Thomas E. Catanzaro, DVM, MHA, FACHE, DACHE

You have graduated; you passed the boards, and you have finally found a practice that is a great fit. The owner is excited about having you start your career at the practice, too. Now you must walk through the door of that practice and make your first impression as a new team member.

It's great to see many practices are now acknowledging that the old, traditional methods of management are not effective, and they are modernizing their strategies and taking steps to improve staff morale, and consequently productivity.

New graduates do not have the privilege of "dating" practices. This a one reason why so few stay with their first practices.

The usual encounter starts with a progress-notes entry for the client concern, a weight (hopefully sequential with a body-condition score), a TPR, a BP, lead II ECG, tonopen screen and maybe even a urinary kidney screen.

One of the most often-used consultation summaries, in my experience, comes from the comments on creating our own day.

In preparing this article, my mind races back to my days as a veterinary student at Colorado State University. One of the more vivid memories I recall involved my surgery partner. He was performing a femoral head resection. The stockinette leg slips up his arm, and he grabs it with his lower jaw and shoulder just as the surgery professor walks up.

The trite phrase, "personality conflicts," allows key issues to be ignored or defined out of existence in daily operations. The term could mean the practice did not hire for "team fit," or they did not establish a "safe-haven" environment when establishing behavior expectations.

The phrase "open book management" means many different things to different people, and in some arenas makes the staff cringe with fear of the charts posted on the wall and the monthly beatings which occur when they do not reach their assigned quotas.

Practice owners need to strategize on employee compensation.

Nurtured means they know the desired outcome and accept the accountability for getting there with the client and patient...

The recent publication of the new canine guidelines by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) is creating some debate throughout the veterinary profession and has hit a little closer to home for even more practitioners.

Dr. Thomas E. Catanzaro sifts through the misconceptions about compliance issues in practice.

Dr. Thomas Catanzaro provides a detailed outline of the essential elements for developing nutritional counseling for your patients.

Opportunites abound when hunting for your first practice; expect unexpected

Opportunites abound when hunting for your first practice; expect unexpected

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