Leading the veterinary nursing team
Mark Hedberg DVM MRCVS, opened the day’s management stream.
On Friday 8 April, Mark Hedberg DVM MRCVS, opened the day’s management stream with a talk directly addressing the need to increase levels of respect, trust and understanding in the veterinary nursing team.
In an engaging and animated lecture, Hedberg offered both personal insight and practical advice to management staff about treating the practice workforce with a clinical approach, with his focus on nursing staff.
Entering the British veterinary profession directly from the Middle East and Hungarian equivalent provided Mark with a refreshing and honest appreciation for the presence and importance of a nursing team. Mark used his personal experiences adjusting to the British veterinary industry to offer interesting insight into his perception of how the role is integral to both the daily running and the overall success of a business.
“I came to Great Britain where it was explained to me that there was this profession of amazing people”. In a recent project opening a new practice, he attributed the successful transition and on going development of the hospital to his head nurse.
In an attempt to blur the lines between job roles and transcend the traditional hierarchy in practice, Hedberg frequently employed a technique of self-mockery to suggest the underlying assumption in many practices that vets should command more respect.
Instead he made the bold statement that “gone are the days of ‘Oh it’s the vet! The vet is god!” He went to on advise that “vets don’t need to know (nurses’) jobs to let them do it”.
He subsequently outlined the management of a whole practice team citing respect, communication, listening, feedback and trust as integral both within and across teams.
“Whether you’re a vet or a nurse, the people on your team deserve respect, how do you expect nurses to respect you if you don’t treat them like people who deserve it.”
He referred to his own flaws as a listener as a means of on going self assessment and team communication. Distinguishing between listening and speaking as both vital components in a process of successful communication is a strong foundation for on going team ethic and an open and trusting work environment.
The reality, in most practices, however, is that situations arise and relationships develop that are detrimental to the ‘health’ of your team, to which Mark suggested a diagnostic approach to the problem, not dissimilar from a clinical approach.
He suggested managers should “examine the practice’s clinical parameters.”
In a five point plan to treat a ‘sick’ team, Mark Hedberg advised managers should take a history, examine the team, investigate further, make a diagnosis and action on it, or in extreme cases refer, either to a consultant a family member or a doctor.
Frequently referring to his own personal experiences, Mark Hedberg offered both a practical but realistic view about what managers should expect from a nursing team. Refreshingly honest and open about his own experiences, the speaker heavily emphasized the importance of communication in daily running and in times of crisis.
“Communication is the only thing we have to get the diagnostic data that we need”. He went on to emphasise that feedback from the team should be an on going process, one that should not be limited to an appraisal situation, to harbour a trusting and open relationship between vets and nurses, managers and staff.
Interjecting his management advice with uplifting and praising statements about the value of nurses, the talk was laced with personal revelations about his own limitations as a vet and a manager, and the importance of acknowledging both strengths in your teams and weaknesses in yourself, even questioning the viability of approaching team management with over prescribed assumptions and formulae.
“You try your best to leave your home at home but you’re human, you’re going to have bad days. My dad died two years ago, for a time I really was not a happy camper, and I still carry his harmonica”. To which he played a tune.
Whilst providing practical steps and guidance about how to address issues within a workforce, perhaps the most beneficial and grounding element to Mark Hedberg’s lecture was in fact the honesty and realism he approached his own guidelines with.
The message underpinning the methods and theories was in fact that when managing a team of nurses and working in a practice environment, the turbulent nature of interpersonal relations and personal situations makes for inevitable difficulties, and a realistic, respectful but proactive approach to management issues is the way forward.
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