Mental health and the use of AI in veterinary medicine

This podcast episode is sponsored by Nationwide.

On this episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360 that was recorded live at the 2025 Fetch Long Beach conference, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes special guest Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA, back to the show to talk about the importance of purpose, people, passion, and process in the veterinary industry.

Throughout the episode, Christman and Weinstein share more about the need for leadership, community, and teamwork in the veterinary industry to help drive motivation and retention, especially for newer veterinarians entering the industry, and more.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: You stress the importance of getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats. What practical steps can practice owners take to hire, retain and reposition team members for long-term success?

Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA: We have a huge problem with retention and acquisition right now. Even though there is really not a bad unemployment situation, we can't seem to fill our practices with good people, and retaining people means we don't have to fill it, but we're always going to have turnover from that standpoint. So good people who can do the job and are committed to the job, those are the right people in the right seats. Now, every once in a while, we get the right people in the wrong seat that need to be coached, trained or moved into a different seat. And then sometimes you let people on the bus that really shouldn't even be on the bus, and those are the people that you write a letter of recommendation to, and you send them down the street to some colleague that you don't really like. But hiring should be done all the time.

We have such turnover that if you're not constantly looking for great people, you never know who's going to walk through the door. I mean, many, many years ago, when I did some hiring in my practice, some of the best people that I found had never worked in the veterinary profession before, and you give them a chance, you get them to buy into the passion, and you train them, and you teach them, and you coax them, and you make them part of this family that we've created, and you get them in the right seats.

Now, sometimes you got to twist the seat a little bit so that they fit, and sometimes we hav square pegs and round holes. But honestly, everybody working in the veterinary profession does it because they want to make a difference, and that's part of what you have to do at the beginning is go through and understand their value system, make sure that you have an understanding of how you can get them trained, and then continue training. Part of veterinary practices should be focusing on is staff retention through respect, responsibility and recognition. Give them jobs, let them grow, give them recognition for the work that they've done, and show them respect. Because this is not an easy job. There is no component of small animal or companion animal veterinary medicine, or any component of veterinary medicine that's easy. It's not easy. And we have to recognize the hard work that our staff does. There's not a veterinarian out there that wants to be a receptionist in their own practice. Yeah, I don't blame them, right?