Do you avoid certain surgeries or cases?

Have you ever avoided doing something but then felt worse afterwards?

Maybe you've made yourself busy when the bloated Great Dane call came in? Perhaps you've popped to the loo when reception were looking for someone to take a phone call with a difficult client?

Given the fact that veterinary is such a challenging profession, it's understandable that we would try our best to make our daily lives in practice that little bit easier.

The simplest and fastest way to make things 'easier', to avoid discomfort, anxiety, fear and pain of practice life is avoidance.

The instinct to avoid pain is primal, much like pulling our hands away from a hot flame. Avoidance is hardwired. 

But in veterinary practice and indeed life, all too often it is this instinct to avoid short term pain that leads to missed opportunities, and in the longer term, even more pain. 

Sounds a bit abstract so lets take some examples...

The girl with social anxiety who avoids parties to avoid discomfort and rejection, who is left quietly suffering from loneliness and immersed in the dreaded feeling of rejection that she sought to avoid. "I won't go to the party because people might not like me" becomes "I'm at home alone because nobody likes me".

The vet who seeks to avoid the temporary crippling anxiety of surgery by avoiding 'big' ops and is left feeling inadequate, dishonest and less experienced than they feel they should be. The "I might make a mistake" becomes, "I hate surgery, I'm a rubbish surgeon or vet. Who am I to do this job anyway?"

The nurse who feels a rising sense of panic during anaesthetics ever since they lost a rabbit under GA. The nurse then seeks to avoid monitoring any rabbit anaesthetics. They then worry daily, "what if I'm made to do one, I haven't monitored a rabbit GA in years!" 

Can you see how these fears start small, but in time they grow?

The avoidance of discomfort and pain causes more even more suffering and anxiety than the situation we first sought to avoid. 

This is exactly how many downward confidence spirals appear and are maintained. 

Discomfort ➡️ Avoidance ➡️ Temporary Relief ➡️ Anxiety ➡️ suffering ➡️ long term consequences.

The need for self-preservation is totally primal, totally understandable, but hard to get out of without expert help.

Helping folks out of this confidence spiral is what we do at ACCess CPD. 

The ACC in ACCess CPD stands for Acceptance and commitment coaching. This form of coaching is based on a proven therapeutic framework which has over 1000 randomised control trials proving it's effectiveness in decreasing anxiety, depression, performance anxiety (and more) and increasing a sense of self-worth, confidence, job satisfaction, job retention (and more). 

We use it because it works. Indeed, ACC was carefully chosen as a foundation for our work with those in veterinary practice because of its simple effectiveness and its suitability to the fast moving, high pressure environment those in all walks of veterinary practice experience. From farm to equine, smallies, exotics and referral the expectation to perform is real and the stakes are often high.

Of course, what we do at ACCess CPD isn't just follow a framework. We use our qualifications in coaching, leadership and therapy and add them to our years of experience and inside knowledge of the unique pressures of the veterinary industry, to specifically help vets and nurses at key points in their careers.

Our CPD courses...

➡️Graduate confidence Online- New grads (5th year students- to 2 years)

➡️Return to work Confidence Online- (post parental leave, chronic illness or mental health crisis)

➡️Leadership Confidence Online- (Vets, nurses, managers in leadership roles)

➡️Surgical Confidence Online (New grads - 30+ years qualified)

➡️General Veterinary Confidence Online (All vets and nurses with generalised anxieties and low confidence)

All of our courses make excellent CPD (10-14hrs per course), they are self-paced with no in-person or zoom call requirement and can be accessed on all devices from iphones to desktops with an internet connection.

At ACCess CPD we believe CPD should stand for continuing PERSONAL development as well as professional. After all what good is our knowledge and skills if we don't have the confidence to use them?

If you would like to know more about how we can help you stop your downward confidence spiral, decrease your anxiety, stop the avoidance and start being the confident professional you want to be please take a look around our website.

The help is there and the great news is for those based in the UK and AUS our courses count as CPD (CE approval still pending for US), plus our receipts contain no mention of confidence as we know employer support can vary. 

With 99% of course attendees stating they would recommend us to a friend and a money back guarantee, you can be assured that we are here to help.

If you have any questions please email hello@accesscpd.com

Lets make 2023 the year you became the confident veterinary professional you long to be.



Louise & Jo