It’s Vet Nurse Awareness Month, and to celebrate the brilliant Vet Nurses in our VMG team, we put them in the spotlight to find out more.
Next we have VMG Director Leah Morley, Partnership Development Lead at Medivet.
What inspired you to begin a career in nursing?
I grew up surrounded by animals and always felt I had an affinity with them. However, none of my family worked with animals; my mother and grandmother were ‘human’ nurses, and that career felt right, but not in the human patient sector. I think I became a combination of what I could see, merged with what I loved.
I qualified as a veterinary nurse in Australia as we saw in the new millennium, and I moved to the UK in 2002 for a working holiday to locum around the country.
What did you find most rewarding about being a veterinary nurse?
I loved caring for the animals, but I also found the opportunity to be a voice for the animals was really rewarding. I also enjoyed the client education aspect of the role, which I think has progressed hugely for nurses since I qualified.
How did you first get into leadership?
My first leadership role was as a Head Nurse, which became a hybrid Head Nurse/Practice Manager role before I moved fully into Practice Management around 2010.
What transferable skills have you found the most useful for progressing in your career?
There have been many transferable skills that I have taken from veterinary nursing that have helped pave my career journey, perhaps the most important one has been people communication.
Many of us go into this sector to work with animals, but we work with people; the pets come in with people, and businesses are run by people. Being able to communicate with different people at different times in different ways is such a valuable skill. I think I’m better at this today than I was in 2000, but it’s also a skill you never stop improving. This has allowed me to work in many different roles within the industry.
How did you grow the additional skills that you needed?
My CPD choices moved away from supporting my clinical role when I discovered the VMG (which was the Veterinary Practice Managers Association – VPMA). I knew this was where I wanted my career to go, but that meant I needed to access knowledge that I had never been exposed to before. I completed a Nurses Certificate in Business Development through Improve and went on to get my Certificate in Veterinary Practice Management (now the CVLM – dual accredited VMG course).
I think most would agree, there is a degree of learning on the job (you may call it the sink or swim method!) and possibly a little winging it when we’re first put in roles that are testing our progression and capabilities, but having some knowledge to apply during this time was incredibly helpful for me, so I’d always recommend doing some research and CPD to support your growth
How do you bring compassion and empathy to your role as a leader/in practice?
Compassion and empathy are used on a daily basis when caring for animals, so I feel that creates a great foundation for being both compassionate and empathetic in all we do. I also played highly competitive sport, one day you’re in the starting line up, next you’re warming the bench. Having had leaders who showed compassion and empathy during those conversations gave me great role models outside of work and helped guide me to be the leader I wanted to be.
In my spare time, I work with marginalised communities to try and create safer more inclusive work environments in the veterinary sector, this also requires compassion and empathy, which I feel I can bring authentically from my experience of growing up gay in outback Australia.
Why did you leave nursing to get into management?
I had two passions growing up, animals and sport. After turning down a place to study Sports Psychology in Sydney to pursue Veterinary Nursing in Melbourne, I was probably destined to try and blend my passions at some point. So I had decided quite early on in my nursing career that I wanted to leverage what I was learning about team work, leadership, and purpose from my competitive sports background, and use it in the veterinary practice. I believed that being able to influence a team in this way would enable better patient advocacy on a wider scale.
Thank you Leah. If you are looking to get into leadership or would like to develop your skills to help your team, have a look at our educational suite of CPD, the iVLM (introduction to leadership and management), and the CVLM/DVLM.
