I KNOW Nothing!

I know this is not about dentistry nor veterinary education and training.  But, I wanted to share it with you all none-the-less.

So, on April 28th, 2013 I shared this photo on my personal Facebook page:

I wrote the following under the photo:

So, this morning, I was so excited to climb up and see if we had eggs or chicks! Now, it is a good thing you weren't outside of my house as I was taking this picture, because you should have seen the bed head, old PJs and this 53 yr old teetering on a plastic step ladder getting attacked by the brazen, fitful mommy bird. You would have died of fright or laughter. Either way, you'd be dead and you wouldn't get to see this!


The different eggs certainly caught my attention and so I wrote further:

 So...we have squatters? Who belongs to who and what do I do? Do I get rid of the squatters? Do I let Nature run its course? What kind of eggs are they? The bombardier bird was small, brown with bright red mixed in. I am thinking Red House Finch. The one thing I am not going to do is turn on the light at night. We will have 8 cooked eggs!

Then I did some research and posted the following:
So, apparently, a Brown Headed Cowbird has laid eggs in my house sparrow's nest. Cowbirds do not build nests due to their wide migratory nature. So, they parasitise other bird nests. Usually the cowbird removes one of the host eggs and then she lays one or more of her own eggs in the nest. She is capable of laying 30-40 eggs over a 2-3 month period so she parasitises many nests. The eggs then hatch and the chicks are much bigger than the other chicks.  Not only will they starve out the host chicks, as they grow, they can literally crowd the other babies out.

Everybody posted opinions on how to handle it.  Literally, it was the most responded to post I have ever gotten (71 interactions).  They went from removing the larger, cowbird eggs to letting Mother Nature handle it.  I valued everyone's opinions but I really struggled with this.  I even went so far as to try to design a net to hang under the nest to catch anyone that was crowded out with the intention to take them to the area's licensed wildlife sanctuary/rehab.

OK...I wrestled with the decision as to how to handle the cowbird:house finch saga.  I chose to allow Mother Nature and the Universe to do as She does best...I figured it was Her responsibility to handle it and my name was not on this.

For days, I had chosen not to peek.  I was afraid my reaction would be that of disgust and disappointment.  But, yesterday I chose to see what had happened.  The video clearly shows what I found and my heart filled with the miracle of Spring and the joy of new life.

Within the last five years I am frequently reminded that I don't know everything and I don't have to understand all.  I have no idea why cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds.  I have no idea why wonderful people get sick.  I don't know why young men bomb innocent children and people.  I don't understand how miracles happen.  But, I have awakened to the beauty and joy available to us in those moments if we chose to see them.

This tiny house finch has chosen to love three big cowbirds as though they were her own.  She doesn't question why they don't look like her, or why they eat so much...she loves them unconditionally. She rises to the challenge and that is a Miracle.  People I love get sick but families and friends rally and gather and find strength and Love in moments they would have otherwise thought they could never survive.  Bombs go off and people run towards the danger to help a stranger instead of listening to the survival part of their brain that clearly says: RUN!

I am coming up on 54 years old and the older I get, the more I surrender to the fact that I KNOW NOTHING!  That statement sounds scary but it has offered me the most beautiful way to experience life.

Namaste', friends.

Vickie

You Might Ask: Why Do I Need to Hire a Trainer?

Why do you need to hire a trainer?  Maybe the truth is; you don't! And if that is the case...I want to take this time to congratulate you.  The ability to practice medicine; whether as a veterinarian or a technician, or to manage a veterinary practice AND to stay abreast of new ideas and best practices while maintaining any semblance of a life is a challenge.  

My experience, even in my clinical practice is that we decide we are going to add a service, how we are going to communicate that service, what we are going to charge for it, and who is responsible for it.  We commence to provide that new service and we adjust everything we originally thought or decided, based on feedback.  Trail and error.  Then once we work it out to the point that we no longer have any problems with it and everyone is comfortable, we will do it every day, the same way and we will never question it again until we are forced to.

I will give you an example. For years, feline patients would come into the practice, be admitted for a procedure and be gently and lovingly placed in a cage with a blanket, a kitty litter pan and a catnip pillow.  A few hours later, it would be time to work with some of these cats and it would seem as though "Lovey" was having an allergic reaction to stainless steel.  Some of these cats would go from a lovely little purr bucket to a whirling dervish of teeth and nails.

We would mutter a curse word, don a pair of welders gloves, lock the doors, grab the biggest quilt we could find, call the employee that has earned the title "cat wrangler" and add a little more sedative to the injection or a cancel the procedure due to it no longer being a safe or atraumatic experience. 

Result:  More curse words, one escapee cat, four employees running wildly trying to apprehend the patient and eventually, one very injured employee, a trip to the ER, one completed worker's comp form and a cat that doesn't sedate well due to an extreme catacholamine flood.

Then an outsider came in and witnessed said experience.  She had experienced many of the same type problems before and she realized that the same cat was a doll baby in the exam room for her vaccines.  She suggested that we identify and schedule these patients as a "Do First" experience and sedate them, on the baby scale in the room with the owner.  A no-brainer some may think...but it took an outsider to show us the way out of our rut.  And, the clients love it.  They feel we are taking special care of their baby...and we are!

So, what ruts do you find yourself in?  Are dentistries the bane of everyone's existence?  Are your client service representatives getting yelled at because the client doesn't understand the bill?  Is the surgeon frustrated because they have to fit in carnasseal tooth extractions between surgeries?  Is it frustrating to do be expected to clean teeth and perform anesthesia at the same time?    if so, please know you are not alone.  

You might ask then ,what does the typical in-house dentistry training look like?  For larger practices, we divide the staff in half.  One half of the vets and techs work in a 3 hour wet lab concentrating on proper cleaning, charting, and honing their radiographic skills so that they can offer a full mouth series efficiently.  The other half of the professional staff is running appointments so that the day is not a total loss.

During lunch, we do a communication lecture.  There is no sense learning how to do a skill if you can't get the client to understand its importance enough to comply with your recommendations.  

Then the staff switches roles and the half that ran appointments, now gets to experience the wet lab. 

By the time the day is complete, we also have created a wish list.  This is a list of equipment that will help you provide this new or upgraded service efficiently.  Change also can seem overwhelming and the trainers can set expected timelines for change and equipment purchases.

The anesthesia training day looks slightly different.  The first half of the day is the trainer will observe anesthetic cases to see where the staff strengths are.  She will then provide a lecture over lunch and in the afternoon, a wet lab tailored specifically for your practice based on her observations and a PetED pre-visit survey the practice provides returns to her.

In closing, a trainer provides great opportunities for the staff:

• to think and troubleshoot with "outside-of-the-rut" thinking
• to be able to tweak protocols and procedures to fit within your practice
• to work with your own equipment and environment
• for the entire staff to get the same education at the same time instead of relying on one staff member to return and share all of the information to which they were exposed 
• to provide RACE CE credits* to all staff members simultaneously without the travel, lodging and registration fees for each staff member.
• PetED also has a Willow Grove, PA site where wet labs can be scheduled for small groups.  This enables practices to send employees for training without the need to amend appointments or their surgery schedules.

If you think that your practice could benefit from a  PetED Veterinary Education and Training Resource experience, contact us through the website at www.PetEDVeterinaryTraining.com or we can schedule a free Skype consultation (Skype name: Vickie.Byard). 

*RACE CE credits have only been submitted and approved for the dentistry experiences.  Anesthesia is pending approval.