Vet Times

Tag: memory

  • Venusians, Martians and abscesses

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    Despite my continued annoyance at the non-appearance of hoverboards, the 21st century is truly a wonderful time to be alive. Contrary to the repeated attempts of 24-hour news channels to make us believe otherwise, many of us live in more tolerant and less violent societies than any of our ancestors. Men and women are now considered equals,…

  • Communication and memory

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    I often see new graduate workshops and tutorials advertised where the seminar leaders address the problems of communication. Similar events are offered to older codgers, too. I’ve been to a couple; the Veterinary Defence Society points out the majority of complaints it handles involve some form of breakdown in communication. The speakers often lay the blame squarely…

  • The dark side

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    Emergency work I think is one of the hardest, if not THE hardest discipline to follow in this profession. That’s because not only do you have to be quick getting to a diagnosis (sometimes making intuitive or logical leaps in lieu of test results) and the fact it touches on virtually every other discipline (making…

  • Failure

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    Failure is another taboo subject in the profession, as it is in most walks of life. We don’t like it, and we don’t like talking about it. The CertAVP, as part of its “A” module (Foundations of Advanced Veterinary Practice), has you analysing learning methods. Apparently I am a strongly experimental/empirical learner, which means I learn better…

  • FMD and confidence

    FMD and confidence

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    I have been qualified for 16 years now, and all bar five months of that has been spent in small animal practice. Back in my day, Glasgow was one of the few vet schools to give its students hands-on surgical experience on real live patients. We all left with a checklist of things we had…

  • Pseudoscientific fluff

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    Attitudes and opinions change gradually as we get older. I don’t normally subscribe to the “left wing/right wing” model of politics and attitudes – I think there are a multitude of nuanced politics and views which make the right/left redundant. I am, however, getting much less tolerant as I get older. When I was an…

  • The subtle art of appropriate charging

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    Pricing of our services is an odd issue and one I have unresolved and conflicting feelings about. I did work experience in the eighties with a vet who these days would be considered old-school. He inspired me to become a vet because I saw what he did and thought: “that is very cool – I…