassroots movement to improve the well-being of both individual practitioners and the profession. A Call To Life takes a much-needed, comprehensive look at the unspoken codes and culture of veterinary education and practice. Using humor and compassion, Dr. Olson charts a path forward to new era of veterinary practice, one where veterinarians can flourish both at work and at home. This book is essential reading for every

Release Date: 17-03-2022

Package Dimensions: 12x233x335