Ali Heywood is an RVN with over 25 years’ experience in education leadership, and quality assurance. She is passionate about shaping the future of veterinary nursing through quality education, compassionate leadership, and ensuring that the women in our profession can enjoy long, fulfilling, and sustainable careers.
Ali will be writing a series of blogs throughout 2026 linking to the BVNA Presidential theme of compassion and empathy. Check out Ali’s previous blogs here for the series so far.
Nurturing Each Other to Thrive, Not Just Survive
There seems to be a lot of conversation about burnout at the moment, and rightly so. Veterinary professionals work in emotionally demanding environments, balancing the needs of patients, clients, colleagues and learners, often before we have even had our first cup of tea.
I’m not an expert in burnout, nor do I pretend to be. There are people far more qualified than me to explain the psychology behind it. What follows is simply a personal reflection, one that has grown from conversations with colleagues, experiences throughout my own career, and a growing awareness of how easily we can lose sight of ourselves while caring for everyone else.
For years, I imagined burnout as something dramatic. I pictured someone who simply could not get out of bed, who had reached breaking point or who knew, without question, that they had nothing left to give.
The more I’ have reflected on it, the less convinced I have become that this is how burnout usually arrives.
Instead, I wonder whether it appears much more quietly. Rather than suddenly stopping us in our tracks, it slowly chips away at the things that once brought us joy. The work we loved feels heavier, conversations become another task on the list, and everything seems to require just a little more effort than it used to.
Because those changes happen gradually, they are easy to dismiss. We tell ourselves we are just tired, that it has been a busy week, or that things will feel better after the next deadline. Sometimes that is true. But sometimes those small changes are worth paying attention to.
The World Health Organization describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed [¹]. Reading that definition made me wonder whether we often wait until the stress becomes overwhelming before we allow ourselves to acknowledge what is happening.
A friend and I, who worked together for many years, had a standing joke that if we were ever going to burn out, it would have to happen between quarter past nine and quarter past three, Monday to Friday, during term time only.
There simply was not time for it to happen at any other point.
We laughed, perhaps a little uncomfortably-because it felt true.
Looking back, I think we had accepted there was never a convenient time to stop. There was always another learner, another meeting or another deadline. The wheel kept turning, so we kept running alongside it.
I wonder how many of us have made similar jokes without realising they were telling us something important?
Perhaps that is one of the reasons burnout can be so difficult to recognise. We become so accustomed to carrying on that we stop noticing how we are actually feeling.
A little while ago, I came across The Foolish Little Biscuit, a beautiful picture by Sarah Jane Szikora. It shows a gingerbread figure dancing on the rim of a teacup, and the image has stayed with me.
It has become my own way of thinking about burnout.
Sometimes we can feel as though we are standing on that teacup rim. On one side is the hot tea, where one more decision, one more responsibility or one more difficult conversation could tip everything out of balance. On the other side is the saucer, where there is enough space to catch our breath, regain our footing and remember why we chose this profession in the first place.
What strikes me most is how little distance there is between the two.
As I said earlier, we often imagine burnout as a dramatic event, but perhaps it is more often the accumulation of countless tiny moments that quietly move us closer to the edge. Equally, protecting ourselves does not always require dramatic life changes. Sometimes it is saying ‘no’ to one more task. Sometimes it is taking a proper lunch break. Sometimes it is asking for help before everything feels impossible. Sometimes it is simply admitting that today feels harder than yesterday.
One thing I have become increasingly certain about is this.
We are exceptionally good at caring for everyone else.
We are often less good at extending that same kindness to ourselves.
We encourage colleagues to take a break while quietly eating lunch at our desks. We tell students that perfection is not expected yet quietly hold ourselves to impossibly high standards. We remind clients how important wellbeing is for their animals while neglecting our own.
Caring for others carries an emotional cost if we do not also make time to replenish ourselves [²]. That is not a sign of weakness; it is part of being human.
I have also come to believe that thriving is not something we achieve alone. The healthiest teams are those where people feel able to admit they are struggling, ask for help and support one another without judgement. Amy Edmondson describes this as psychological safety – an environment where people feel safe to speak up, learn and be themselves [³]. Surely that is exactly the kind of workplace we should all be striving to create.
Perhaps we need to redefine what thriving looks like.
Maybe it is about recognising when we have drifted too close to the edge of the teacup and giving ourselves permission to step back onto the saucer before we fall.
Veterinary nursing deserves people who do not simply survive their careers.
It deserves people who still find joy in them.
References
- World Health Organization. Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11). Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019
- Figley CR, editor. Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in Those Who Treat the Traumatized. New York: Brunner/Mazel; 1995
- Edmondson AC. Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams. Adm Sci Q. 1999;44(2):350–83