Creating a collective of compassionate carers

For Megan Alderson, there’s a central truth to the challenges facing the veterinary industry: a lack of self-compassion.

“We run towards compassion, but we have a lack of compassion for ourselves,” says the veterinarian with more than three decades’ experience in the industry.

This lack of compassion results in mental health challenges, overwork, burnout, and ultimately people leaving the veterinary sector for good, which compounds the challenges for those who remain, she says.

These challenges led Megan to develop Vet Thrive, a wellbeing programme designed to improve the wellbeing of those working in caring industries: vets, dentists and healthcare professionals.

This evolved to a podcast, Vet Thrive Collective, which allows her to reach a wider audience. MAS supported the first season of this podcast, which offers conversations with people who have insight into the different aspects of mental wellbeing.

Seeking help

Megan has faced her own mental health challenges throughout her career, and has sought help from many sources, and wanted to create something specifically for vets and other carers.

“I was constantly seeking help, mostly from books, sometimes in business, sometimes in career mastery, and sometimes it was for personal health or mental and emotional health.”

Her ‘aha’ moment came when she took part in a mindfulness-based stress-reduction course that helps to build resilience and wellbeing and to prevent burnout and compassion fatigue of caring industries, she says.

The Vet Thrive programme offers simple exercises that individuals, teams or workplaces can undertake daily to set themselves up for positive mental wellbeing during their work. Megan trialled it on her own team at The Strand Vets in Auckland, which illustrated it can be done in a clinical setting.

“We had the people that were really engaged like, ‘I’m happy to have 10 minutes, just sitting there meditating.’ And then we had the people that actively hated it that were like, ‘I don’t even want to be in the room, I want to be getting on with my day, we’re not going to do this.’

“And the shifts gradually happened as the seed grew within our team, that the self-care that we put in for 10 minutes a day in the morning then filtered out to the rest of our lives and our community and our whānau,” she says.

Sharing her knowledge

Megan says podcasting was a natural extension of Vet Thrive, building on her experience working in talkback radio and her love of conversation.

“I am so curious about every person I meet. I love conversation and I love talkback, so I thought how can I share these conversations with amazing people that bring new insights to everyone else?”

She says feedback has been really positive so far and she has a long list of speakers she wants to bring on to share their stories and wealth of knowledge. While she is speaking from her experience as a vet, the topics explored can benefit anyone, particularly those working in caring professions.

“I hope it will help medical professionals like vets, dentists and doctors to start looking after themselves and really think about how do we support the carer so they can keep on caring.”

You can listen to the Vet Thrive Collective podcast on Spotify or Apple. To find out more about the podcast and wellbeing programme, visit vetthrive.org.