Blogs

VHMA Insiders' Insights Commentary
April 2026
Brittany Yost, CVPM, CVBL, CCFP
Director, Customer Implementation and Engagement, Vetsource

As 2026 gets underway, the latest VHMA Insiders' Insights data points to a cautiously stabilizing environment for veterinary practices. After a lot of ups and downs throughout much of 2025, Q1 2026 shows signs that things may finally be leveling out. Patient visits, which spent much of last year trending downward, improved steadily through the quarter and were nearing flat year-over-year growth by March. At the same time, overall revenue remained strong, rising 6.4%, supported by continued strength in revenue per patient (+6.3%) and a noticeable rebound in exam activity. This suggests that clients are beginning to return for routine care that may have been delayed.

On paper, that's an encouraging shift, but behind those numbers is a reality most teams are feeling every day: while the pace of decline may be easing, the work itself hasn't necessarily gotten lighter. Stabilizing doesn't always feel like relief in the moment. It can still look like full schedules, emotionally complex conversations, and the ongoing effort to meet high expectations for both care and service. It's within that space, between what the data shows and what the day-to-day experience feels like, that I want to pause and reflect a bit more personally.

Beyond the Numbers: The Emotional Load of Caring Deeply

This quarter, I want to step out of the numbers for a moment and speak candidly (and in first person) about something we don't often discuss in management conversations: the emotional weight of veterinary medicine. Insiders' Insights commentaries usually focus on industry trends, KPIs, and operational strategies. These are all topics that matter and help practices navigate the economic realities of running a hospital. When renewing my Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional (CCFP) credential recently, I was reminded just how much of this work is emotionally heavy, and how rarely we pause to acknowledge it. We all know this instinctively, but we don't always stop long enough to say it out loud.

Across the industry, the challenges are undeniable, but it's the daily pressure behind the numbers that often goes unspoken. We've seen declining patient visits and slowing revenue growth for several quarters. For veterinary teams, these trends aren't just data points. They translate into longer days, more difficult decisions, and a constant push to maintain the perfect client experience. Every appointment carries more weight, every interaction feels more critical, and the cumulative stress of meeting these demands can take a real emotional toll.

Longer days, heavier caseloads, and increasingly complex conversations with clients who are trying to balance their love for their pet with financial realities all contribute to the strain. Layered on top of that is something harder to measure but equally important: the emotional weight of caring deeply.

Many people enter this profession because they feel a deep connection to animals and a genuine desire to help, and that empathy is one of veterinary medicine's greatest strengths. It drives extraordinary care and creates meaningful bonds between veterinary teams, their patients, and the families they serve. However, it also means that veterinary professionals regularly encounter emotional situations that most other professions experience only occasionally.

Veterinary teams sit with clients making euthanasia decisions. They witness suffering and loss. They support pet owners who are grieving, frightened, or overwhelmed. They also navigate moments when the medicine they want to practice simply isn't possible because of financial constraints. Over time, these experiences quietly accumulate.

I've attended hundreds of hours of continuing education over the course of my career, but one lecture I heard at VMX 2024 continues to stand out. Turpin Mott, then Chief Community Officer at Ethos Veterinary Health and now a Principal at Mott Leadership, spoke about emotional intelligence and how it can help veterinary professionals move from simply surviving their work to truly thriving within it. Several of the concepts he shared have stayed with me ever since, shaping the way I think about leadership, teamwork, and the emotional demands of our profession.

He shared that humans experience more than 34,000 emotional variations, but many stem from a small set of core emotions: happiness, fear, sadness, anger, and shame. These emotions show up in veterinary medicine every day. Sometimes they appear in our clients, sometimes they appear within our teams, and sometimes they show up in ourselves in ways we don't fully recognize until much later.

Anyone who has spent time in a veterinary practice has probably experienced what psychologists describe as an emotional "hijack." It's the moment when a situation triggers a strong reaction before our logical brain has time to catch up. These triggers can look like a client arriving with information they found on Dr. Google or a fellow staff member becoming unjustifiably upset with us.

Our instinctive response might be frustration or defensiveness. Emotional intelligence invites us to pause and consider another possibility. What if that client spent hours researching symptoms because they care deeply about their pet? What if a colleague's frustration is actually exhaustion after a long day filled with emotionally difficult cases?

Mott explained that empathy doesn't mean agreeing with someone. It simply means acknowledging that their experience is real. When people feel understood, they are far more willing to engage in the conversation that follows.

Psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey describe emotional intelligence as the ability to identify, understand, and regulate emotions. In practice, this often shows up through four key leadership behaviors:

• Self-awareness involves recognizing what we're feeling in the moment rather than reacting automatically.
• Self-management allows us to choose responses that move the situation forward rather than escalating it.
• Social awareness requires us to pay attention to what our team members and clients may be experiencing. 
• Relationship management is the ability to use that awareness to strengthen communication and build trust.

For leaders, emotional intelligence is far more than a soft skill. It has real operational impact. Teams that feel seen and supported tend to communicate more openly, resolve conflict more effectively, and maintain stronger morale during stressful periods. Morale plays a significant role in how teams experience their work. If something doesn't feel good to you as a leader, chances are it doesn't feel good to the people around you either.

Another idea from Mott's lecture that resonated strongly with me was the reminder that we are not responsible for other people's emotions. Veterinary professionals often feel an intense responsibility to fix things. We want to relieve suffering, solve problems, and improve outcomes. That instinct is part of what makes the profession so compassionate.

However, many of the emotions clients bring into the exam room existed long before the appointment began. Fear about a sick pet, guilt about waiting too long to seek care, and sadness about a possible outcome are all emotions that are part of the client's experience. We can acknowledge them, validate them, and support clients through them without carrying them as our own. Maintaining that boundary is essential. Without it, the emotional load of the profession can quietly grow heavier over time.

The veterinary industry has made meaningful progress in recognizing the importance of mental health in recent years. Organizations like the Veterinary Hope Foundation are working to change the conversation around emotional well-being in veterinary medicine. The foundation focuses on improving mental health awareness and suicide prevention within the profession, providing educational resources that help veterinary professionals better understand intentional well-being and connect with support when they need it. Efforts like these reinforce an important truth: thriving practices depend on thriving people.

Veterinary medicine will always involve emotionally complex situations. Caring deeply about animals and their families is part of the profession's DNA. But emotional intelligence offers a path toward navigating those moments with greater awareness, empathy, and resilience.

Sometimes it starts with something simple like being curious about our own emotional responses and compassionate toward the experiences of the people around us. Sometimes it starts with a blog like this one, where we step away from the metrics for a moment and acknowledge the emotional side of the work we do.

Behind every KPI, every patient visit, and every operational decision are people who chose this profession because they care deeply. Taking care of them may be one of the most important investments we can make in the future of veterinary medicine.

References

Mott, Turpin. “Building Emotional Intelligence: From Surviving to Thriving.” VMX 2024, January 2024, Orlando, FL.
Veterinary Hope Foundation, 2026, https://www.veterinaryhope.org/.

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