It’s no secret that life in the veterinary industry can be stressful. Juggling long hours, high-pressure situations, and difficult clients can be exhausting - particularly with pet ownership rates reach record highs post pandemic.
Managing these stressors relies on clinics having the right support systems in place. For veterinary practice leaders, the challenge lies in fostering a work environment that champions staff wellbeing while meeting high workload demands with limited resources.
Finding that sweet spot is easier said than done, but leveraging patient care software like Vet Radar can be a savvy way to slash unnecessary administrative overheads and, by extension, reduce workplace stress. Here’s how.
1. It automates repetitive daily tasks
Your frontline staff probably spend a significant chunk of their day dealing with paperwork. All those little administrative duties - whether it’s creating a treatment sheet by hand, filing documents, or manually adding products to an invoice - can be extremely time-consuming and sidetrack staff from the more important and rewarding aspects of veterinary work.
Vet Radar enables your people to spend more time doing the work they love by eliminating or streamlining many of your repetitive day-to-day tasks. Electronic treatment sheets, for example, enable you to set up treatment sheet templates, which are then automatically populated with information from the patient’s clinical record in ezyVet. Vet Radar also optimizes your invoicing processes by automatically capturing all billable products and services administered in Vet Radar and passing them through to ezyVet, eliminating manual data entry and minimizing the risk of costly missed charges.
Check out this blog post to learn more about how you can use Vet Radar to optimize your repetitive workflows.
2. It allows you to communicate more effectively
More than half (52%) of employees say that communication breakdowns contribute to workplace stress. But in the fast-paced veterinary setting, staff don’t always have the luxury of communicating as clearly or effectively as they might like. A hurriedly scrawled clinical note or a garbled conversation with time-poor colleagues can result in ineffective information sharing, which can lead to stress, productivity loss, and unnecessary mistakes.
Vet Radar helps facilitate effective communication via its electronic veterinary whiteboard, which allows every member of the team to track patient progress and see who needs to do what to advance the patient to the next phase of treatment. Staff can monitor hospitalized patients and access clinical notes and medication history at all times, eliminating communication silos and ensuring every member of the team is always kept in the loop.
Vet Radar doesn’t replace face-to-face communication, of course, but having a centralized source of information can do wonders for keeping everyone on the same page.
3. It helps you distribute the workload
High work demands are a significant source of stress in the veterinary industry - one that has been further amplified by COVID-19. In 2021, more than 8 in 10 veterinary employees reported facing challenges with their clinics being short-staffed due to employees taking time off for personal health or family care reasons.
Vet Radar gives veterinary practices the tools they need to better distribute the workload. The electronic whiteboard offers real-time visibility of the tasks that each member of the team is responsible for, enabling clinic leaders to easily monitor staff’s workload and availability, and prevent one person from taking on too much work.
4. It empowers your team to prioritize self-care
When resources are stretched thin, practice staff often feel compelled to work late and forfeit breaks in order to keep up with the work. While it’s certainly noble, this type of self-sacrificial behavior is not sustainable in the long run and will - sooner or later - inevitably lead to high stress levels and professional burnout.
Patient care software can’t resolve the understaffing issues that are so prevalent in the veterinary industry. But by automating repetitive tasks and clearly communicating team schedules, Vet Radar can help clinics make more effective use of their resources and reduce staff’s effective workloads - both of which can help encourage employees to take their breaks and leave work on time. Empowering staff to prioritize self-care is key for delivering high-quality, sustainable patient care.
Schedule a Vet Radar demo
Want to find out what Vet Radar could do for your practice? Schedule a free demo today and discover how Vet Radar could help you reduce stress, operate more efficiently, and cultivate a more sustainable work environment.