I would like to tender my resignation as Editor of VetSurgeon.org and VetNurse.co.uk.
Chris Ritchie will now be taking over editorial responsibility, bringing Veterinary Edge, VetSurgeon.org and VetNurse.co.uk together under one roof.
Before I slide into the background, though, I’d like to leave a few thoughts on how communication has changed over the last quarter of a century, the dangers of social media, and why I think the veterinary profession needs to rediscover its sense of perspective.
It’s been a hell of a ride.
I launched VetNurse.co.uk in 2000, four years before the upstart Mark Zuckerberg had a similar idea, and VetSurgeon.org in 2008. Looking back, I’m enormously proud of the role the sites played in bringing the veterinary community together to share information, ideas, support and experience.
It has also been a serendipitous career choice because one of my daughters has a catastrophic epileptic syndrome. I often didn’t know whether she would still be alive by the end of the day, which would have made a normal office job challenging. So I really do thank all of you who visited VetSurgeon.org and VetNurse.co.uk and helped make them the communities they became.
It wasn’t always a bed of eider down, of course.
Over the course of my career, society has moved from communicating with thoughtfully-composed letters, face-to-face discussions and the telephone, to the short-form, hastily-composed written word sent by email, text or social media.
The thing is, writing is a real skill that not everyone has.
People forget that written communication is not about what the author intends, but what the reader reads into the words.
Offline, we mind our manners naturally. We self-moderate our thoughts when face-to-face with others.
And when we’re speaking face to face, we instinctively adjust our words as we go. A raised eyebrow, a frown or a puzzled expression tells us to clarify, soften or explain.
Online, there is none of that. We become more selfish, thinking only about the point we want to make. So we just press “Send” and expect the person at the other end to read our words with exactly the same tone we had in our heads.
Often they don’t.
That made my job moderating forums difficult. I mean, if someone called another member a shit, that was easy enough.
But vets and nurses are a highly educated bunch and the sharpest barbs were rarely openly rude.
They were carefully phrased, often technically defensible, and usually written by people who genuinely believed the importance of making their point completely overrode any consideration of how hurtful, dismissive or arrogant those words might appear to someone reading them on a screen.
So what advice would I give to a young person setting out today? Three things.
First, never have an emotionally-charged argument by e-mail, text or on social media.
The medium is simply not up to the job.
Where spoken words evaporate, written ones have a habit of coming back to haunt you.
So pick up the telephone or better still, demand to meet.
Second, brevity is a luxury that can only be afforded by two people who know each other very well. To anyone else, it can appear abrupt, opinionated or arrogant.
So make up for that shortfall by being a little more flowery with the written word than you might normally be.
For example, if you have an opinion to share, preface it with the words “I think”. They respect the reader by saying that what follows is an opinion, not an arrogant decree.
Thirdly, whenever you’ve got the time, always pick up the telephone rather than texting or emailing someone.
Text communicates information. Conversation builds understanding.
Turning to social media, things like Facebook have obviously had a profound impact on all our lives, and perhaps none so much as those who find themselves judged by the mob.
In that regard can there be any profession more at risk than professionals responsible for caring for someone’s beloved “fur baby”.
Faced by an aggrieved owner mouthing off online, many would argue the best thing is to ignore it. But leaving an untruth about your business unchallenged can be commercially, not to mention emotionally disastrous.
My inclination would always be to respond by explaining that for all sorts of reasons, the internet is not the right place for a complex medical discussion, that as the late Queen Elizabeth famously said: “Recollections may vary” and that you would welcome the opportunity to talk it all through in person.
For many of the same reasons, I think the professional use of social media by vets and nurses to debate clinical issues and shared experience is fraught with danger.
But it’s an insidious kind of danger.
It’s the algorithm.
The problem is, the algorithm decides what you see based not on what is important or informative or even true, but on what it thinks will provoke reaction.
Indeed, the algorithm doesn’t merely decide what you read. It quietly teaches millions of people how to behave. Outrage is rewarded. Certainty is rewarded. Nuance is largely ignored.
That’s no basis for a balanced scientific discussion.
It just rewards the loudest voices in the room.
Worse still, Facebook and LinkedIn impose a brevity that makes it impossible to express complex or nuanced scientific thoughts.
It’s that same brevity which so often polarises the discussion into: “I’m effing right and you’re effing wrong.”
Finally, there is something rather wasteful about social media.
Yesterday’s discussion disappears beneath today’s.
Valuable conversations and shared information become effectively undiscoverable.
What a waste.
More by luck than design, VetSurgeon.org and VetNurse.co.uk have largely escaped many of these problems. Discussions happen in chronological order, not according to what an algorithm thinks will keep you scrolling. People have the space to explain themselves properly. Shared knowledge remains searchable years later. And, perhaps most importantly, discussions are moderated with the simple aim of encouraging people to disagree without becoming disagreeable.
Still, the endorphin hit of a Facebook ‘like’ is a hard thing to compete against, and the veterinary audience has, for the moment at least, fragmented across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and even TikTok.
At the same time, I have to recognise that, at almost sixty years old, I am no longer the right person to imagine what the next generation of veterinary surgeons and nurses want from an online community.
That’s compounded by the fact that I’ve developed an opinion about the direction of the veterinary profession which has shades of Gerald Ratner.
I wish I could say I was leaving the profession in a better place than it was back in 2000, but sadly I think the reverse is true.
Where most practitioners once worked for small independent practices where they had skin in the game, the profession has increasingly consolidated into large corporate groups where they have become employees.
Where most general practitioners once handled a broad range of work in-house, there is now a much stronger referral culture, which has undoubtedly advanced standards, but perhaps also reduced some of the variety and job satisfaction that many practitioners once enjoyed.
Where BSAVA Congress once felt like an intimate gathering of familiar faces, the London Excel feels rather more anonymous by comparison.
But perhaps most difficult of all has been the profession’s relentless pursuit of clinical excellence.
By that I mean how the regulator, the corporates, the universities and practitioners themselves have all spent the last quarter of a century striving to improve standards.
The problem is that progress is rarely free, and alongside improving standards has come a steady increase in the number of pet owners expressing resentment about the cost that accompanies those higher standards of veterinary care.
To put that in perspective, when I was 30, I don’t remember anyone talking about it. Now, it feels like pretty much everyone I meet does.
What they say usually falls into two camps. Either:
“Private equity is milking everyone”
or
“Vets are exploiting my love of the animal.”
And often wrapped up in that is some version of:
“The vet recommended a number of options, one of which was a crazy length to go to, clinically or financially, for my old dog.”
And every time, I find myself explaining that I think they’re wrong.
Private equity may well have been inflationary, but not in the simplistic big-bad-bogeyman, rip-everyone-off-for-shareholders way people often imagine. And vets themselves are certainly not exploiting anyone. The overwhelming majority have only one thing in mind, which is doing the best for the animal in front of them.
Unfortunately, the march of science has hugely increased the spread of what’s possible, from £100 to well over £10,000, and vets feel professionally obliged to lay out all the options, regardless of cost.
Society’s relationship with risk has changed too. Once upon a time there was an acceptance that medicine, whether human or veterinary, involved judgement, uncertainty and occasionally getting things wrong.
Now everyone expects certainty, and vets, understandably fearful of complaints, disciplinary action and public criticism, gravitate towards ever more exhaustive investigation.
I think the evidence that ever-higher standards and ever-higher costs have created a serious problem is now overwhelming.
I also think the situation could be eased if everyone, and I mean everyone: the RCVS, the universities, employers, practitioners and owners, took a more pragmatic approach to care.
If that was more front of mind, I think it would remove a lot of the resentment.
It would dramatically reduce the number of “my vet suggested spending thousands scanning a thirteen-year-old Labrador and then thousands more treating it” conversations that so often end up fuelling negative headlines and anger towards the profession.
So if I could leave the profession with one thought, it would be to rediscover perspective.
Many years ago, after I generated a spectacularly embarrassing piece of newspaper coverage for one of my clients, my boss quietly put the screaming headline down and said: “Arlo, remember, it’s only a newspaper. We haven’t killed any children today.”
In that one sentence, she put things into perspective in a way that has lived with me for the rest of my life.
I sometimes wonder whether veterinary medicine could benefit from a little more perspective.
Not because animals don’t matter.
Not because owners shouldn’t love them.
But because, in the end, it is still a dog, a cat or a rabbit.
The aim should not simply be to pursue everything modern veterinary medicine makes possible.
It should be to pursue what is proportionate.
Ironically, I think that would improve life not only for owners, but for vets too.
It would relieve some of the constant pressure to investigate everything, explain everything, recommend everything and fear criticism for missing anything.
Perhaps excellence isn’t doing more.
Perhaps excellence is knowing when enough is enough.
So that’s me done.
After twenty-six years writing about veterinary medicine, it’s time to hand over to Chris Ritchie, who will now be taking on editorial responsibility, whilst I help from behind the scenes.
I honestly think the communities will benefit from fresh eyes and fresh ideas, and I’m looking forward to watching what comes next.
Meanwhile, I’m off to explain something else.
Technology.
Artificial intelligence, gadgets, cameras, apps and all the other bits of everyday technology that promise to make life easier, waste your money, or occasionally do both at the same time.
If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, I’d love you to join me at arlo-guthrie.com.
Starting from scratch again at almost sixty is either wonderfully optimistic or spectacularly stupid.
Time will tell.
I wish you all the very best
Arlo Guthrie Publisher VetSurgeon.org and VetNurse.co.uk