By Rebecca Rose, CVT

You and your team members may feel like hamsters on a wheel, constantly spinning, with no vision beyond the daily routine. I imagine you are satisfied with providing daily care to patients, because that’s what we do as veterinary professionals. But wouldn’t it feel better to work toward a common purpose or goal, to include providing extraordinary patient care?

While the acronym TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More) may seem cliché, to me, it’s a timeless classic. Together Everyone Achieves More, especially when there is a defined purpose and an established, common goal to reach.

Read the entire article in Veterinary Practice News.

Time for a TEAM Tune-Up? 

With the expert coaches and tangible tools received during the Veterinary Teams Living Well Streamed Symposium, veterinary teams can spend a weekend defining their Values, Vision and Mission (VVM), create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Veterinary Team Wellbeing and prioritize the goals to move forward into a productive, purposeful Summer. Consider it a TEAM Tune-Up!

Examples of team purpose:

• Treat each patient and pet parent with dignity
• Work alongside team members with integrity
• Be an integral and respected part of the local community

Examples of team goals include:

• Receive favorable ratings on client surveys
• Decrease team turnover to reflect other industry averages (15 percent)
• Engage in three community events annually, as a team
• Debrief traumatic team incidences with 24 hours

There are three ways to evaluate (or design) your hospital’s values, vision, and mission statements.

1. Through dictatorship, where the owner(s) hide in the back room, huddled in a secretive manner, exclusively defining their team’s destiny in veterinary medicine and client service.
2. Upper management hides in a back room, exclusively crafting their team’s destiny.
3. All team members collaborate in defining personal values, professional vision, and daily mission. Common values, shared professional vision, and daily mission are created in an inclusive manner.