Upcoming CE Events
WRVMA webinar:
March 4, 7-9 p.m.
Dr. Amy Learn, VMD Topics in Behavior: Evaluating Normal Puppy Problems & Understanding the Connection between Health & Behavior
March 18, 7-9 p.m.
Dr. J. Scott Weese, DVM, DVSc, DACVIM, FCAHS H5N1 in Wildlife and Domestic Animals: Clinical and Zoonotic Considerations
As we welcome the arrival of spring, I am filled with excitement for the opportunities ahead for our community. This season brings fresh ideas, renewed energy, and a host of engaging discussions and presentations that will help us grow both professionally and personally.
I am particularly thrilled about the upcoming events where we will explore the latest advancements in veterinary behavior, exotic medicine, emergency medicine, and much more. I look forward to the meaningful conversations and collaborations that lie ahead.
Additionally, I am pleased to introduce the newest members of our Executive Board, who bring fresh perspectives to our organization:
• Dr. Kristy Herman
• Dr. Michelle Neiman
Please join me in welcoming them to the board!
I encourage you all to stay engaged, participate in upcoming events, and take advantage of the knowledge our organization offers. Thank you for your ongoing support and dedication to our field. I look forward to seeing you soon and sharing in the exciting months ahead!
Monica Sterk, DVM Chapter Chair
In
person:
April 1, 6-9 p.m.
Dr. Erin Lashnits
Sleepy Hollow Hotel & Conference Center, Tarrytown
Buffet dinner with cocktail hour
April 29, 6-9 p.m.
Dr. Petra Cerna
Westchester Marriott, Tarrytown
Buffet dinner with cocktail hour
For more information, go to: https://members.nysvms.org/events.
What’s a Better Solution for Pet Owners: Financing or Pet Insurance?
The answer is both! How combined financial solutions can positively impact your practice.
Imagine this scenario: Wendy rushes her beloved terrier, Ozzie, to your veterinary clinic after he suddenly falls ill. You diagnose Ozzie with a condition requiring immediate surgery, and your treatment estimate comes to $3,000.
You watch Wendy’s face fall as she hears this total. However, you know that she has two powerful tools at her disposal: she has a dedicated health and pet care credit card and she’s a pet insurance policyholder. You remind her she can use them together to help Ozzie get the care he needs today!
Wendy uses flexible financing with her credit card to pay over time for the cost of Ozzie’s emergency care. She then files a claim and gets reimbursed for eligible expenses when her claim is processed. She can then pay down her remaining financing balance.
Pet insurance: A safety net for all clients
The pet insurance industry arose as a solution to help pet owners be financially prepared for the costs of veterinary care. And it only continues to grow in popularity as more and more pet parents recognize the importance of being ready for expected—or unexpected—veterinary care.
Pet insurance provides clients with an added layer of financial security for a variety of types of care, including illnesses, routine checkups, vaccinations and more—even emergency and specialty costs. In exchange for a monthly or annual premium, pet insurance can deliver clients greater peace of mind for eligible pet care expenses. But while pet insurance can help ease financial burdens through reimbursement, it’s also important to offer clients a solution that can help offset up-front costs of pet care.
Flexible Financing: A client—and practice—friendly solution
Paying for care at the time of service is the role of budgetfriendly financing. Enabling clients to break up total costs, spread payment out into manageable monthly payments, and pay for any costs not covered by insurance can increase the chance they accept your recommended care.
Clients equipped with a dedicated card with financing options may also be more likely to use it for routine or preventive services in a way that fits their budget—which can help your practice drive repeat visits and client loyalty.
How they work Better Together
Educating clients on the value of having both solutions helps them be more prepared for a Lifetime of Care—and helps them accept your recommendations. Companies like CareCredit and Pets Best are even integrating technologies to make the reimbursement process a more seamless experience—so you can focus on giving your clients a solution that works even better together.
2025 NYS Veterinary Conference October 10-12
The 2025 New York State Veterinary Conference is a three-day event October 10-12 with high-quality continuing education, offering live and on-demand NYS continuing education credit opportunities. The conference will once again be a hybrid event offering: on-site, online, and on-demand sessions. Whether you join us on-site at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine or virtually, our sessions are all presented live. We will have our most popular tracks at Cornell and streaming those sessions, plus additional tracks to our virtual audience. After the event, sessions will be available on-demand.
Co-hosted by the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and the NYSVMS, the conference features a diversity of species and professional development tracks, with something for everyone – from recent grads to seasoned practitioners and LVTs. Topics include: Controlled Substances, Behavior, Large Animal, Well-being and many more! We will once again offer labs, movement sessions, networking opportunities, exhibitors to visit and fun extras throughout the weekend. Registration opens in early April. For more information, go to: www.nysvc.org.
Change is hard for many practices. It is often difficult for practice leadership to identify, design, and introduce new programs. Leaders find it is complicated to gain the team member support and commitment needed to embrace change and work toward common goals. Change is necessary to maintain vibrant practices; implementing new programs and processes is a critical part of meeting the needs of pet owners and team members, as well as ensuring practice success. What are some leadership skills that connect the change that leaders want to see to what matters most to team members? It starts with the end in mind, managing leader behaviors that culminate with buy-in.
What is Buy-In?
Buy-in is the “acceptance of and willingness to actively support and participate in something”1. It is the voluntary change to which employees commit when engaging with and adopting diverse ways to work. When buy-in is present, it increases an employee’s commitment to the practice’s strategic goals, increasing their motivation and engagement.
It is estimated that only 31% of projects are successful. 2 Too often, leaders confuse buy-in with change management, which is a process-oriented approach that focuses on components of making change, like identifying needs and creating new workflows. Change is communicated to employees as ‘ready to implement;’ this approach minimizes the autonomy of the employees, who are expected to execute on the strategy. Due to dictated change, the voluntary component needed to achieve buy-in is missing, and the strategy often fails. The bridge between change management and buy-in is change leadership. Change leadership has been described as the ability to influence and inspire action in others. It is a people-oriented approach in which leaders share the reasons for the needed change, involving the team in crafting the vision and the implementation.
Why is Gaining Buy-In Difficult?
Gaining buy-in requires leaders to understand why team members resist change. Often, it is not the change the team members object to, rather it is the uncertainty that accompanies change. Studies3 have found that people resist change because they fear being overwhelmed with work or losing control. These concerns create feelings of resentment or unease.
When change is introduced, especially mandated change, employees feel anxiety and uncertainty. These feelings are intensified by fears of losing control over their work as well as the loss of purposeful work that occurs as job responsibilities shift. New initiatives often require employees to change their well-established habits, expending time and energy to learn different protocols .
When leaders facilitate buy-in by connecting the proposed change to both purpose2 and shared values, it helps to unify and reassure team members. Shared values are the feelings and common values that are shared within the team. When these are defined by the group each employee can align with the organizational purpose, which is created when shared values are visibly linked to business decisions, including new initiatives. When team members can see and feel how new programs align with their shared values and purpose, they are more willing to support and participate in the changes.
The Impact of Leadership Style on Buy-In
Leadership has been defined as the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. The act of leading involves two parties: the leader and the follower. Those who are leaders inspire followers to embrace initiatives necessary for success. This is fundamental to gaining buy-in. Too often leadership is viewed as an either/or style:
• Some leaders believe they are responsible for driving outcomes, success, and are overly confident in their ability to make decisions on their own. This is a hierarchal or top-down approach characterized by decisive and exclusionary behaviors. They lead by controlling their teams.
• Alternatively, leaders can embrace a more autonomous approach where leaders convey the vision and empower followers with autonomy in how goals are reached. These leaders are openminded, collaborative, and connect with their teams.
When leaders are hierarchal or control-oriented, their teams feel minimized, with little say about their roles within the practice and in business decisions. These leaders operate within an echo chamber, failing to solicit other perspectives. The team doesn’t feel safe to proactively offer opinions and are demoralized by the lack of responsiveness of the leader.
While there are several factors that contribute to controlling leadership behaviors, common drivers include the fear of losing control and influence over organizational operations, insecurity and self-doubt about an ability to lead, and a lack of trust in their teams by leaders who believe they can ‘do it better’. As a result, controlling leaders rarely delegate, and if they do, they often micromanage.
Outcomes of controlling leadership behaviors include micromanagement, a lack of psychological safety, a reduction in employee autonomy, diminishing innovation and less risk-taking within the practice.4
Collaborative leaders build synergistic ways to work. This leadership style is characterized by the development of shared values and a common purpose, mutual respect, and effective communication. Each team member shares responsibility for their role in the process toward creating positive outcomes; they embrace accountability. This results in a multidirectional leadership process where a team member has lateral influence; each team member is empowered to share collectively in the leadership role and in change leadership.
Four Leadership Behaviors that Drive Collaboration and Buy-In
The foundations of collaborative leadership are built when leaders embrace behaviors that engage and create team alignment. Here are four behaviors that facilitate collaborative leadership5 :
• Humility
Collaborative leaders recognize that they don’t know, nor are they expected to know, everything. Accepting this is hard for veterinary leaders due to their tendency toward perfectionism, which has been identified as a key personality trait6 in veterinarians. Perfectionist behaviors can be damaging to teams when leaders set unrealistic expectations for themselves and team members. It contributes to a controlling leadership style if they are afraid of failure and experience self-doubt in their ability to lead.
A core feature of humility in leaders is the ability to admit mistakes. This vulnerability helps create trust, signaling to team members that they aren’t expected to be perfect and that mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities to build future success. This approach helps to create environments for learning, growth, and increased employee engagement. These are necessary components in achieving team buy-in.
• Different Perspectives
Collaborative leaders value different perspectives. When leaders make space for team members to participate in discussions and share insights it fosters innovation, collaboration, and inclusion. This leadership behavior is critical in transforming from a controlling to collaborative leader. It requires that the leader cultivates curiosity and openness to hear other ideas rather than an attitude that their view is the correct one.
• L ong Term Thinking
Collaborative leaders understand that achieving long term goals requires strategic foresight, as well as aligning plans with organizational purpose. When designing new initiatives, it is important to understand how a long-term vision can be impacted by shorter term decisions that may have direct or unintended results.
Leadership behaviors that help build lasting change include eliciting team perspectives by fostering differing viewpoints. Leaders can encourage candid conversations by having oneon-one conversations with key team members before meetings, asking them to share their thoughts and concerns with their teammates during meetings. Another technique is to invite a team member to play ‘devil’s advocate’ during the meeting, which can reveal unintended consequences.
• Building Trust
Collaborative teams share a common characteristic: trust in each other. Trust is “the belief or confidence that one party has in the reliability, integrity, and honesty of another party. It is the expectation that the faith one places in someone else will be honored.”5 Trust is created over time and begins with relationship building, when team members learn about and get to know each other on a personal level. When trust is missing, team members don’t share information, are less invested in
workplace success and emotionally withdraw.
Leaders build trust by being transparent, open, and authentic. When leaders are candid and share truthful information, both good and bad, it signals to team members that you are all in this together. Frank communication helps establish a culture of trust so that teams can work together in developing new initiatives and analyzing current programs, identifying ways to improve them without fear of blame. When leaders create teams built on trust, it enables buy-in behaviors such as ownership, engagement and sharing of perspectives.
In my experience as a veterinary business consultant, very few practices can successfully implement and execute new business initiatives. Too often, change is implemented as a knee-jerk reaction to an imminent business need, and not seen as a part of normal practice operations. When leaders normalize the expectation of change, using purpose, change leadership, and collaborative leadership skills, it creates a culture of buyin, where innovation and new initiatives are embraced.
References:
1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buy-in
2. Nieto-Rodriguez A. Organize Your Change Initiative Around Purpose and Benefits. Harvard Business Review; May 17, 2023.
3. Khaw, KW, Alnoor A, AL-Abrrow, H. et al. Reactions towards organizational change: a systematic literature review. Curr Psychol 42, 19137–19160 (2023).
4. Hubbart JA. Understanding and Mitigating Leadership Fear-Based Behaviors on Employee and Organizational Success. Administrative Sciences. 2024; 14(9):225.
5. Goman CK. Six Crucial Behaviors of Collaborative Leaders. Forbes July 11, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2017/07/11/six-crucial-behaviors-ofcollaborative-leaders/
6.Holden CL. Characteristics of Veterinary Students: Perfectionism, Personality Factors, and Resilience. J Vet Med Educ. 2020 Jul;47(4):488-496.
Wendy Hauser, DVM Peak Veterinary Consulting
Wendy Hauser, DVM is the founder of Peak Veterinary Consulting and has practiced for 35+ years as an associate, practice owner and relief veterinarian. She has worked in the animal health industry as a pet health insurance executive and as a technical services veterinarian. She is a member of the AVMA Veterinary Economics Strategy Committee. Dr. Hauser, passionate about education and innovation, consults with both industry partners (established and start-up) and individual veterinary hospitals. She is a regular presenter at veterinary conferences, facilitating workshops on hospital culture, communication, leadership, client relations and operations. Frequently published, she is the co-author of “The Veterinarian’s Guide to Healthy Pet Plans.” Learn more about Peak Veterinary Consulting at https://peakveterinaryconsulting.com
