Old Lessons, New Opportunities

I'm often told that veterinarians are slow to adopt new things. I want to talk about why.

When I first started this article, it came off as rather angry and bitter. I’m generally not like that, but I’m somewhat fairly extraordinarily intense. I wanted to write a thorough piece. The more citations I found, the more evidence of veterinarians getting the wrong end of the stick from laboratory companies, corporate aggregators, software companies, supply vendors, and so forth, the darker my mood got. It was lengthy and well-cited. It was not a fun read.

It makes me pretty angry how my profession has been treated by others who would seek to make money off of our work. But to list each and every offense hasn’t been cool since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg.¹ ² The list of wrongs done to veterinarians and the profession seems a compilation of relatively small slights and short-ends. But it’s hard to find a veterinary professional who hasn’t experienced several of these wrongs from the indifferent employees of a corporation. Talk to the doctors, everybody has at least a few of these stories.

So I ditched the first draft of the article and took a different approach.

See? It’s a veterinarian stepping carefully but also burdened with some baggage. Metaphor.

Sometimes I hear things like, “Veterinarians are resistant to change.” Which is probably true. A quick glance at scientific literature will show you that it’s not just veterinarians, but we get a reputation for it all the same. The thing is: the people who say this about my profession are usually the ones trying to sell me something.

I’m at VMX, and there’s no shortage of people trying to sell me something. And no shortage of people whose products or services I’ve declined. Some understand that declining services or products isn’t a personal affront, it’s just a reality of business. Other folks look at me like I kicked their puppy.

I’m coming up on my ten-year anniversary of practicing medicine. I really do love what I do, but it hasn’t been without challenges. I’ve had bad experiences with PE firms, franchises, with laboratory providers, with big vendors and small ones, and software providers too. I’ve had good experiences as well, but it takes more than one good experience to erase the feelings of one bad one. And I’ve had some hard lessons, but I learned them well.

So when a new purveyor of technology or hardware tells me that my profession is slow to change, I know it’s because years of bad experiences have made us wary, careful, and skeptical – sometimes to the point of cynicism. 

I didn’t always insist on a deposits up front, but I do now. I didn’t always blow off phone calls with vendors, but I do now. I didn’t always thoroughly research companies and salespeople before meetings, but I do now. I didn’t always have a nasty opinion of private equity aggregators, but I do now. Heck, I didn’t always do background checks on employees, but I do now. Hard lessons, but I learned them.

My wary skepticism is a way to protect myself and my hospital. My occasional indifference to sales calls is a way to protect my time. I don’t resent the folks trying to do their job of pitching a product, but there’s some resentment at their righteous indignation. I take some offense to the idea that my lack of regard for the value of their product indicates a character flaw on my part or that it represents an overall failure of the profession. 

While a number of experiences come to mind, one in particular sticks out as emblematic of the attitude. In a conversation with my local Hill’s sales representative, she offered to put a large Hill’s display in my lobby at no charge to me. I declined, and she responded, “I guess you’re not that into nutrition.” She’s not allowed in my hospital anymore. And now we carry Purina.

Maybe I’m a cynical jerk, maybe the majority of my profession are Luddites, or maybe the product just isn’t very good. Sometimes I just can’t afford to do all things I want.

Saying “thanks, but no thanks” doesn’t make me a Luddite or a jerk.³ It’s not a character flaw. It’s not an institutional failure. The discerning wariness of the experienced veterinarian is the result of lessons learned when we were trusting and enthusiastic and found that such traits were not always to a great gain of our own.

It was Herodotus in The Histories who wrote, “we must of every thing examine the end and how it will turn out at the last.”⁴

We needn’t dwell darkly on the details of history to recall its lessons. When presented with new opportunities, and there are many in these times of astonishing technological growth and advancement, we can retain open-mindedness and enthusiasm while still treading carefully.

And salespeople: give us a break, huh?

1. I hadn’t brushed up on the history of the Reformation in a while. The nailing of the 95 Theses to the door probably happened. The Theses written in 1517, primarily focused on the practice of indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church and did not make any mention of witchcraft. The Theses were a critical reaction to the sale of indulgences, which were believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins. Luther's key arguments in the Theses centered around the nature of repentance, the limits of papal power, and the importance of true contrition for sins, rather than the purchasing of indulgences as a means to absolve sin. The content of the Theses suggests that Luther was concerned with reforming church practices and doctrine related to penance, salvation, and the authority of the pope. Perhaps notably, the work makes no mention of the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of witches. So while Martin Luther had 95 Theses, a witch ain’t one.

2. I have exactly zero regrets about how hard I worked for that joke.

3. However, my overly direct delivery of said message may stray into that territory—mea culpa.

4. That’s the translation from my copy of The Histories. The awkward language is verbatim.