14 Feb 2024
You don’t have to specialise to achieve happiness and contentment in your career, says RVN Carly Kilby. In fact, if you’re happy where you are, your role as an approachable, knowledgeable member of your practice team can keep you fulfilled for years to come.
Carly Kilby
Job Title
Image © ipopba / Adobe Stock
There’s a constant pressure in the industry to do something else. Whether that pressure comes from us wanting to branch out and experience different practices, different countries, different disciplines, or whether its pressure from society for you to change it up a bit.
It’s almost like you can’t possibly be happy in the same job, with the same role for 5, 6, 10 years – that’s repetitive and boring, isn’t it? The same people. The same rota.
But, what’s wrong with that? You know where things are, you know how the practice works, you know the clients, you know the computer system, it’s familiar and comfortable. You couldn’t think of anything worse than moving.
Then there’s society: don’t you want to experience different practices? Don’t you want to expand your knowledge in a particular area of the role?
No…
I like where I work. I like my job. I like my role. I’m content with how my professional life is. It’s hard for some people to understand how difficult it is to get into the profession in the first place, so, once you’re in and you find your place, why would you want to ruin that by changing things?
Obviously, CPD is a requirement for our roles and it’s this that tends to feed the thirst for further knowledge in one particular area. But what if you like everything? A mere 15 hours of CPD is a drop in the ocean for how much you want to learn about all the areas of your role you enjoy the most. Dabbling in everything and being confident in all aspects of your job provides confidence with your team and with clients.
People come to you for the radiography positioning and anaesthesia advice, they also rely on your knowledge of where to order more sharps bins and how to dispense Fluffy Smith’s tablets in a certain way so Mr Smith can medicate correctly – and don’t forget, you’re the one who can get the printer working despite everyone else’s efforts.
Without the colleague who has all the experience and knowledge of the practice and their role as a veterinary nurse, we would have no one to learn from or to lean on. It’s people like you that keep the practice going – you’re missed when you have a week off, and everyone is always looking for you when you’re at work.
To everyone in the veterinary profession, the world is yours.
