Twelve years ago, Dr Janey Lowes went to Sri Lanka on a holiday, and never really came home. Today she runs WECare Worldwide, a hospital that treats the island’s three million street dogs to a standard that you’d like your pet treated - from the worst trauma cases you can image do a highly efficient desexing service. And then, a few times a year, she flies back to locum in clinics that look a lot like yours.

This one's about what it's like to live on both sides of that line that separates the reason we became vets, and the job most of us ended up with.

We get into:

• Do-or-die medicine in a place where you're the only option
• How being the last line changes your perspectives, and what that does to your goalposts when you go back to first-world practice
• The bits of ‘normal’ practice that Janey misses the most (no, it’s not the fancy equipment)
• Charity vetting as a viable career option, not just a gap year - the good and the bad

Support WECare Worldwide:This work runs on donations, and Janey's currently raising for a new hospital by running six hundred kilometres, the length of Sri Lanka. (She’s not actually a runner…)

• Website and donations: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk

The charity takes volunteers and offers longer-term work

• Volunteer and work with WECare: https://wecareworldwide.org.uk/volunteer/
• WECare on Instagram: @wecare_srilanka

Find Janey:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeythevet
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@janeythevet
• Her book, Janey the Vet: Saving Sri Lanka's Street Dogs, is on Amazon, Waterstones and WH Smith

More from The Vet Vault:

• Everything we do lives at https://www.thevetvault.com, including our clinical CE podcasts and resources
• Come learn with us in person at Vets on Tour: https://vetsontour.com

Topics and Time Stamps

03:20 Going Viral, and the Unexpected Backlash

08:24 The Love-Hate of Social Media

10:17 The Birth of WeCare

13:24 75% of Dogs Are Unowned

13:53 Courage or Naivety?

16:35 Mid-Roll Break

18:31 Regrets? & Life in Sri Lanka

21:30 Two Lives: Sri Lanka vs UK

36:15 Are We Too Quick to Euthanise?

39:55 What We Underestimate and Undervalue in ‘normal’ Vet Life

43:22 Volunteering at WeCare

49:03 Charity Vetting as a Career

55:10 Rapid Fire Questions

59:21 Advice for New Grads

You've been using your veterinary AI note taker for a couple of years now - it’s great - saves you heaps of time.

But are you using it to its full potential?

I’ll take a bet that you’re not. These things move fast, and it’s hard to keep up.

Which is why, in our Tech for Vets Series, we pull apart the veterinary tools that are changing how we work, and this time we put Heidi up on our screens for a detailed walk through.

Our guide is Dr Kieran McLeod, head of medical knowledge at Heidi Health. We start by putting the scribe through its paces to find the workflow tricks that you’re probably missing - I walked away with at least five tricks I'd never used. Then Kieran shows off all the shiny new AI magic coming your way: voice agents, built-in clinical support and a hardware solution that lets you leave your phone in your bag.

You'll learn:

• The scribe features you're almost certainly ignoring - linked patients, the context window, smart dictation, and the one-click voice edits that mean you never type a note correction again
• The AI voice agent that makes the phone call you've been dreading
• What baked-in clinical decision support looks like
• How to safety-net the worry that keeps you up - that quiet "did I miss something?" feeling
• How to incorporate hands-free hardware into your workflow

This is a screen-share walkthrough, so head to Spotify if you want to watch the clicks rather than just hear us talk about them.

Show notes and details live at thevetvault.com

Get clinical support from human specialists at the Vet Vault Specialist Support Space

Get rid of your mid-year 'meh' at our Vets On Tour New Zealand snow conference

Topics and Timestamps

02:35 Intro: Beyond the scribe0

05:18 Human-first vs. vet-first: does it matter?

09:17 Note-taking basics

09:46 Context windows & linked patients

15:46 Multiple documents & the source of truth

18:49 Smart Dictation for quick edits

29:38 Sync changes across documents

33:10 Task lists

36:06 Collaboration & session sharing

40:07 Sharing & exporting documents

41:22 Heidi Comms: AI voice agents

53:46 Heidi Evidence: clinical decision support

01:04:50 Using Evidence for complex histories

01:09:11 Evidence sources & collections

01:14:01 Heidi Remote: the hardware mic

01:21:46 EMR integrations (ezyVet & Covetrus)

A surgeon hurls a scalpel across theatre. It clatters off the wall. Nobody looks up.

Twenty minutes later he's in the tearoom offering everyone a biscuit, and someone shrugs: "That's just him when he's stressed."

If you've worked in veterinary practice for any length of time, you've got your own version of that story - maybe a bit less dramatic, but still things that completely destroy psychological safety. This episode is about that stuff, and the new psychosocial safety laws now rolling out across Australia that say plainly: no, actually, that's not acceptable.

To make sense of what that looks like on a normal Tuesday in a normal practice, you'll hear from psychologist Rhonda Andrews, who works across high-pressure industries - emergency departments, the courts, and the veterinary profession - and who has spent years watching them all wrestle with the same problem: people breaking.

This conversation is not about “just be more resilient”, but about systems. Rhonda makes a genuinely good-news case that these laws aren't more bureaucracy to dread - they're the push our profession has needed all along.

You'll hear

• Why the things you've always filed under "just part the job" might now legally count as a psychological workplace injury - with consequences attached
• The myth spreading fastest right now - that bosses can no longer have an honest performance conversation - and why that's flatly wrong
• What the new psychosocial safety laws actually require of you as a practice owner
• Why this a team problem, not just something for management to sort out
• Why "workload" is almost never the real problem - and the thing breaking your team underneath it that owners consistently miss
• The one shift available to everyone in the building - whatever their title - that changes culture without a single policy change

A note: this is the second in a small psych-safety miniseries. If you haven't heard Episode 158 with Dr Rebecca Faris on the AVA Thrive programme, start there for the bigger picture.

Resources:

• Barrington Centre - Rhonda's psychosocial safety seminars (two online sessions, plus an in-person Melbourne day) and the Vet ECM training programmes for owners, leaders, and new supervisors: barringtoncentre.com

For show notes, clinical content and the newsletter head to thevetvault.com, and come find your people at a Vets On Tour conference - email me at info@thevetvault.com to find out about our new-grad 50% discount for Wānaka inAugust.

Topics and time stamps

04:52 Rising Mental Health Claims

08:41 Mythbusting Owners Fears1

0:37 Defining Psychological Safety

12:37 Vets Staying in Bad Jobs

14:28 Sponsor Break Vets On Tour

16:03 Systems vs Individual Responsibility

19:35 Burnout Stats and Human Cost

21:17 Who Can Influence Culture?

22:46 Is Vet Work Uniquely Hard?

24:05 Human Sector Parallels

29:15 Business Model Reality Check

30:18 ROI of Retention

32:20 Psychosocial Safety Laws

37:34 Workload and Rostering Fixes4

2:44 Leadership and Being Heard

45:27 From Blame to Pathways

50:27 Training Programs and Teams

52:58 Myth Busting Performance Reviews

54:27 Final Takeaways

The long-term vision is that you walk into a clinic, hit record at the beginning of the day - you walk out at the end of the day, and you never put your hands in a computer. You just did medicine, and everything went into the right place.’

Sound too good to be true? Maybe. But it's closer than you think.

If you've already adopted a veterinary AI scribe, you'll know it's transformed your day. But scribes are just the gateway drug. The really interesting question is what your scribe connects to next - and the answer, for a growing number of vets, is the brain of the clinic itself: your practice management software.

This conversation brings together Dr Caleb Frankel, ER vet and founder of Instinct - the PIMS used by many of the world's largest specialty and emergency hospitals, and now built out for general practice too, and Rohan Relan, founder of Scribble Vet. Earlier this year, Instinct acquired Scribble - and what they're building together is a glimpse of where veterinary software could be heading.

You'll hear:

• Why up to 80% of your veterinary work day is swallowed by a keyboard
• What "beyond scribing" looks like - from infographics, to embedded drug references that update in real time as you talk, to anaesthesia records that fill themselves in from across the room.
• The "easy to verify, hard to generate" principle - why the best AI tools in clinic don't try to replace you, they let you stay in the loop without doing the grunt work.
• What it means when your scribe and your PIMS talk to each other.
• Why an "open API" matters more than you think when individual vets can magically build for their own tools.
• The tech patient safety layer that can catch your mistakes before you make them
• Where this all goes next - and why both guests believe we're still only seeing the beginning of what AI in clinical practice can do.

• 
  

We recorded this as a video with screen sharing, so if you want to follow along and see what these tools actually look like in action, watch it on Spotify.

For our clinical content, show notes, and our full back catalogue, head to ⁠thevetvault.com⁠.

While you're there, check out our subscriber-only clinical podcast, our newsletter, and come and hang out with us in real life at ⁠Vets On Tour.

Topics and Timestamps

Why Instinct Acquired Scribble 2:08

Beyond Scribes: The Bigger Vision 7:48

Demo: Scribble + Instinct Integration 10:06

Plums Drug Reference Integration 11:30

Mid-Roll: Events & Announcements 14:49

Pushing Notes to Instinct 16:27

Scribble Features: Translations, Care Cards & More 19:29

Record Review & AI Verifiability 21:28

Instinct PIMS Overview 24:17

Instinct Expands to General Practice 24:51

Instinct Features: Estimates, Safety Warnings & Clinical Tools 32:03

Embedded Scribble: Voice-Controlled Anesthesia Records 38:07

AI Safety: Human in the Loop 38:46

APIs, MCP Servers & Vibe Coding for Vets 45:02

Open vs Closed PIMS Philosophy 50:39

You know that feeling: exam time is looming. You've spent three days making flashcards and highlighting your notes, but you haven't even started actually studying yet...

Whether you're a vet student drowning in slide decks, a membership candidate juggling articles and notes, or a resident trying to jam an impossible volume of clinical knowledge into your skull - the way most of us study is, frankly, not backed by the science. Which is why you might need a little help from technology:

In part two of our Tech Tools for Vets series, software engineer Hasitha Jayatilake joins me to walk you through StudyAnything - an AI-powered study tool that generates quizzes from your notes, tracks your weak spots over time, and builds guided learning pathways based on Bloom's hierarchy of learning. (By the way - he built this tool because he couldn’t bare watching his vet student partner making Anki cards at 2am!)

What you'll learn:

• How active recall and spaced repetition actually work - and why highlighting your notes is basically doing nothing
• What Bloom's hierarchy means for your study plan - and how Study Anything uses it to move you from rote recall to clinical application
• StudyAnything’s guided learning pathway feature (just gone live) - that turns your uploaded notes into a structured lesson plan with concept maps, assumed knowledge, and motivational context
• How the community feature works - study groups, shared question banks, and what this means for educators (or podcast hosts!) who want to create resources
• How to generate harder questions on demand - using learning outcomes and difficulty levels to get yourself on the honours roll
• What makes this different from Notebook LM or other AI tools

This episode includes screen sharing, so if you want to follow along, watch the video on Spotify. If you prefer audio only, you'll still get 99% of the value.

The team at StudyAnything are giving Vet Vault listeners the opportunity to try out their top tier subscription (LOTS of quizzes!) with code VETVAULT at studyanything.academy for 50% off your first month on the paid plan. That's about $3.50 to give it a proper test run.

Note: This episode isn't a promotion, endorsement or an ad - it's part of our ongoing series exploring the tools you might be considering. If you have a software you'd like us to look at, let me know at info@thevetvault.com

Go to ⁠⁠⁠thevetvault.com⁠⁠ for show notes, access to our clinical continuing education content and to sign up for our weekly 'best of the Vet Vault' ⁠newsletter,⁠ or join us in person at one of our phenomenal ⁠Vets On Tour conferences. ⁠ (Look out for our upcoming New Zealand, Italy and Africa conferences.)

Topics and Timestamps

3:26 Active Recall & The Science of Studying

4:06 How StudyAnything Works - Uploading & Courses

7:57 Bloom's Hierarchy & Learning Outcomes

9:53 Ad Break - Vets on Tour

11:24 Quiz Demo

19:28 Guided Learning Pathway

20:15 File Summary, Concept Maps & Key Terms

29:10 Study Groups & Communities

31:02 Comparison with Notebook LM & Competitors

32:32 Spaced Repetition & Future Features

37:29 Pricing

39:48 Deep Dive: Navigating the Dashboard

41:00 Deep Dive: Creating & Customising Quizzes

Is our podcast getting… repetitive?

Honest question.

Lately, we’ve felt a growing tension behind the mic: are we just saying the same things… just with a new guest and in slightly different ways?

Are we actually helping you? (With is after all the point of this podcast)

In this short solo episode, I ask a few questions that I’d love your input on.

We want to rebuild this with you. This is your invite.

Feedback to info@thevetvault.com, or at our contact form on the website, or hit me up in the comments on Spotify.

Ever check your payslip… your student debt… your mortgage… and wonder if you’re just treading water?

You’re not alone, and you’re not stuck.

In this episode we revisit one of the most neglected topics in the profession: money.

Hubert sits down with US-based financial adviser Eric Miller to break down the decisions that can actually move the money-needle for employed vets: from budgeting and debt to investing, insurance, and increasing your income. (We do global principles with US specifics)

No jargon. No guilt. Just a clear starting point for vets who know they should have a plan… but haven’t begun yet.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why practice ownership isn’t the only route to financial security
• The one habit that underpins every solid financial plan
• A simple 70/20/10 framework for spending, investing, and enjoying your money
• How to handle student debt without letting it control your life
• Whether to prioritise debt repayment, investing- or both
• The difference between good debt and bad debt (and why it matters)
• How automation quietly builds wealth in the background
• What young vets need to know about insurance, income growth, and lifestyle creep

And perhaps most importantly:

A more grounded, reassuring view of the profession itself.

Yes, financial pressure is real.
But Eric will convince you that veterinary medicine is still a strong, high-potential career - IF you do it right.

⁠⁠thevetvault.com⁠ for show notes, access to our clinical continuing education content and to sign up for our weekly 'best of the Vet Vault' newsletter, or join us in person at one of our phenomenal Vets On Tour conferences.

Topics and Time Stamps

04:24 Biggest Financial Mistakes

05:42 Budgeting & The 70/20/10 Rule

14:41 Retirement Planning & 401k

24:09 Student Debt & How to Tackle It

26:22 Loan Forgiveness

28:58 Pay Off Debt vs. Invest

31:53 The Debt Snowball Method (it's a good thing!)

33:55 Increasing Your Income

37:44 Constructive vs. Destructive Debt

41:35 Insurance & Health Coverage

44:06 Looking Ahead: The Veterinary Industry

49:45 One Financial Habit for Ne w Grads

We love to hear from you. If you have a question for us or you’d like to give us some feedback please get in touch via our contact or catch up with us on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠.

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