August 2017 - Good Enough?
As I settle into my new job and find a routine, I’m finding my confidence and joy in veterinary medicine. I’m not performing life-saving surgery or diagnosing rare illnesses at a glance, but I am making clinical decisions which I have confidence in. Trusting my instincts isn’t easy, but there is an art to veterinary medicine as well as science and sometimes there is more than one right answer. After one particularly tough day in which everything I did ended up a bit of a bodge job I went upstairs to speak to my clinical coach about my general feeling of uselessness. “My skin sutures were awful”, I wailed. “I had to put staples in my stitch up”, I sniffled. She sat me down and looked at me square in the face, “Did you remove the dog’s testicles? Did you do the job you set out to do?” I did, I reluctantly agreed, but it could have been better. She cut me off, “On this day, for this job, were you good enough?” Good enough. Initially I bridled at those words, being good enough is the