Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1277774
17 Winter/Fall 2020 | Equine Solutions It is pretty obvious that it's more pleasant to work at a practice with a positive culture and with teammates who like being at work. Before asking how to support staff morale and prevent burnout, let's address what causes burnout and why it is important for you to address it. Taking the time to specifically ask yourself why this is important and valuable to you and your practice is a necessary step in this process. Determining your own personal "why" will help guide your efforts and serve as a compass point as you work with your team to make changes at your clinic. Exercise #1: Get a piece of paper and a pen or open your computer and take some time to write down why it's important to you and your clinic make changes to support the well-being and morale of your staff. As you continue to read this article, set a series of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, Time-bound) goals that will shape your path from where your clinic is now to where you want it to be. Environmental well-being is one of the eight domains of well-being, and that includes our social environment as well as our physical surroundings. To this end, part of ensuring that we are meeting the well-being needs of our team and ourselves is addressing workplace interpersonal relationships and culture. Further, striving to have a positive culture that supports the well-being of team members will help reduce staff turnover, increase productivity, safeguard the quality of care provided, and contribute to the longevity of the clinic. Each of these things has a tangible financial benefit. When these reasons are put together, they provide more than adequate motivation for devoting time, energy, and resources to supporting staff morale and working to decrease burnout. Veterinary practices are complex When we consider how to support staff morale, we first need to acknowledge and appreciate the complexity of veterinary practice. Despite the fact that all practices do fundamentally the same thing—provide care to patients and services to clients—there are many factors that determine how the practice functions. These factors include the practice's client base, its productivity, and most importantly, the team members. Due to these differences, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Appreciating the uniqueness of your practice will allow you to create a tailored plan that will work for your specific team.