#140: Science vs Profit: Navigating Medicine, Money, and Morals. With Dr Brennen McKenzie

A frightened cat in a cage. A vet who has to decide if it lives or dies, because the shelter is full, and a new batch of cats will be arriving on Monday. These are familiar situations for many vet teams - so much so that it can feel like just an unfortunate reality of veterinary work. But what if we’re thinking about it all wrong?  If you don't understand the underlying cause of the problem, you’ll choose the wrong solution.

Why does a vet who's flat out every single day still hit a pay ceiling? Dr Andy Roark explains the hidden economics of veterinary practice, and an uncomfortable truth: the thing that makes us good vets might be the same thing holding our pay down.

Ask most vets what feedback means, and they'll think of a meeting. Once a year - maybe someone explaining that you're not billing enough. Dr Liv Oginska reckons that meeting is barely feedback at all. Because real feedback is happening all day: the look on your face when someone walks in, whether you say the thing you've been wrestling with for three weeks, or take it home and complain about it to your partner instead. There's a famous quote: 'The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.' In this episode, we fix that. Liv shows what to actually say when someone goes straight to defensive, why you should never label their emotion, and the work you need to do on yourself first. Plus her practical advice on receiving feedback well. Dr Olivia Oginska is a vet, emotional intelligence specialist, certified workplace conflict mediator, lecturer at Murdoch University and founder of Human-Savvy. She's also just published research examining the links between feedback skills, psychological safety and turnover intention in veterinary organisations. In other words: does the way we talk to each other influence whether people want to leave? (Spoiler: it matters!) Somewhere in your practice there's a conversation nobody is having. It's already changing how everyone behaves. This episode is about having it. Resources and links Liv's work: Human-Savvy A new cohort of the year-long Human-Savvy League leadership mastermind opens in October 2026. The Human-Savvy Symposium - a full day of this, in person, Brisbane, Friday 6 November 2026. Stuck on a case and want a specialist's eyes on it? Come and ask in our specialist support space. Close to 700 clinical episodes with full show notes: thevetvault.com (click "clinical content") Vets on Tour - Italy 2027 and the Serengeti with Prof Jill Maddison and Prof Dave Church: vetsontour.com

What if the thing making your working day harder isn’t the workload? What if it's the building? In this episode we're joined by Jerry Kennard from ⁠Evoke Projects⁠, someone who designs veterinary spaces for a living and has watched a lot of owners get this expensively wrong. Because a practice build always starts as a dream: the right location, the beautiful fit-out - the clinic you've always wanted. But plan it wrong, and that dream can quickly turn into a trap that stifles growth and demotivates teams . And most of it comes down to five mistakes that are a lot easier to avoid before you sign anything than after. In this episode, you'll learn: Why falling in love with your site might be the single most expensive mistake you can make The "too big or too small" problem, and how to future-proof for expansion without drowning in debt Why designing for the pet and the client but forgetting your team is a false economy How lean design and smart workflow let you do more in less space, without burning anyone out

Everyone says burnout. But Dr Sarah Golding thinks a lot of us are misdiagnosing ourselves. When vets come to her ready to walk away from the profession, they arrive with a vocabulary: burnt out, overwhelmed, imposter syndrome. Not one of them opens with the word Sarah reckons is often actually doing the damage: Fear. Fear of failing. Fear of the money conversation. Fear of the board, the Facebook post, the Monday morning debrief. And the big one, the one that shows up in almost every list she asks vets to write: fear of criticism, mostly from each other. Every fear you carry into a consult room was handed to you somewhere along your path - often by someone with good intentions - a teacher, a mentor, a friend. So we get into what to do about it. How to run a debrief that lets someone put a mistake down instead of carrying it for a decade. Why "don't worry about it, mate" is just as unhelpful as shouting. The difference between practising defensively and practising to help, and why clients can sense which one you are within seconds. Sarah's "debrief and dump it" process, complete with the literal bucket in her clinic that gets burnt at the Christmas party. And a small structural fix for the money conversation that has all but ended adult tantrums at her front desk. Dr Sarah Golding is a mixed practice vet in her second decade, principal practitioner and co-manager at Gowrie Vet Clinic in NSW, and this year a finalist in the NSW/ACT AgriFutures Rural Women's Award for her mentoring work through The Vet Mind Mentor. Somewhere in your career there's a case that wrote a rule about what you're good at, and what you avoid. This episode is about going back and reading that rule properly.