The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. This is a special episode. We are live, at least Emily and I are the important people and we are in public recording this one. If there is a little background noise, we apologize, but we're at the bar and that's just how this episode's going to go.
Emily: [laughs] Yes, it'll be fun. Live and in person. We miss Bradley, but Gruesome Twosome is here.
Joe: We're both at the MVMA conference, which is the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association. Emily got roped into speaking and I don't think it was my fault, but it might have been.
Emily: It was 100% Joe's fault. He is the reason that I got roped into speaking, but that's okay because I've spoken at this conference before. It's a really fun one to come to.
Joe: Yes, so there's lots going on. This is a three or four-day conference. Lots of veterinarians in one place, so it's probably Bradley's nightmare, but it's fun for me. Emily claims it's fun as well. Em, tell everybody what you're talking about a little bit.
Emily: Yes, so I gave a presentation already earlier this morning about recognizing and responding to crises and how to have difficult conversations with people that you think might be in crisis. I think we know from my work doing this for as long as I have that this is an important topic across the board, but I think sometimes we can miss how much of that veterinarians actually deal with. Not always, but sometimes if you are working with your veterinarian, it's probably because there's a high-stress situation happening, right?
That may be an emergency on the small animal side, could be an emergency C-section of your favorite cow, whatever it might be. Yes, so I got to come in today and just talk a little bit about what do you say. I think that's the number one question people always have is, "I know I should say something, but I don't know what to say and I'm so scared of saying the wrong thing." We just spent some time this morning talking through some of that and Joe actually very kindly came to my session. I'm curious, Joe, what did you get out of my session?
Joe: Yes, putting me on the spot there.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: The key is that everyone wants to know what to say, and I think Emily did a great job of walking people through. That every situation's different and it's not cookie cutter. There's not something that's going to be perfect every time to say. She gave people some options on what to say, but really focused on being empathetic and knowing the difference between being sympathetic and empathetic and looking at here's what you can do.
Especially in a very short interaction to make sure that that other person feels heard. Even just doing that and using active listening to make sure someone feels heard is going to be a huge step for them in helping them feel better or in opening up about something where they might need more help.
Emily: Wow. Joe was actually paying attention when I was speaking. Wow.
Joe: I was, I was.
Emily: I'm so impressed. Yes, Joe, and for the sake of our listeners, I guess I want to emphasize one major point, and that is providing people with an opportunity to be heard, right? I think we all get so concerned about what we should say, and I understand we want to say the right thing, not the wrong thing, but it's so important to focus on just listening to the person and in what you say to them. You don't need to fix their problems. You need to acknowledge that they have a problem and that this problem is very real for them and very stressful. Even if it might not be a situation that's stressful for you, it's stressful for them.
I just emphasize acknowledging that and keeping that in mind. We all have different thresholds for stress and when people come to us, it's not our place to judge or to provide advice or fix things that we maybe don't know much about. It's really our place to just hear what the person has to say and to acknowledge that what they're experiencing is hard and is stressful for them.
I think that that's my biggest takeaway whenever I give talks like this is really it is so much less about what we say and saying the right thing and way more about just being there and listening and just even saying simply to the person, "I'm so sorry that this happened to you", or "I'm so sorry you've been going through this."
I am going to say, "Oh, it's that simple." I know it's not easy, but I just think that saying something is better than saying nothing. That's really what we talked a little bit about today.
Joe: Yes, and it was very applicable, especially in a small animal and a large animal setting. There's so many situations where you are with people repeatedly and over and over again. You get to know them pretty well and you're in this weird spot where you're a third party in the whole thing. People sometimes feel more comfortable talking to you about things that they might not talk about with someone that they're really close with. Having those skills to be able to listen appropriately, come back with something that doesn't make the situation worse, and knowing that most of not making it worse is just being a good listener and showing empathy and showing that you truly do care. Thanking them for sharing to encourage them to continue to do so.
All those things are very, very real. I wish I had had some of this training before I went into practice because this is all trial and error on my part, figuring it out and not always doing the right thing.
Emily: That's okay, right? We're not going to do the right thing or the perfect thing all the time. It was a great session and again I was grateful Joe was in there, but there's obviously a lot more going on here than just my talk. Joe, I know you're going to be doing some presenting on some things I know we've already talked about on the podcast before.
Joe: Absolutely.
Emily: Let's go through the quick review of Joe's many, many presentations here at MVMA.
Joe: Yes. Unfortunately, one of the speakers that was supposed to speak on mastitis is sick and both her kids are sick as well, so she can't make it. I'll be filling in for her tomorrow and that's going to be on a cow-calf calendar year. We're looking at all the things throughout the year that a veterinarian can do to influence the system on a cow-calf operation in a positive way and advice they can give to help with potential problems in more of a systems thinking context. We'll be doing a fall and winter the first round, the first hour, and then the second hour after lunch we'll do spring and summer.
Most of that talk is just like we talked about on this, it's all management and how management plays into health of those cattle and productivity. That's really the first talk. Fortunately, I don't have to give that one alone. That'll be with my good friend Tim Goldsmith. He got roped into a talk because of me as well.
Emily: Tim Goldsmith, a friend of The Moos Room.
Joe: Friend of The Moos Room. Tomorrow, is that tomorrow? No, that's tomorrow. Saturday I will be giving a talk on our beef survey that we did on Minnesota beef producers and everything that went on with that. We have some further analysis so that I can look at how things broke down according to the different herd sizes in the state and is there a trend in some direction with some of the questions based on herd size.
Excited to share some of that. It's nothing terribly new, but good things to know, especially in the context of being able to provide a service to beef producers around the state.
Emily: Maybe we'll have to do a follow-up on that. I know we did an episode about that and that was fascinating.
Joe: Yes, there's a lot going on there in the breakdown in herd size. We're seeing a few things that are surprising, at least to me. I'll need to confer with my colleagues and make sure that I'm just running the stats right and doing all of that, which is not my strong suit.
There's some things to share that are surprising and we'll save that for another episode. There's just not enough time to get into it today.
Emily: Joe, I have a question that just popped into my head. This is a conference that's for veterinarians, right? When you talk about certain things, how do you talk about them differently with veterinarians versus producers?
Joe: Well, I'll tell--
Emily: Joe is laughing, so this is going to be good you guys.
Joe: Sorry, [laughs], I'll tell you two stories. This has already happened today. Okay. The first story is I ran into two guys I have not seen since vet school. I haven't seen them since veterinary school. One guy was two years ahead of me in school and one guy was in the class below me. We'd been talking for about two minutes, I think two minutes. We were already on subjects that were so inappropriate that it would probably make other people uncomfortable if they weren't a veterinarian.
Emily: Okay.
Joe: Emily joined that conversation and saved us from ourselves. It was fine.
Emily: That's what was going on there. Okay, got it.
Joe: If she got an awkward vibe, it's because we were talking about stuff that-- When you talk with other veterinarians, initially it just gets wildly inappropriate. That's the first step of any conversation with another veterinarian. Then after that, it is a little different. We talk in different words. When you go to some of the talks here is a very different tone and there's a lot more explanation into the mechanism of things. Why do they happen? What are the actual pathways within the body and why things work and how that happens so that you have the background to explain in the context of a system what's going on?
There's a lot of different language that gets thrown around. We are a little more technical, whether you believe that listening to this or not, that I can talk in a technical manner. That's a whole nother discussion, but we do talk in a different way. Most of it, and I'll be honest, you don't need to know all of it. It's good to know the background and the why to make sure that we're basically peer reviewing these results and saying, does that make sense within the physiology context and with everything else? Is this research done appropriately? That's a lot of why you need to know those things.
Then once you know that that is the case, the rest of it, that's just how it is. Now it's figuring out how to explain that in a way where you don't use all this technical jargon that doesn't mean anything to anyone but veterinarians.
Emily: I think that's so important is that you as a veterinarian and me, even as just an average boring lay person, we get this information and yes, that's part of the, for me, the challenge, but the fun part of extension work is how do I take this really technical information and pull out the pieces that I know producers want and make it easy for them to approach and understand it. I think that that's a huge part of what we do in extension and probably a really big part of what our veterinarians need to do is getting this information in their language and then needing to translate it into their client's language.
Joe: Well, and I think that that in general, not just veterinarians, anybody, that the mark of someone who really understands something is that they can explain it in a very succinct, brief way without having to use a lot of technical jargon. Now, obviously, if you really want to get into the weeds on something, you need to know all these different things and very specifics of it, but being able to explain it in a way that makes sense and explain only the parts that are applicable in the real world, that's a piece that's missing sometimes.
I'm not going to pick on my small animal colleagues too much-
Emily: Yes, he is.
Joe: -but I am, and they're terrible at it. They know so much, about one thing, about dogs, cats, companion animal, and they're brilliant, but sometimes they're so brilliant they don't even understand how to transfer that knowledge in a way that makes sense to someone who hasn't been doing that their whole life. Sorry if there's any small animal vets that listen to this, it's just a thing. It's just a thing. That's just the way it is.
It's harder for them to do so because I think they have to know so much more and more in-depth knowledge on a very specific subject, which gets-- We won't go any further on that. I don't want to bash them too much. They're probably here listening to me.
Emily: Yes. We're surrounded by them, so we need to be a little careful.
Joe: For sure. That's what's going on here, guys. I know we're going to keep this one short. Emily and I got lots to do here at the conference. If we think of anything or we learn anything just absolutely earth-shattering, we'll be sure to share that in future episodes and let you know what's going on but for now, I think that's all we got for today. We're going to keep learning and try to bring that information back to you in a way that makes sense. We're going to wrap it up then I'll let Em do that since she's better at it.
Emily: All right. If you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode of The Moos Room, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. You can also call and leave us a voicemail at 612-624-3610. Find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and on the web @extension.umn.edu. Bye-bye. How does this apply to dolphins?
Joe: How does this apply to dolphins?
Emily: How does this apply?
Joe: Emily's no longer allowed to come to any of my talks because she asks me questions like, how does this apply?
Emily: I cannot wait for the next livestock gathering. When you speak, I am going to have that question locked [crosstalk].
Joe: I'm going to have to figure out an answer.
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