08 October 2026
New clinicians Eleanor Goad and James Robinson describe their experiences of practice life…
Image: Prostock-studio / Adobe Stock
The journey from veterinary student to practising clinician can be a demanding transition.
Every year, hundreds of newly qualified vets leave the structured environment of university to step directly on to the front line of clinical practice and while their academic preparation is rigorous, the reality of the consult room brings challenges that no university setting can fully replicate.
New graduates are expected to not only manage real-time decision-making, but also deal with clients, discuss complex financial realities and balance practice workloads – all while trying to manage their work-life balance.
Recognising these pressures, Purina Pro Plan launched its Young Vets programme late last year in a bid to help bridge the gap between academia and everyday clinical life.
By providing accessible, real-world educational resources, practical guidance on pet nutrition and structured support for non-clinical communication, the Young Vets programme has been designed to offer young vets tailored tools to prepare for practice life and thrive during their early months and years in practice.
Based around the three core pillars of nutrition, employability and entrepreneurship, the platform provides digestible, actionable insights to help early-career vets manage challenging client conversations, advocate for preventive health, and build long-term professional confidence.
To look at some of the issues facing young vets entering practice, Vet Times has partnered with Purina Pro Plan on a series of podcasts and editorials featuring new graduates and more experienced clinicians.
The series will look at the challenges young vets face and the support they need in those vital first months and years of their veterinary careers.
Our aim is not to provide all the answers; it is simply to highlight some of the issues and find some solutions to help the veterinary sector make the most out of the next generation of talent.
For this first article and accompanying podcast, we spoke with young vets Eleanor Goad (three years qualified) and James Robinson (eight months qualified) and asked them to describe their experiences of practice life as a newly graduated vet…
Eleanor: “It’s ingrained on the brain to be honest. The imposter syndrome I think’s probably at its strongest. It’s a really surreal experience because you’ve got so much build-up to it, literally years upon years of wanting to be a vet and then you’re suddenly just in it.
“It’s exciting, it’s overwhelming. I think I just remember just being so tired, but loving it at the same time, because you’re just using your brain, 100 per cent of it, for every single decision, everything you say, everything you see is brand new. So yeah, it was –it was really tiring and all-consuming for me.”
James: “I’m fortunate in that the place I work is the practice where I did my work experience placements and EMS and everything when I was at uni, so I was already pretty familiar with the team and the sort of layout of the building.
“But it still doesn’t do much to prepare you for that first day of having actual clinical responsibility. So I would say I was excited, but incredibly, incredibly nervous.”
Eleanor: “I loved everything in the early days. I just came home so inspired and happy with the job. It was a really nice honeymoon period to be honest.
“I think the two big challenges for me were getting the confidence in yourself, because I remember going into those early consults, and in particular when they were maybe a little bit more serious or emergent, and thinking, ‘Do they know how new I am?’
“You’re very professional, you’re very capable and you have all the tools you need and you have a supportive team behind you. But in the moment, you feel almost like you’re just playing a part and over time, you just become that part.
“It’s not ‘fake it till you make it’ because you’re not faking it, but you’re reinforcing this idea to yourself of, ‘No, you are a vet. You can do this. You’ve got this’.
“I think it’s that, and I think there’s this preconceived notion coming from the older generation of vets that you pay your dues and you work really, really hard, especially in those first few years, because you do have to get as much experience as possible.
“That meant I was coming in about 30 minutes early for my consults to check the consult list, make a plan. I was leaving, but I wasn’t leaving my patients behind. I had them with me in my head. I’d run over my consults and my surgeries long after I’d actually left the building.
“It’s having the confidence in yourself when you’re at work, and then having the ability to switch off when you’re outside. And I think those are two things you have to learn. You won’t get them from day one.”
James: “I’m still very much in that window of the first few months, but it goes back to what Eleanor was saying about the whole imposter syndrome. You know, I’ve been in practice now for eight months, but it still feels like closer to eight weeks in many respects.
“I think from the clinical side of things, the biggest challenge is doing things which are still fairly new to yourself and having to sort of push yourself sometimes outside of that comfort zone.
“Sometimes it’s a bit challenging identifying where those boundaries are and then pushing yourself through those.
“I think I’ve been fortunate to do someday shifts and some night shifts, which are very different in terms of environment you’re working with. You’re working with a very different team under very different circumstances and I absolutely love that contrast.
“There’s also the whole work-life balance aspect outside of clinical work, and I think that has arguably been the bit I might have struggled with the most, is finding that healthy, good balance while still trying to really commit to everything.”
Eleanor: “I think they try their best, but it’s really tricky to replicate a very stressful and dynamic working situation under university conditions. Like we had OSCEs, we had mock consults, but nothing ever really replaces the real thing. They tried very hard in particular, I think, to get us used to the difficult conversations and what happens when mistakes are made and that sort of thing, but there’s just so much to cover.
“University focuses much more on theory than it does on application, which makes sense, because there’s just so much to know, so much to learn.
“They don’t know whether you’re going into small animal, exotic, equine, farm, all of the above. You have so much knowledge, and then that last year feels like they try as hard as they can to prepare you for the real world, but you’re still focusing on the theory trying to pass your exams. I don’t think it is enough, but I don’t know what the solution would be.”
James: “I echo a lot of what Eleanor said, really. There’s only so much you can do, because even when you are at vet school, you don’t have that entire responsibility on your shoulders in the same way that you do when you’re in practice. And there is no way I can imagine for that sense of responsibility to be put on to a veterinary student before they actually are qualified.
“We had the OSCEs, the mock consults, they got all the medical actors in and tried to train you for all the worst-case scenarios. But I mean, deep down, when you’re doing them, although they’re stressful in the moment, you still do understand that they are just actors. And once that consult is over and the bad news has been delivered, there’s not actually a patient in front of you who is facing the repercussions of that in the same way that there is in the real world.
“So vet school did the best it could do, but I certainly do think there are just innate limitations with how far they can go in that respect.”
Eleanor: “The money side of things for me, I think, was difficult. It’s always going to be difficult.
“Add in stress [and it] gets even more difficult. And I think when you come out of university, you’ll have just finished your rotations, probably in a big shiny hospital where everyone is doing everything gold standard.
“And that’s just not real life. It’s really hard knowing what is best for that animal in front of you, especially if they’re suffering, and then having to work backwards on what is actually feasible for that owner and what resources they have at their disposal.
“It’s a strange mindset to get into when you’ve come from working day in and day out with specialists and learning what the cutting-edge techniques are, and you’ve just got to do what you can.
“And I think nutrition goes hand in hand with that, because if you get there early enough, so many conditions are preventable or minimisable.
“I have found nutrition conversations difficult, mostly in terms of getting owners to understand how important it is and having those starter conversations when they’ve got a healthy pet in front of them and you’re going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ because there’s no problem.”
James: “Like Eleanor’s saying, a lot of the preventive medicine is what can be quite challenging to convey to a client who has a healthy pet in front of them and you’re sitting there saying, ‘Maybe we need to talk about dental management or weight management,’ and they say ‘Why are we having to pay extra for this sort of care?’ which then ties into a lot of what we’re seeing in the press at the moment about their bills.”
Eleanor: “I can never have enough resources, can never have enough knowledge. I think it’s great. It’s really easily accessible, divided up quite plainly by what you need at the time, whether it’s just the sheer information or how to tackle the difficult conversations, because those fall into different categories.
“Sometimes you have the time to spend 30 minutes on a case and think, ‘Right, what does the evidence tell me to do?’ But sometimes you’re going into a consult and you’ve got 10 minutes to prepare, and you think, ‘Right, just what is the bullet points I can send this home with this owner with?’
“I think the fundamentals are the most important, because you can kind of blind owners with science sometimes, and you’ve only got 15 minutes, and they can only absorb so much information, especially if they’ve just come in for a routine consultation.
“So knowing exactly which key points to send them home with is very useful and that’s why resources like this that are easy to digest are really helpful.”
James: “You can never have too much information at your disposal. And I think there’s a lot of, shall we say, misinformation you can find online about, especially in pet nutrition, for example.
“And having it at different levels, clear and concise within a time limit, is going to be nothing but helpful and nothing but useful, both for yourself and for the owners and their pets.”
Eleanor: ”When companies are forthcoming with information like this, and trying to involve themselves in every aspect of the profession, I find it really helpful.
“And I think it gives me confidence in their products, and in recommending their products, and recommending their advice to owners, rather than just seeing them as a company. When I see them sort of getting their hands dirty, and showing that they are in touch with the profession and in touch with the market which they’re selling to and the pets who are using their products, that gives me a lot more confidence.”
James: “Again, I’m a big fan of this sort of thing. You know, to have a big company like Purina going and helping out especially the younger guys, it’s fantastic. It’s only going to make the quality of vets that are coming through better, and it gives us trust in the company that, you know, we think they’re doing well. And like you said, it’s giving back I think to us a little bit, which is really useful. And I suppose it goes back to the earlier point of you can never have too much information with this sort of thing.”
James: “I feel like it’s vastly exceeded expectations.
“My job’s going very well, I’m really enjoying it, I’ve got a wonderful team. I’m very lucky with the hospital I work at where we’ve got fantastic facilities and a lovely client base. I’m able to do my certificate on the side of things as well, which has been a real bonus. So at the moment, it’s certainly living up to and exceeding expectations. And I think, like Eleanor said at the start, we absolutely love the jobs that we get to do. And I don’t know if it is a bit of a honeymoon phase, but if it is, long may it continue.”
Eleanor: “I still love my job. Not a day has gone by in almost three years where I think I should have done something different. It’s the only thing I think I could ever do.
“I think when I started, I probably set my expectations maybe too high just in terms of what is achievable when you’re a new graduate – or possibly just when you’re me as a new graduate.
“I’ve realised that you need a good basis on which to then build, that’s why I did my rotating internship after 18 months. And I think where I am now in terms of my confidence and my work-life balance and my ability to not quite get so many heart palpitations when the phone calls out of hours, that’s taken three years for me to get to, and it works differently for everyone, everyone’s on their own timescale.”
Eleanor: “Don’t be too hard on yourself, because it’s a really easy thing to do. The kind of person who gets into veterinary is a perfectionist and they work really hard and they’ve had to, to get there.
“But you need to know that it’s okay to ask for help wherever, whenever, whatever it is. I think it’s a universal worry that the more experienced you get, the less acceptable it is to ask for help – it’s not the case.
“I’ve got a colleague who’s been qualified far longer than I have, and I helped her wire a jaw the other day because she’d never seen one and the day before and the day after that, she was helping me.
“The scary thing about our job is that we’ll never know it all, but the best thing about the job is that we get to keep learning. So the only way you’re going to learn is to ask.
“Ask for help, there’s always someone there who will give you a helping hand.”
James: “Knowing when to ask for help is the exact same advice that I would give. I’ve already said it to other new grads who’ve come in and they’ve asked me that exact same question, and I say don’t be too proud.
“Know when to ask for help, because it’s only ever going to be beneficial. There is no gatekeeping with knowledge in this profession and if it’s something as simple as ‘I can’t place the catheter, can you come give me a hand?’ versus ‘I’ve got this really complicated medical case and I feel out of my depth,’ there’s no shame in asking for help.
“And, you know what, I think it shows a great deal of bravery and confidence to do so, and I admire people who know how to ask for help and know when to do it.”