Livestock vets have spoken about their experiences and how they respond to the challenges they face. They wanted to encourage others in the profession and give some advice to vets who may be struggling, e.g. "There's always hope and you're not alone. Other people feel the same and you mustn't ever feel that you're the only one that feels like this."
The quotes are separated into topics (some may be in more than one topic) and split into 'short', 'medium' and 'long' – so that you can flick though quickly or read in more depth.
A small number of comments are available to listen to.
Some vets suggested that hearing other livestock vets speak about their experiences, including of when things went wrong and they made mistakes, may be useful in helping others to realise "that everything's not going to be perfect all the time" and that "it's normal to make mistakes".
We are most grateful to the two vets who have provided the recordings below as samples to illustrate how this might sound.
The quotes are loosely collated into general topics and some quotes may appear in more than one. They are verbatim quotes, extracted from longer conversations which means that some read better than others.
Please feel free to print or save quotes that you find helpful. For citation, please acknowledge "Livestock veterinary surgeon, 2020, How farm vets cope, RCVS Mind Matters Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Project – Year 1, SRUC. Available at: https://www.howfarmvetscope.co.uk