Clinic leaders: why invest in support for your team?
Your team carries the emotional weight of this work every day, and euthanasia appointments are a significant part of that weight. Left unaddressed, it shows up in ways every practice owner recognizes: absenteeism, turnover, and people who are physically present but running on empty.
“30% to 40% of veterinarians experience high levels of burnout. For support teams and veterinary technicians, that number climbs sharply, with 60% to 70% reporting active burnout symptoms” (CoVet, June 2026). Compassion fatigue doesn’t announce itself. It erodes, quietly, the very thing that drew your team to this profession in the first place - their capacity to care.
Have you thought about how your team’s wellbeing reaches your clients?
A euthanasia appointment is one of the most consequential moments in the entire veterinary-client-patient relationship. It’s the appointment a family remembers in detail, years later - whether they had a private space, whether they felt rushed, whether anyone acknowledged what was happening. When a client leaves that room feeling heard and genuinely cared for, that experience becomes part of how they tell the story of their animal’s life. They come back when they welcome the next one.
When the experience is rushed, or cold, or simply under-supported, it’s quietly one of the biggest reasons a client never comes back - and a painful goodbye is a story people tell other people, whether or not they ever say a word to you.
A fatigued team can’t consistently deliver that moment well
No matter how skilled or how well-intentioned they are. This is where structured support changes the equation: team debriefs, education around compassion fatigue, and a trusted resource to hand a grieving family - all of which lighten the load on your team while raising the quality of the experience at exactly the appointment that matters most.
Supporting your team isn’t a soft cost. It protects your people, your client relationships, and your practice.
If you’d like to talk through what team support could look like at your clinic - a workshop, a standing debrief, or simply having somewhere to send a family - I’d welcome the conversation.
This writing is psychoeducational and doula-based - it is not clinical counselling, therapy, or veterinary medical advice, and it isn’t a substitute for any of them.