You can save a patient and still be called greedy.
You can explain everything properly and still be accused of hiding something.
You can recommend diagnostics and suddenly, “Pera lang habol ng vet.”
You can refuse an unsafe procedure and become “walang malasakit.”
You can refer a difficult case and suddenly, “Hindi magaling.”
You can set boundaries and become “mayabang.”
Welcome to veterinary medicine.
Here is something young veterinarians eventually learn:
Doing the right thing does not guarantee that people will like you.
Sometimes, doing the right thing is exactly what makes people angry.
Because good medicine does not always give people what they want.
A veterinarian sometimes has to say:
- “No.”
- “We need tests first.”
- “This procedure is too risky.”
- “I cannot guarantee survival.”
- “This case needs a specialist.”
- “We cannot continue if my staff is being abused.”
And those may be the exact sentences that turn a veterinarian into the villain of someone’s Facebook story.
Advertisements & Promos
BUT CRITICISM DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN YOU ARE WRONG.
History is full of people who were attacked for challenging what others wanted to believe.
Jesus Christ preached love and compassion, yet was condemned.
Martin Luther King Jr. fought peacefully for equality, yet was threatened and killed.
José Rizal fought through his writings, exposed abuses, and was executed.
No, veterinarians are not being compared to these people in sacrifice or importance.
The lesson is simply this:
Being attacked has never been reliable proof that a person is wrong.
Sometimes people attack wrongdoing.
And sometimes people attack because they do not like being told something they do not want to hear.
Veterinary medicine is no different.
Advertisements & Promos
Tell an owner that the pet is obese.
You may offend them.
Tell them the disease could have been prevented.
You may offend them.
Tell them they waited too long before seeking treatment.
You may offend them.
Tell them you cannot treat a critical patient without diagnostics.
You may offend them.
But our job is not to manufacture comfortable answers.
Our job is to practice medicine.
VETERINARIANS MUST REMAIN ACCOUNTABLE
Of course, veterinarians must remain accountable.
If we make mistakes, we should admit them.
If criticism is valid, we should listen.
If our system is wrong, we should fix it.
But we must also stop believing that every angry comment deserves guilt.
Every viral complaint is not automatically truth.
Every one-star review is not automatically malpractice.
And every person calling a veterinarian heartless does not automatically understand what happened inside that consultation room.
Advertisements & Promos
As your career grows, so will the number of people with opinions about you.
Some will praise you.
Some will criticize you.
Some will misunderstand you.
Some will dislike you simply because you finally learned how to say no.
So to my fellow veterinarians:
Do not measure your integrity by how few people dislike you.
Measure it by your medical decisions.
Your documentation.
Your ethics.
Your willingness to correct yourself when you are wrong.
And your courage to stand by yourself when you know you did what was right.
Because sometimes the price of doing the right thing is becoming the bad guy in somebody else’s story.
Let them tell their story.
You keep doing your job.
Dr. Geoff Carullo is a Fellow and the current President of the Philippine College of Canine Practitioners.
Sharing this helps others understand what it really means to be a vet. Like and follow if you’re with us.
