Episodes

Courage. Grit. Persistence. Some might call it stubbornness. Whatever you call it - our guest for this episode has it in spades. Dr Mariana Pardo is an emergency and critical care specialist at the Veterinary Emergency Group, in Whiteplains, New York. She qualified as a vet in Santiago, Chile, in 2009, and then moved to the United States where she walked a long long road to the first female emergency and critical care specialist from Latin America - but I won’t ruin the story for you here - it’s...

Yes. it's totally fine. In fact, it's the preferred way to send your spleens to the lab. Here's another thing that I learnt from this episode: pathologists don't necessarily look like Uncle Fester from the Adams Family! Join us with the very un-Uncle Fester-like anatomical pathologist Dr Flaminya Coiacetto for more things that you didn't know about how to ensure better histopath results. (And happier pathologists!) From sample handling, preparation and storage, to what the ideal history looks l...

For this episode, rather than casting our conversational net wide and seeing which topics come up, we have a very specific topic. We wanted to get insights into complaints made against us as vets. Our goal with the episode was to help you find better ways to think about and live with the threat of the official board complaint, with the end goal being, as always, a happier vet career. We think we found the perfect guest for it. Dr David Tabrett is an emergency vet and founder and director of the ...

Thanks to Heska Australia for supporting this very important series of episodes on mental health, resilience, and burnout prevention. Go to https://www.heska.com.au to find out about ways to re-imagine the way you run your in house labs and digital radiography. Professor Gordon Parker AO is Scientia Professor of Psychiatry at the University of NSW. He is, amongst other things, founder of the Black Dog Institute, and Director of the Division of Psychiatry at Prince of Wales and Prince Henry...

Vicarious trauma, burnout, and living with the critic inside your head is supported by Heska Australia. It's time to re-imagine how you run your in-house pathology and radiography. Visit https://www.heska.com.au/products/lab-diagnostics/ to discover how. In this conversation, we explore some ideas that we’re all familiar with, like how to live with those annoying self-critical voices that we all carry around inside our heads. Our guests, Rhonda Andrews and Dr Louisa Johnson also introduce us to...

Dr Justin Ward is a veterinarian and practice owner from the Gold Coast in Australia. He grew up in South Africa where he studied veterinary science before heading to the UK for a 5 years stint of locuming and travelling, eventually putting down roots in Australia. After 4 more years of working as an employed vet, he had his first crack at practice ownership. In this episode, Justin shares his experience and the lessons learnt from when this first venture didn't go according to plan. But it was...

Other than conundrums around the legalities of labelling and wondering if you're allowed to stock any compounded meds for 'emergency use', drug compounding is probably not something that most of us give a lot of thought to. You pick a dose, write a script, and your patient gets what they need, right? Right? But what about quality? Does someone regulate what goes into the meds you prescribe? And can we be sure that the active ingredients are 'active' - are they doing what they're supposed to? Su...

Dr Hannetjie Van Zyl-Edeling is a counselling psychologist, mediator, author and artist, amongst other things. You’ll know that our goal at the Vet Vault is to help you create a sustainable and thriving life around your veterinary career. This is exactly why we HAD to speak to Hannetjie, because she believes that we can use our minds to help create our best life and find meaning, even in challenging circumstances. (And let’s face it - even the dream veterinary career will throw plenty of challen...

Does it drive you crazy how you'll sometimes look at an X-ray image and you don't see anything significant, but then you send it to a radiologist and they come up with a long list of important things!? How do they do it?! Well, a lot of it is practice, but here's a secret - a lot of it is also just good technique. And these are techniques you can easily apply in your practice to take great images and interpret them like the pros. We did a series on tips for rads of the acute abdomen over on the...

Dr Penny Thomas’ career has taken her from working as a nurse in a specialist clinic while she was doing her vet degree, to a stint in mixed practise after graduating from the University of Sydney in 2011, and all the way to gaining registration as a Specialist in Veterinary Oncology in 2019. Penny is a member of the Veterinary Cancer Society and has also obtained her Memberships of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists in small animal medicine. She has a keen interest in haematologica...

Welcome back to another one of our clinical episodes. I decided to share this one today because of a case I dealt with just this morning. We had a cat in hospital with what was thought to be acute renal failure, but what turned out to be a ureteral obstruction. That's ureTEral, not urethral. Seeing this case reminded me how dangerous this disease is, and how easily it can be missed. So I thought I'd share this episode that we recently did on the topic with our resident medicine specialist, Dr Da...

What do you think when you hear the words ‘holistic’, or ‘alternative’. What about "complimentary"? These are terms that can evoke quite strong opinions and responses in many vets one way or another, right? 100% honest - I was a bit apprehensive about doing this interview. I’m a natural skeptic, and I was worried that our guest was going to be a bit ‘out there" in his ideas, but I’m very glad that we took the time for this conversation. Turns out that, like me, and like you, Dr Gary Richter i...

We’re back today with another full-length vet interview, and it’s a corker! We’re exploring the ins and outs, the ups and downs and the and the joys and struggles of a career in emergency practice, with Dr Lorna O’Dowd. You’ll pick where Lorna cut her teeth in mixed practice from her lovely Irish accent. Since her early career in Ireland, Lorna did stints of smallies locum work interspersed with volunteering in all sorts of exotic locations around the world. She finally put down her roots her...

This episdoe is a bit of a hybrid between our standard performance episodes and a clinical one. We speak to Dr Randolph Baral, who owns and works in a feline-only practice in Sydney, Australia. But Randolph doesn’t just like staying up to date with what’s new for his patients - he prefers to stay at the forefront by doing his own research. This has led to him gaining his memberships feline medicine, a pHD in clinical pathology, being a regular contributor on VIN, and authoring a string of public...

I recently had the privilege to be interviewed by my podcast/business coach, James Whittaker. James is an author, film producer, entrepreneur, all-round great guy and host of the Win The Day podcast. We thought we'd share it with you here on the Vet Vault, because A - If you're a podcaster and you get handed a well-executed pre-edited bit of audio then you'd be a fool not to use it. B - We discuss a few things in the conversation that we think could be of value to some of you. C - Maybe...

You know that virus that the entire world hates at the moment? Yes - the C-word. Well, us vets have hated it for a long time, because it’s been killing our feline patients relentlessly in it’s mutated form of Feline Infectious Peritonitis long before the rest of the world ever heard the name 'corona'. Well, that might be about to change... In this episode, we share some highlights of a recording we recently released on the Vet Vault Clinical small animal medicine podcast with our resident med...

Dr Sarah Heath is an RCVS and European Veterinary Specialist in Behavioural Medicine and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2018. She is an External Lecturer in small animal behavioural medicine on the veterinary undergraduate course at Liverpool University. In 2019 she gained her Postgraduate Certificate in Veterinary Education and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority. She is a Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist under the ASAB accreditation scheme ...

We wanted to share one of the episodes from our clinical series of podcasts to give you an idea what they are about. This one is from a series we did on brachycephalic obstructed airway syndrome (BOAS) with specialist surgeon Dr Bronwyn Fullagar and Dr Mark Tenenbaum, a GP vet who works in a practice that has a strong focus on brachycephalics. Regardless how you feel about bulldogs and all their flat faced friends - the reality is that you WILL have to deal with them. This episode is from our su...

Here’s the link to our brand new clinical continuing education podcasts: https://vvn.supercast.tech. Subscribe before the end of January 2021 to lock in your subscription at a 30% discounted early bird rate. Now - our guest: Dr Mark Kelman is a man on a mission. He’s a veterinarian, independent scientific researcher, social philanthropist and investor who has had a wildly varying career. From charity work to private practice to working in pharmaceuticals, a quick PhD, and now as a researcher and...

Just a quick chat to say hi and let you know what we’ve been up to, plus Hubert shares an important letter that we’d received at the Vet Vault from a listener who is NOT a vet, but a client. You may need to hear this - I know that there are many days that I do.

If you’re thinking we’ve been slow to release new episodes then you’d be right! Hubert is travelling around Australia with his family for 6 weeks, so the Vet Vault will be taking a 6 week break. We’ll be back towards the end of the year with a tonne of new content and the official launch of our clinical podcast series. We miss you already!

This episode is a special bonus episode for our student contingency. We chat to Nada Blagojevic (@dogtornada on Instagram). Nada is a final year vet student at Adelaide University and co-creator of Hashtag Vetschool. #Vetschool is a compilation of study tips and a survival guide of sorts made by an international group of vet students, for vet students. In this conversation Nada gives us a few of her favourite tips from the guide and some of her own wisdom. Enjoy! Get your copy of this fantast...

Dr Kathy Anderson has been a practice owner for almost 5 years, and under her guidance, the practice has grown from a 2 man business to a bustling 6 vet practice and has seen a remarkable increase in revenue. Which is impressive in itself, but if I told you that she chose to enter ownership when she had two very young kids, one of them a 2-year-old who wasn’t even sleeping through the night, you’d probably think she’s crazy, right? But here’s the thing - she’s loved her journey and still loves p...

Here’s another sneak preview of our upcoming clinical podcasts with this episode on the diagnosis of immune-mediated haemolytic anaemia. IMHA is one of those diseases where timely recognition and treatment can mean the difference between a patient that lives and one that does not, but it can be a challenge to diagnose. We’ve roped in Dr Dave Collins, a medicine specialist from North Side Vet Specialists in Sydney, to help you to create a solid plan for diagnosing and saving these patients. This ...