Why I left veterinary practice

My perfectionism broke me

When I left vet practice, I felt like a failure.

I thought the only way to be a good vet, was to have high standards. I mean, who wants to be the vet that doesn’t?!

But at 2 years graduated, I couldn’t do everything I wanted to be able to do, at the level I wanted to be able to do it. 

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

I wasn’t the quickest at bitch spays - so always felt guilty that the patient would be better off with a more experienced colleague.

I needed to ask for help when interpreting x-rays - so I felt like I was wasting colleagues’ time and that they’d be better off just doing it on their own without me. 

And I felt sick with worry during sole charge, in case something came in I couldn’t handle and I had to call for help. 

I thought the only way to “feel good enough” and to stop all that worry, was to be able to do all those things, perfectly, on my own, all the time 😥

I knew I was a long way off being able to do that (if ever; I wasn’t naive enough to think that anyone knows what they’re doing all the time), and so I decided to leave practice. 

I didn’t know that you can feel good about yourself when you’re still learning. 

Even when you’re not perfect. 

And that it DOESN’T mean being complacent and lowering your standards.

Studies show there’s minimal to no correlation between being a perfectionist and high performance, so wanting things to be perfect isn’t actually making you any better anyway (read more about that here).

I don’t regret leaving practice (I realised half way through vet school that I didn’t want to be a vet long term - LOL).

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

But I do wish I’d had the skills and the mindset to enjoy my time as a practising vet, and to have seen how good I was (hindsight is a wonderful thing). 

It’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about helping high-aiming, hard-working professionals to enjoy the life they’ve spent so long working towards.

And it’s the motivation behind the free online workshop I’m running next week on “releasing perfectionism and enjoying more of life”. 

Free workshop: releasing perfectionism and enjoying more of life

22nd October, 8-9pm BST, live and via replay.

I share three key principles I wish I’d known to help you keep those high standards (while actually achieving more of them….) AND enjoy it along the way. 

If you’ve already emailed me to sign up, you should have received the link (let me know if not!).

And if you want to join us:

I hope to see you there 🥰

Lucy x

PS. Thinking

🙋‍♀️ “I’m not a veterinary professional, can I come?”. Absolutely! If you resonate with my writing and consider yourself a perfectionist (or you’re now considering calling yourself a perfectionist 😉) please do come

🙅‍♀️“but I’m not a perfectionist! I just have a high standards” - I thought the same. Check out this

Two therapists* indicated I “might be a perfectionist”