Never good enough

When I look around at my veterinary colleagues, I see the same desire to achieve more. We are all searching for that elusive 6%. At the beginning of each oncology rotation where I teach, our final year students will introduce themselves and tell us their plans for after graduation. For the students that are going into general practice, they will say, “I’m just going into practice.” Because just being a general practitioner and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, is not enough and they feel judged. They judge each other and they judge themselves. They think that I must be judging them too because I am a specialist and they are not. This always breaks my heart. Of course being a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine is enough. In fact, it’s fantastic! I always have to correct them, pointing out how important the job of the family veterinarian is and how I believe that being a veterinary general practitioner is one of the hardest jobs in our profession. . . .

No one can ever get 100%. It is not possible. If you or the people you work with are consistently hitting about 80-90%, then that is enough. It has to be enough.”