#61: Good grief: How to navigate the grieving journey for veterinary teams. With Rhonda Andrews.

You’ll bump onto grief several times a day on an average shift at a vet clinic. But do you UNDERSTAND it?  Do you face it head-on, or does it make you uncomfortable, so you run and hide when you see it coming? Do you even see it coming? Can you recognise the stages of grief in your clients and your co-workers? What about yourself?

Did you know, for example, that when that client is lashing out at you and your team, it may just be that they are stuck in one of the stages of grief, and that with the right tools, you can help guide them to a more appropriate stage? Don’t worry – neither did we, which is why we invited our friend Rhonda Andrews back to give us some guidance and strategies for dealing with grief in constructive ways. 

You’ll remember Rhonda from episode 47 on Trauma and Burnout, and if you listened to that one you’ll know that she is a psychologist with almost 3 decades of experience and that she is the principal psychologist and managing director of the Barrington Centre, which provides organisational and personal psychological services to a large number of sectors both in Australia and abroad.

Rhonda is also part of the team that has adapted a programme called Systems of Support, or SOS, for the vet profession. SOS is an evidence-based positive psychological health program that was designed for high-stress professions that reduces the negative psychological impacts associated with work. Also, look out for the Barrington Centre’s vet-specific Employee Assist Programme launching in March of 2022. 

In this episode, Rhonda teaches us about the stages of grief: what they look like, and how to respond to someone when they are transitioning through each stage. We also talk about dealing with grief in our items and in ourselves. 

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