In this blog for Veterinary Nursing Awareness Month, Teri Ann Baldwin RVN discusses how compassion and empathy between colleagues within the veterinary nursing profession have always been important and key to great team dynamics, but when you’re a veterinary nurse who is part of the LGBTQIA+ community, compassion and empathy can mean so much more.
Find out more about VNAM here, and how you can get involved this year.
Being LGBTQIA+ in clinic can feel very lonely and isolating, it can be difficult to navigate when you’re not sure how your colleagues or clients will react when you’re comfortable in coming out.
Veterinary nurses are naturally empathetic and compassionate. Extending this to LGBTQIA+ people enables us to have a safe space and creates better working environments where we’re not afraid to be our true selves.
Unfortunately, with recent events rolling back EDI initiatives and the supreme courts ruling on the definition of sex, being LGBTQIA+ in clinic has become lonely again. Many members of the community choose to hide this part of them, refusing to live as they should be able to freely live, for fear of hatred, attack, further isolation.
This is where Allies and their compassion and empathy are important to us. It can be something subtle to let us know you’re a safe person to talk to such as a rainbow badge, it could be putting a poster up to sign-post to BVLGBT in the staff room. These displays show we’re not alone and that we have at least one safe person.
It also means standing up when you hear micro-aggressions; when you hear acts of hate speech, homophobia, transphobia etc.
Showing up is the best way of showing empathy and compassion for us in a world which is trying to erase us again.
I’ve been really lucky to have colleagues who wore Pride flag badges during Pride month (and beyond), who I heard telling people they can’t use the language they’re using. But I’ve also been on the other end where I’ve been told my pronouns and sexuality won’t be tolerated because ‘they’re not believed in.’
We just ask for compassion and empathy in a world which is not made for us to walk in freely. So that one day soon, we can all walk freely in it together.
