It's been over a year since I've visited these forums (I forgot which e-mail I used and then just forgot about it altogether), but I need some like-minded pre-vet people to read my rants.
I had a year long internship end recently. It was a great opportunity with great pay but it was not veterinary in nature. I was really itching to get back to something with animals so I applied to some clinics before my final day in the internship. I was really excited when one called me for an interview. I have never worked on the clinical side of things before, most of my experiences have been in public health, regulatory, zoo, and research. I interviewed, my inexperience was mentioned repeatedly, and they still chose to hire me with the knowledge that I would need a lot of training.
Well, the training I received was approximately 16 hours of shadowing techs. After that period they wanted me to perform on my own. I tried my best to be up to the task, but apparently failed their expectations which were not really made known. After three weeks the head tech said that things weren't working out and that while I was a hard worker, reliable, and liked by the staff, my handling and restraining skills were not up to par and that I was free to leave the practice. I knew my skills were lacking, but I was surprised that they thought in less than two weeks of actual work on mostly part time shifts that I was going to perfect those skills. Were their expectations unreasonable or is that really all the training people receive when starting in a clinic?
In truth, I was relieved when they dismissed me. On my first day, amidst the shadowing, no less than five employees told me, "Don't take it personally if [Head Vet/Head Tech] yells at you." This was followed by people joking about quitting before they made it to six months. I also heard from multiple assistants that there had been a recent rash of employees quitting and that they "used to have a larger staff." In hindsight, I probably should have left that first week upon hearing such negative things about the work environment. I didn't because I really wanted the experience.
... and the head vet did yell at me multiple times. He yelled at me when I didn't know how to roll a vein, which took five seconds to demonstrate. He yelled at me numerous times for asking him to repeat prescription orders. He yelled at me for drawing up the wrong vaccine for a cat (just RCP vs a combo, which their records did not indicate). He yelled at me for making clients wait for a fecal float (something I had not been trained to do yet). Almost every interaction I had with him involved yelling, eye-rolling, or him just flat out ignoring my question. I on the other hand was constantly trying to be polite and professional when asking him and the other employees to show me how to do things that weren't covered in my training.
Like I said, I was relieved, but I'm still a little sad because it's never fun to fail. 🙁
I didn't receive much training either... it was kind of a toss you to the sharks and hope you swim. Though that wasn't their intent with me, they were just a busy clinic and didn't have time to show me every little task. I was started in reception and was shown once how to schedule an appointment and once how to check out a client, then we got hit with emergencies and I was stuck on my own. Again, not their intention, but I sure learned fast when I wasn't given the option to ask questions.
As far as restraint and things, those things do take practice and time to get used to. When I was flipped over into training people, I would pay less attention to if you are doing it "perfectly" (no one is perfect) and more attention to if you are learning, adapting and improving with time. The most important thing with restraint is that you are doing it in a manner that is not going to end up with harm to yourself, a client, the vet, another tech or the dog or cat. You should improve within two weeks, provided you are getting some direction if you are doing something wrong. If you aren't being told you are doing something wrong or could be doing something better, then you can't improve. Maybe that was the problem here? If they weren't communicating to you how to do things or improve things, then there was no way you could change things.
Also, when I was training new employees, I rarely allowed them to shadow me. Maybe the first time I would, but most of the time I was going to explain/demonstrate and you were going to do it. I don't think people learn by shadowing, they learn by doing, so I didn't allow for a whole lot of shadowing when I was training. I was always there to direct/guide/etc if the new employee needed it. And you never watched me doing things on the computer, you were going through and doing what needed to be done with me directing you were to go and how to do it.
Also, everyone has their own learning curve, so some new employees we were having them doing things on their own within a week or two and others took longer, however after two weeks there were definitely things we expected you should have a handle on, especially things with the computer because that wasn't something super difficult to get a hang of. We did have to let a new employee go once because after a month she still couldn't open a patient chart despite that being something that we guided her through 23523 times a day, every day, for 4 weeks.
As far as the vet yelling at you, that sucks. I am sorry. I have had a vet get angry with and yell at me before and it is never fun nor does it make you feel comfortable. I did end up at a bad clinic once with a horrible vet and got yelled at quite a bit, but she finally let me go and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I later happened to see a review on that vet clinic online and a client posted that the "tension within the clinic was so high that it felt as if you moved the wrong way the place would blow up". Yeah, even the clients could tell that vet was making her employees feel miserable. I was very happy to be out of there. I also later heard that another employee got angry enough with the vet that a week after I was let go, this employee finally lost it, cursed out the vet, then walked out of the clinic on her own. My only wish, is that I had been let go a week later so that I could have seen that. That vet deserved and probably still deserves a lot of bad words, yelling and probably a few good smacks from many people.
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