Not One More Vet (NOMV)
Dr. Nicole Arthur founded the organization, Not One More Vet (NOMV) in 2014 following the suicide death of renowned veterinarian Dr. Sophia Yin.
The following recently appeared in my Facebook feed and reminded me of what NOMV stands for. Please help me share this with as many people as possible.
“Unless you have a very close relationship with a veterinarian, you probably don’t actually know much about what their day to day life involves. Many career choices have dramatic highs and lows but there is a perfect storm of the personality types that excel in vet med (often type A, self critical, ambitious, yet extremely compassionate with high investment into their work and skill level, unlikely to be great at self preservation) with the nature of the job itself (very long hours of high intensity work, burden of hefty student loans, sleep deprivation, high emotional toll, high self and client expectation, inability to “turn off”, self perpetuating culture of work obsession).
People never cease to be shocked when I correct the idea that the hardest part of this job is having to euthanize old animals. Not even close. They also are almost always surprised to learn that vet medicine incorporates one of the highest suicide rates across all professions. These losses are highly talented and committed individuals who nobody suspected of struggling until it was just too late.
If you are linked to a person on social media who works in veterinary medicine, you may have noticed them changing their profile picture to include "NOMV" with the Rod of Asclepius. Some of you may know, but if you don't, NOMV stands for Not One More Vet because we have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. A CDC study showed that female veterinarians are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the average person and male veterinarians are 2.1 times more likely. When you see your friend or social media acquaintance change their profile, it's usually because they have learned of another colleague that succumbed to suicide. This crisis is multifactorial. High debt and subsequent financial struggles, poor work life balance, compassion fatigue, threats of lawsuits, board complaints and cyberbullying.
For my non-veterinary friends, understand that vets are under a tremendous amount of stress and pressure. Please be kind to ALL of our staff. They matter too.
Realize none of us are "in it for the money" and are "trying to run a bill up". Both those statements are asinine.
If you see people bullying a vet online, for the love of all things, do not pile on. Veterinarians literally kill themselves over that kind of stuff.
We lost 3 more this week alone and another in the past month. We are literally dying trying to help you and your pets. We are humans, not punching bags. Your words and behavior matter.” (author unknown)
Want to know what you can do to better support your veterinarian and hospital staff members? I invite you to pay a visit to Not One More Vet.
What do you love about your vet and the people who work with her?
Best wishes to you and your four-legged family members for abundant good health,
Dr. Nancy
Compassion fatigue and suicide in the veterinary community is SUCH an important message to share. I used to follow Dr. Yin's work and was as shocked as everyone else was to learn of her suicide. I work in the lost pet recovery field and am well aquainted with compassion fatigue. The charity that I am currently forming will ultimately host pet memorial retreats and compassion fatigue retreats, including a specific retreat just for veterinarians. We plan to build a pet memorial site that will include a Companion Animal Memorial building and we plan to have a memorial wall for all the vets and veterinary staff who were lost to suicide. This is many years away of course, the this topic is near and near to my heart. Thank you for sharing this topic with your peeps.
The patients rarely if ever tell the human caregiver what is going on. Equally, the patient won’t tell the doc anything. Going to put on my I love my vet! shirt and drop off some food at the clinic.
Susan Williams
Servant & caregiver to one GSD and 3 feral felines.