Episodes

I don’t know about you, but one of my least favourite things to see on my consult list is a cat with a snotty nose. The idea that my patient’s problem can be anything from a self-limiting mild disease to a serious and frustrating impossible-to-treat condition, and the decision-making around this, fills me with uncertainty and dread. This episode aims to replace that uncertainty with confidence, or at least a solid plan based on sound knowledge! Dr Kath Briscoe is a Specialist in Feline Medicine ...

Confession: sometimes I get tired of wellness discussions, with the constant barrage of advice on resilience and burnout prevention. Not because it's not important, but because it often feels like these conversations boil down to "here are ways how you should be better so that you can better cope with this challenging career." Which is why I loved this conversation with Dr Heidi Hulon, which isn't so much about adapting to challenging circumstances, but rather about revolutionising the whole vet...

Vets of Australia, meet Spirocerca lupi, a parasite that's been flying under the radar for a while now in Northwest Queensland. But as you'll learn in this episode, is well worth adding to your DD list. To make the introductions we're joined by Professor Peter Irwin, an Emeritus Professor from Murdoch University with a career that spans several continents and almost four-decades. He's a registered specialist in canine medicine with a particular passion and extensive knowledge on anything and eve...

Join us as we explore the concept of compassion fatigue from a fresh perspective. We take a closer look at the underlying mechanisms behind the terms commonly used when we talk about sustainable careers. While empathy and compassion are often used interchangeably, they are actually distinct concepts, and it's not just a matter of semantics - it’s a matter of neurology, which has practical implications for you, your career, and your happiness. Dr Olga Klimeck i is a neuroscientist, psychologist, ...

Dr Doug Mader is a triple board-certified veterinary specialist and has been a veterinarian for nearly four decades. He is an internationally recognized speaker, has written three best-selling medical textbooks, and numerous scientific publications. He has had long-standing columns in multiple media outlets, and he is the recipient of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Conservation Award, the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine Alumni Achievement Award, and the Fred L. Frye Lifetime Achievement Award f...

Introducing Dr Mike Bugg. Mike graduated from veterinary school in 2008 and started his career as a mixed animal veterinarian. However, he soon realised the importance of having multiple sources of income and saw other veterinarians struggle with retirement. With a passion for personal finance and investing, Mike started investing in real estate in 2012 with the goal of making veterinary work optional. He and his wife continued to build their real estate portfolio while working, eventually allow...

Dr Shea Cox is a global leader and subject matter expert in veterinary hospice and palliative care. She’s certified as a Pain Practitioner, a Hospice & Palliative Care Veterinarian and a Pet Loss Professional. With a focus on technology, innovation and education, her efforts are changing the end-of-life landscape in veterinary medicine. In addition to launching the first hospice and palliative care service integrated within a specialty hospital setting in 2012, she was also the first to launch a...

Have you ever considered, or are considering specialising, but you are put off by the journey of becoming a specialist? Usually the path to specialising means putting almost everything else aside for 3-5 years. But what if there was a different way? Dr Anna Dengate is a medicine specialist, and she's convinced that there could be an alternative path, and in this conversation she helps us to explore what that could look like. Anna's own career journey hasn't quite followed the the norm. After gra...

Who feels like Cushing's is a nice disease to diagnose and manage? Like, how often do you feel like your hyperadrenocorticism patients are really doing REALLY well? My guess is: not that often. This episode will change that. Dr Sue Foster is a registered specialist in Feline Medicine and Senior Lecturer in Small Animal Medicine at Murdoch University in Western Australia. She’s also a medical consultant for Vetnostics and ASAP Laboratory , where a large part of her role is interpreting cortisol t...

Our guest for this episode - Dr Olivia Oginska, has made it her mission to help us have better relationships, both in and outside of work. Olivia Oginska is a veterinarian, speaker, positive psychology coach, a certified workplace conflict mediator and an emotional intelligence specialist. Liv has been immersed in the global veterinary community since 2010 when she did multiple externships in the UK, North America and Australia. It was through Liv's veterinary career in the UK, including a surge...

Many of us struggle with attaching a dollars-and-cents value to this ‘fixing animals’ thing that we do for a living. We tell ourselves stories about how our work is a labor of love, about ethics and about the noble nature of our profession, and we underestimate the value of our skills and knowledge. But stories can become limiting beliefs that hold us back from realizing our full potential as veterinary professionals and as thriving humans, which all-too-often ends up with this story that Dr Oli...

This episode from our clinical series is brought to you by Elanco , makers of the broadest range of parasiticides including Advocate, Milbemax, Seresto and Credelio Plus. "The question about the biochemistry is really interesting, because what your question now is, is 'what is it, and where is it?' And the problem that we have is that the liver enzymes aren't gonna tell us, because it's really hard to separate hepatic from post-hepatic on bloods. ALP is very insensitive in the cat and will go up...

Dr Andrew Ciccolini is a Medical Director at the National Mill Dog Rescue , a non-profit that rescues and rehomes discarded breeding dogs, and also the Director of Non-Profit Initiatives at Galaxy Vets. His background includes serving in the U.S. Army, where he worked his way up from Associate Veterinarian to VP of Operations. In addition to his veterinary degree, he also has a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership. In this conversation Andrew takes us on a wild ride through his career wi...

Dr Steve Joslyn is a specialist veterinary radiologist and tech enthusiast with more than two decades of experience consulting for referral, teaching, and general practice hospitals on four continents. Steve is highly regarded for his radiology work on designing imaging workflows and clinical 3D printing services, among other ground-breaking projects. Steve’s passion for technology and informatics led him to co-chair a joint American and European Radiology committee exploring the role AI has to ...

Who loves neurology?! That little blob of skull-jelly and all the wires that come off it can be very confusing and very intimidating, even more so when we start talking about the encephalitis/meningitis complex of diseases that we encounter in our veterinary patients. To help us make sense of the different immune-mediated neurological diseases we’re joined by specialist veterinary neurologist Dr Sam Long . Dr Sam gives us a clear plan for getting to a diagnosis, including how to make sense of se...

How nice are you to your fellow veterinarians? It's likely that most of us feel that we're professional and supportive with a high degree of collegiality. But if this is true, then why is it that so many vets have experiences that don't fit with this narrative - feelings of being 'thrown under the bus'? Dr Denis Verwilghen is boarded in both large animal surgery and equine dentistry. He’s a graduate of the University of Ghent in Belgium and he’s currently the clinical director of Goulburn Valley...

We talk about well-being a lot on this podcast, but one thing we don’t really discuss all that often is financial well-being. And while it’s a truism that money can’t buy you happiness, I'm also of the opinion that if the number of shifts you do is purely determined by your level of debt rather than your level of enthusiasm that there is likely to be an increase in sadness! Which is why we invited one of the world’s foremost authorities on personal finance, Noel Whittaker , to set us off on the ...

This episode is supported by Animal Emergency Services Tanawha , part of the AEA group . If you're interested in the career opportunity discussed in this episode contact us at vetvaultpodcast@gmail.com to find out more. Dr Kate Toyer graduated as a vet in 1995, got married in 1996 and bought shares in a veterinary practice with her partner in 2000. In 2007 she gained Memberships of the ANZCVS in Veterinary Surgery and also the College Prize for her work on developing one of the first interactive...

Dr Micheal Archinal has been a vet for over 35 years and is the senior director of 9 veterinary hospitals. He has post-graduate training in animal behaviour, acupuncture, dermatology and pharmacology. Michael has also had an illustrious media career that includes 13 years as a weekly guest presenter on Channel Nine’s Mornings with Kerri-Anne and 21 years as an ABC radio talk-back host, as well as being a regular contributor on National ABC radio afternoons. He's a long-term columnist for multip...

If you are a clinician working in a paralysis tick area of Australia then you’ll be well aware of the 2022 shortage of tick antiserum, and you very likely have some questions, like how do we ensure that we still do the best for our patients, where do our previous dose rates for TAS even come from, and why is it suddenly ok for us to use less? You might even be wondering how the vet boards will view deviations from the label dose if that’s what we’re required to do in response to the shortage. We...

This episode from our clinical podcast series is brought to you by the SVS Pathology Network - Australia's exclusive provider of the advanced testing techniques discussed in this episode. We sit down with Dr Penny Thomas from Veterinary Oncology Consultants to ask all of the questions you've ever had (and probably a few you didn't know you had!) about canine lymphoma. Dr Penny covers the common sticking points, like how to make sure you get an accurate diagnosis, new advances in diagnostic testi...

Shiva Greenalgh is a registered animal nutritionist who specialises in companion animal nutrition in both commercial production as well as clinical and therapeutic nutrition for individual pets. She holds a Master's of Animal Science in Animal Nutrition and has recently completed a PhD in animal nutrition. Shiva's career journey has included roles as a wildlife carer and a vet nurse. She currently works as a nutrition consultant for pet owners, vets and commercial businesses through her consulti...

Challenging situations, negative emotions, hard conversations... pretty standard stuff in the average day of a vet, right? This is a conversation about finding a positive perspective on all these, plus all of the other stuff that gets in the way of an enjoyable veterinary career. Join us with Dr Rebecca Faris as we explore positive psychology, what real mindfulness looks like and why it’s essential in the work that we do, how to discover and live your strengths and how to have those hard convers...

Ours is a pretty cerebral profession, right? But if you think about the reasons we do what we do - our WHY, for most of us, it’s mostly about heart. This creates some challenges though. Like how do you protect your heart? How do you not abandon it in exchange for 'progress' How do you rediscover your heart when most of your life has been run on brain power? How do you GROW your heart, strengthen it, and create the space to find out what lives deep inside your heart that needs to be expressed? Bi...