The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, the focus shifts from motivation to what actually sustains healthy habits. Hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss why relying on motivation often falls short and how small, consistent changes, supportive environments, and realistic expectations can help veterinary professionals build lasting physical and emotional resilience.

This episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success focuses on a familiar challenge in veterinary medicine: maintaining proper nutrition during long, unpredictable workdays. As clinic schedules fill and breaks become limited, meals are often replaced with quick, convenient options.Cohosts Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, and Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, discuss how those daily choices can affect more than energy levels, including cognitive function, client communication, and team interactions. The episode also outlines practical approaches to help veterinary professionals build more consistent eating habits in a busy clinical setting.

Why do so many workplace frustrations in veterinary medicine feel hard to explain? Building on episode 11 of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, delve deeper into the hidden cost of unspoken expectations—how assumptions, unclear standards, and mismatched “mental bars” quietly erode performance, relationships, and culture. Together, they unpack why resentment is often a signal of unmet expectations, how identity can get tangled up in competence, and what practical steps veterinary professionals can take to create clarity, agreement, and healthier team dynamics.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS; and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP explore how everyday thought patterns, which often go unnoticed, can drain energy and keep veterinary professionals feeling stuck. Designed as a rapid-fire but actionable conversation, the episode breaks down 3 common roadblocks in veterinary medicine: unspoken expectations, assumptions, and self-judgment. Drawing on coaching experience and life in practice, Edwards and Shaw offer simple ways to recognize these patterns in real time and create more sustainable, intentional responses at work.

There is a veterinary technician — you probably know her, or someone exactly like her — who has been at the practice for 11 years. She knows which cats will bite before they're out of the carrier, which clients need five extra minutes, and how to talk a panicked owner off a ledge at 4:45 on a Friday. She is, by every reasonable measure, indispensable. And that is precisely the problem.Veterinary medicine selects for competence. Veterinary professionals study for it, test for it, get judged by it on every shift. The more issues one individual solves, the more challenges find their way to them. The more people rely on them, the less they learn to function without them. And somewhere in that feedback loop, the practice's greatest asset can become its most significant bottleneck.Cohost Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, and Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, call this pattern "over-functioning." In this episode of The Resilient Vet, they make the case that this system can burn out individuals, stall team development, and make entire organizations more fragile than they appear.

Veterinary medicine can take a toll on the body and mind, especially during long, physically demanding clinic days. In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, outline the 5 levers of durability—5 practical upgrades veterinary professionals can begin incorporating into their daily routines for longer, more sustainable veterinary careers. Drawing on Shaw’s concept of “Vetspan,” the conversation covers protecting the spine during long hours on the floor, fueling the body to avoid midshift energy crashes, and resetting the nervous system between appointments.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet Podcast: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss the impact of catabolic energy on veterinary teams. Edwards explains that the exhaustion many veterinary professionals feel is often tied less to their workload and more to the breaking-down, draining nature of catabolic energy. Although useful for short-term survival, this state becomes a primary driver of burnout when it becomes a long-term default.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss how physical and emotional preparation before shifts can help veterinary professionals become more resilient in their careers. They explain that resilience is not a "switch" one flips, nor a product that can be bought. Rather, it is a skill set developed through intentional physical and emotional warm-ups before a shift even begins.They also explore the concept of the “veterinary athlete”: The idea that surviving the physical and emotional demands of a long shift requires the same kind of intentional warm-up and training an athlete brings to game day. To help veterinary professionals build this resilience, Shaw and Edwards share tips and exercises that veterinary professionals can use to strengthen their mental and physical resilience in their roles.

Veterinary medicine asks a lot of the people who practice it. To continue showing up for difficult cases, emotional clients, and challenging demands, many veterinarians learn to put on “emotional armor,” like humor and control. However, what happens when this “armor” stops protecting and starts wearing down? In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, explore how emotional armor forms, when it becomes costly, and how veterinary professionals can find a healthier balance that supports their humanity and longevity in the profession.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, delve into workplace culture and the role it plays in personal well-being. They explore how the well-being of each individual contributes to the collective culture and how that culture can either support or hinder the whole team. Shaw and Edwards discuss burnout and belonging, exploring what culture truly is, why it matters, and how veterinary professionals can cultivate environments where people and pets can thrive.

“We all know that burnout in [veterinary] medicine is really kind of an epidemic,” cohost Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, begins in this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success. In this installment, Shaw and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, dig into why veterinary professionals continue to struggle with burnout despite the abundance of wellness information available.According to Shaw and Edwards, addressing burnout starts with identifying an individual’s true “why,” recognizing what gets in the way, and shifting from gathering information to taking action in meaningful, personalized ways.

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, delve into the concept of “VetSpan,” a term coined by Shaw, that describes the years veterinary professionals can thrive in their careers.

Hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss how physical sensations, like tension, fatigue, or even excitement, can serve as valuable tools for self-awareness, balance, and performance in and outside the clinic.

Through personal anecdotes and practical tips, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, talk about how just 15 minutes each day can make work easier in this episode of The Resilient Vet.

In this debut episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, share their personal journeys, explore what resilience means in veterinary medicine, and more.Read more, and watch the full video clip, here: https://www.dvm360.com/videos/the-resilient-vet