Episode 40 – From Burnout to Breakthrough: Coaching and the Squiggly Career Path

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In this week’s episode:

• The 100-year career: today’s graduates could have two or three full careers within their lifetime – so why define yourself so narrowly?
• Escaping burnout: Adrian shares how stepping into industry saved his veterinary career when he was on the brink of collapse.
• Fixed identity trap: the profession often instils a rigid definition of what it means to be a “real vet” – leaving many guilty when they want to pivot.
• Coaching as clarity: coaching isn’t about therapy – it’s a future-focused tool that helps vets get unstuck, reframe success, and take control of their next steps.

Veterinarian-turned-coach Adrian Nelson-Pratt joins Jack Peploe to explore how redefining success, escaping fixed identities, and embracing coaching can unlock clarity, resilience, and joy in veterinary careers.

Additional Guest Spotlights

• Recommend Resource: This week, Ian Stroud highlights the power of shared learning – recalling how clinical director development groups provided invaluable support, reflection, and problem-solving among peers, alongside formal study and hands-on experience.
  
• Next Episode Sneak Peak: Coming up next, We’re joined by Dr. Paul Manktelow and Dr. Allison Thomas from Blue Cross to explore what private practice can learn from the charity model – covering pragmatic medicine, balancing limited resources with high demand, and redefining the true value of veterinary care.
  

Show Notes

• Out every other week on your favourite podcast platform.
• Presented by Jack Peploe: Veterinary IT Expert, Certified Ethical Hacker, CEO of Veterinary IT Services and dog Dad to the adorable Puffin.
• Adrian is an accredited, professional coach, speaker, writer, entrepreneur, business owner and veterinary surgeon with nearly 30 years’ experience in the veterinary profession. He has been coaching and training teams for nearly 20 years.
• He brings significant business commercial and marketing expertise to any project, with 10 years of management experience at Hill’s Pet Nutrition and Colgate Palmolive and 6-years working with Vets Stay Go Diversify, latterly as a Director.
• Recognised as a thought leader in the veterinary industry and, alongside ANP Coaching, running his own business consultancy in the veterinary industry, he has been invited to speak at numerous international seminars, events, Universities and company programmes.
• Explore more about welcome to ANP Coaching, and find Adrian on linkedIn!

Transcription

Jack Peploe:

Coming up on Modern Veterinary Practice,

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

If you are graduating and you’re a child of the nineties, there’s a 50% chance you’re going to make it to 101, which is either scary or terrifying, of course, or liberating. If you realise that if your veterinary identity started when you were in 1990 and you graduated in 2020 something and your identity is 25 years old, you could have two more fully formed 20 year careers and still retiring in your seventies.

Jack Peploe:

Welcome to the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast. I’m your host and veterinary IT expert, Jack Peploe. In this episode, I’ll be welcoming Adrian Nelson-Pratt veterinarian turn accredited performance coach and business consultant to the podcast. We’ll be talking about breaking free from fixed mindsets, redefining success in veterinary careers, and how coaching can help professionals unlock clarity, resilience, and fulfilment in their work and lives.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Hi, my name’s Adrian Nelson Pratt. I am a breast or 1995 graduate. I’ve been out of clinical practice since 2001 when I joined Hills Pet Nutrition, and now I run my own coaching practice. I’m an accredited performance coach and insights discovery practitioner, and my day-to-day job is coaching high proportion of vets and vet nurses on careers, personal performance and business. There you go. That’s a little bit about me, Jack.

Jack Peploe:

Amazing Adrian. Well, it’s so good to have you on the bottom very practice podcast. I keep saying to myself, I dunno why it’s taking me so long to get you on here, but obviously it’s great to finally have you here. Now you’ve sort of had a fascinating journey from vet to coach to business leader, and I think what stands out is that thread of purpose. Now you’re clearly driven by helping others, finding clarity, fulfilment, joy in their careers, which is great. And it feels kind of, I suppose, a mission that’s very relevant now when so many in our profession sort of feel burnt out or sort of a little bit stuck. So today I sort of love to challenge some of the traditional narratives around success in VetMed. Now I thought we could explore why so many feel like they’ve lost momentum, how coaching can unlock new possibilities and how the profession might evolve if we started defining success differently. Does that sound okay?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Sounds great. I have to point out though, Jack, the purpose piece didn’t come for the first six to eight years of my career.

Jack Peploe:

Okay.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Absolutely didn’t. And I can genuinely say hand on heart that Hills Pet Nutrition saved my veterinary career because after six years in clinical practice, I was toast.

Jack Peploe:

Wow.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Done, dusted. And if I look back, I can probably recognise eight out of 10 signs of burnout at the time, possibly even borderline clinical depression with the wisdom of hindsight. And so hills saved my veterinary career for sure, and I found a company that through its corporate practices, had career development pathways, it had people pathways, and it took its employees seriously at a time when almost none of those structures existed. So I’m of a vintage. I can remember when the law changed and the corporates kind of started popping up. So I was a lost at sea small animal vet in a state of burnout until I got onto an industry pathway, and that was the start of the squiggly career.

Jack Peploe:

Okay, well that’s kind really relevant actually. That was one of the questions that I was wanting to dive into was obviously you’re talking about yourself there, but obviously you also work with a lot of vets who seemingly have it all on paper, good jobs, clinical skills, stable income, but still feel stuck or unhappy. Now you’ve given a couple of examples there, but why do you think that is and what are we missing when we define success so narrowly?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

It’s a really interesting question. So one of the things I think we’re struggling with is a very fixed mindset, veterinary identity. And actually this is written up in some literature that was done a few years ago at the RBC and other places as well. The veterinary mindset, if you take success in veterinary medicine as knowing everything you possibly can and reaching a diagnosis for the animal in front of you, and you define your identity mindset around that. Plus you probably wanted to be a vet since you were very young. With my coaching clients, I asked them that question and the majority of them can put a five or 6-year-old type label on it, which means that by the time they graduate in their early twenties, they’ve been a vet identity for 20 plus years. I think that that mindset is one of our challenges. We’re not very adaptable because we’ve been funneled and hot housed and an unspoken curriculum perhaps that what the vet is and isn’t starts to define you pretty early in career. So I think at the moment, one of the challenges that we have coming through is that we know the story of the competition to markets authority. There are new vet schools everywhere. There are vet schools growing, there are vet schools in trouble. There are lots of things going on with the shape of the profession essentially. And so if the vet identity is a fixed mindset and you’re not able to actualize mindset

Because the world’s moving around you, then you’re going to feel unsettled because you’re not equipped to deal with change. So I’ll tell you a story. So my mom who’s 84 this year, she still says to me, bear in mind, I’ve not been clinical since 2001. Don’t you miss being a real vet and loving members of our family accidentally do this to us all the time. And they twist the knife. So in their head they have the HARRIET test kind of definition or whatever is or isn’t. And clinical practice is the definition to the average member of the public, which is fair enough where the majority would work. Don’t you miss the animals? Yes, I do. To a point. Do you miss the owners? Not at

Ian Stroud:

All.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Do you miss the challenges of being in clinical practice? Not in the slightest. What a shame. It’s a waste of your education. Well, I can’t do what I do today without having done what I’ve done. And that includes that vet identity piece. It’s a really interesting paradox. People who love us accidentally reinforce the fixed identity.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah. And why do vets feel that guilt or failure when they want to change direction? Whether it’s stepping away from clinical work or trying something new? Why is it so hard to give permission to pivot?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

If we had the answer to that question, we might be quite a lot richer than we are today, Jack. The straight answer is, I’m not sure. I think it varies a lot between people, but if you believe that being a vet has a certain shape and size to it and your identity is rooted in that structure of being a vet, then changing careers challenges some of your deepest, most long held values that you have and challenging those deep values is a fundamental change. It can be done, it’s done regularly, but we’ve had to work hard for sure.

And we are regulated professionals from world-class universities, some of the biggest, best universities in the world. And so not doing what we set out to do seems like somewhat of a failure. And in the fixed identity mindset, the entity mindset, I am who I am, that actually is questioning your deepest values. And there’s a huge dissonance attached to that. So when I’m talking to my coaching clients, I use the example of the hundred Year life. There’s a book, and I forget who wrote it, but it’s called the hundred Year Life. So if you are graduating and you’re a child of the nineties, there’s a 50% chance you’re going to make it to 101, which is either scary or terrifying of course, or liberating. If you realise that if your veterinary identity started when you were in 1990 and you graduated in 2020 something and your identity is 25 years old, you could have two more fully formed 20 year careers and still retire in your seventies, which is bonkers. Which is absolutely bonkers. And until you stop paying for your M-R-C-V-S and stop doing your CPD, the qualification never goes away.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

So one of the things I get to talking about is a skill stack, which is the word stack comes from tech, which you’ll fully understand Jack, but in the context of what we’re talking about, the veterinary skills are just part of a stack of skills that you get over life from your whole life that you build into something else, which you can then use as a toolkit to do pretty much anything you want. You are in control of that next step.

Jack Peploe:

No, that’s cool. And I mean, you referenced coaching there. It’s not something that’s historically been sort of embedded in veterinary culture. What resistance do you see to coaching or self-development in our profession? And again, how do we start to shift that?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

I think there’s two answers to that. The first one is the self-development question. The working assumption that most of the people that I talk to around coaching have is that self-development in vet world. That becomes CPD that you can put on the app to keep up to date for the RCVS and reflect on it has to be veterinary. So something clinical and well, firstly, that’s just not true. And that’s in the RCVS descriptions. It has to be context specific. So if you’re in a leadership role, leadership skills would be just as valuable. So I think we’ve accidentally hemmed ourselves in by imagining that CPD is just clinical stuff and it’s not. The second part of it is that coaching as a profession, it’s not a professionally regulated, there’s no professionally regulated body. There are so many different flavours of coaching. There’s a credibility gap, which is still being bridged, I think with some. And investing in coaching as CPD is the first thing I refer to, but investing in it as an investment in self when you’ve spent all of your time focused on any personal development I do is always veterinary flavoured and doing something that’s absolutely for you and not veterinary can actually be a little bit out there for some people.

I don’t think it’s as defined as some people would imagine either. So if you’re looking for a coach, I think you’re looking for an accredited coach with an accredited body like coaches of excellence like the International Coaching Federation, like the EMCC in Europe are looking for somebody with indemnity insurance, you’re looking for somebody who follows a code of conduct and actually takes the time upfront to talk about how that code of conduct may or may not affect their coaching because working coaching’s an intervention and maybe some people don’t like the idea that they have to have an intervention.

And it’s in parallel to things like counselling and therapy. Coaching is not therapeutic. It’s future orientated, goal orientated. Whereas the therapeutic side would be much more about regressing into the past to work on something that’s affecting your now, whereas coaching’s future orientated towards a goal. So I think there is an understanding issue, and I think it goes all the way back to the eighties when coaching started to be a thing, is that a word was picked that was in use elsewhere. For example, football coaching, basketball coaching, netball coaching, all that kind of stuff. And that’s not the essence of coaching that strict coaching would do. That’s more training and management and all kinds of other things as well. So I think we’re working towards an accreditation and a regulation globally, probably under the International Coaching Federation. And I think that could move it a long way as a resource for people to dip into.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Now, for those people that are listening who feel they’ve lost momentum or are a bit overwhelmed or unsure, what’s next? What’s the very first step to getting unstuck in your opinion?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Great question. So people come to coaching usually for one or two reasons. They’re at A, and they want to get to B, they know where B is. It’s a destination. The coach helps them get there quicker, more productively and more effectively. So that’s a straight line journey in the vet world. Use the word stuck. And so I hear two or three different versions of that when I’m speaking to people every day. So they’re stuck in the mud walking through treacle, getting nowhere. That’s the first one. The second one is, I’ve got so many options. My head’s in a spin, I need help working them out. And then the third one is, I am absolutely, I’m toast, but I’ve got no ideas. They’re kind of the three flavours. What they share is having somebody to talk to through coaching or some form of discussion.

It doesn’t have to be coaching. There are other ways to do this that sort of stops you. And when we’re having a coach coaching exploration, most of the people we talk to don’t have a clear vision of what they want to do next. So it’s either the blank space in your mind or so many options or just going around in circles, for example. So slowing people down and actually working on a vision, working on some clarity around what they want through great questioning, that’s normally how we do it. And get them to build some kind of vision that they could work to, even if it’s a short-term vision, that could be a year, it could be less than a year. And you start to say, right, okay, if you want those things, what’s important to you? Get into the values, get into the things that they are looking to achieve. And sometimes it’s mastery of a skill. Sometimes it’s financial security, sometimes it’s a new career step or a career squiggle and squiggle, meaning that it could be lateral as much as onwards or backwards.

And really just taking time to slow everything down for even if it’s half an hour, because that then sets a pathway using coaching processes and coaching exercises and skills. There’s lots out there and different coaches will do it in different ways. So it’s an important step to talk to a coach to get the flavour of the kind of work they do and how they do it, whether it suits you. And once you have that clarity, then you can start to think about building forwards. Then what does the vision become? It becomes a goal. The goal becomes a big, hairy, audacious goal, and then you break it down into steps. So to use, I imagine you do this with your team when you’re doing tech work. How do you break in a big, hairy, audacious tech where you break it down into sprints, don’t you? And each sprint has a short timeline and specific tasks. And what’s the old phrase? How do you eat an elephant? One fork full at a time.

Jack Peploe:

That’s very good. I like that. So I mean, you mentioned vision there, and I’m completely aligned with what you’re saying, but I mean obviously there’s always that resistance of I haven’t got time. It’s a very sort of reactive, fast-paced industry. How do they create space for that vision and reflection?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

Wow, that’s a very big question. And obviously everybody’s different. Of course. I think the first thing that people need to realise is that some of the institutional busyness, and that’s busy with a y busyness, not with an i, is actually noise. And yes, there’s questions about how you draw boundaries, and yes, there’s questions about how you switch your brain from work mode to life mode or family responsibilities or financial responsibilities. And most of our technology is hijack tower limbic system with scrolling and notifications and beeping and buzzing and all that kind of stuff. So one of the first things we do with a new coaching client is try and find that space in a way that works for them. But to recognise that everything that’s urgent is not always important,

Ian Stroud:

Of course.

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

And do you know what the realisation that if it’s not important, you can probably ignore it. And the urgency always trumps importance because it’s on fire, it’s big, it’s red, it’s flashing at you. It’s like, actually there’s some calm in there if we can find it.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Just around the joy aspect, you’ve talked about how seeing people unlock their potential is kind of the best part of your work. Is there a moment or story that stands out as a reminder of why you do what you do?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

I get them every week, to be fair, because, and that’s what keeps me buzzing. You know what, I’m like Jack. I am a raging extrovert most of the time, and I just really enjoy the people side of things.

So I enjoy the conversations. I’m quite renowned for my coaching sessions being longer than planned, which is bad coaching technique, but actually fun for me. So this week for example, there’s somebody coming on board to have a coaching programme with me who is at their wits end and watching the relief on their face when I said, look, you’re not alone. There are ways that you can do this. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. We don’t where you’re headed. This is not an A to B journey. This is a bit of a question to the unknown, but when you see the relief, and actually we don’t set out to cause tears in a conversation, but there are tears, and I’ve helped people get some pretty hardcore jobs. So I’ve helped people move countries.

I’ve helped people move specialisms. I’ve helped people go from the classic first step out of vet practice is into an industry role, for example, as a business advisor or a technical advisor. So we’ve helped people do that numerous times. There are people that I worked with actually probably two years ago, and all of a sudden someone stops me at B-S-A-V-A two weeks and says, you changed my career pathway. Nice. And I’m there trying to remember clearly who this person is, because although we do coaching visually online, it’s still, you dunno how tall someone is, all that kind of stuff. And so you get those moments where it’s just like, yeah, I’m doing the right thing for the right reasons, and that’s the buzz.

Jack Peploe:

No, I like that. That’s awesome. Well, look, Adrian, it is being by no surprise, such an inspiring and grounding conversation. So you’ve shared so many sort of important truths around identity fulfilment and what it really means to thrive in veterinary medicine, which is awesome. Now, for anyone listening who’s feeling, I keep saying it, but a bit stuck or wants to connect with your work more, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Adrian Nelson-Pratt:

So we talked about discussing clarity a while back, and so most good coaches will do you some form of exploratory call upfront. And so what we’re going to do is it’ll be confidential, it costs nothing. It’s part of exploring whether you are the right coach for a person course. So that’s a two-way street. And I’m going to, there’ll be a link in the meeting show notes below which books a gap in my diary, and you can have a chat. Alternatively, send me an email to adrian@anpcoaching.com. And yeah, happy to chat.

Jack Peploe:

Amazing. Well, Adrian, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. And thank you very much, Jack. Thanks for the opportunity. It’s been great.

Jack Peploe:

Every week we ask professionals and experts to suggest a best business resource for our listeners. This week’s recommendation is from Ian Stroud.

Ian Stroud:

There’s so many resources out there and there’s lots of things I did which were really useful. I mean, obviously experience just doing the business and having the experience and learning those painful lessons is really important. And I did the study to the University of Liverpool where the RI business and management, it was like a mini MBA type thing, and that was really useful as well. But I think the thing that really helped was listening and learning from other people. And when we were at es, they set up this clinical director development breach where they knew clinical directors came together to support each other and to tackle a complex problem that they may all be sharing. And then they could talk about particular areas of challenge or success within their individual practice. And that’s where we initially met. But it was really, really useful, really useful to learn from other people and to reflect on your own journey to that point. So for me, that would be that.

Jack Peploe:

Coming up next week, we welcome Dr. Paul Manktelow, chief Vet at Blue Cross and Dr. Allison Thomas, head of veterinary standards at Blue Cross. Together, Paul and Allison share their experiences of leading within the charity sector where veterinary care is designed around welfare and accessibility rather than profitability. We discuss the principles of pragmatic medicine, the challenges of balancing finite resources with high demand, and the lessons private practice can take from the charity model. They also open up about sensitive topics like euthanasia, transparency in pricing, and redefining what value in veterinary care really means. Tune in to hear how purpose-driven veterinary medicine can shape a more compassionate and sustainable future for the profession.

Allison Thomas:

There tends to be a belief that pragmatism might equate with low value. I think it may be low cost, but I think the value to the animal and its owner can be huge despite the lack of financial input. If you focus on the quality of life and the welfare implications, then you can achieve an awful lot.

Jack Peploe:

That’s it for this episode. All links and recommendations we talked about are in the show notes. Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast if you found it useful. In the meantime, thanks for listening and see you next time.