Emotionally intelligent teams: How to build a culture of safety through shared humanity

Session summary

In the face of the current retention crisis in our industry, veterinary leaders seek new ways of taking care of their teams, promoting wellbeing and creating a culture in which veterinary professionals can not only survive, but also thrive. Money, technology, organisational developments and many other well described factors can help to partially alleviate this crisis, however, none of them has the chance to have a lasting effect if the basic psychological needs of the employees remain neglected.

To provide comprehensive support to our colleagues, organisations ought to re-discover and embrace the very core of every veterinary practice - shared humanity.

In this workshop you will:

1. Discover the hidden, but remarkably potent core of every veterinary team
2. Learn more about the culture of safety and how it can enrich your budget, as well as your employees’ mental health
3. Deepen your understanding of emotional intelligence
4. Discover practical EQ tools
5. Plan out the future steps that can revolutionise your workplace culture, leadership style and your own private life

About Dr Olivia Oginska

Liv graduated in 2016 from the university Poland and shortly after graduation moved to the United Kingdom to undergo surgical training. During her career development, Liv was exposed to various workplace environments and worked with veterinary professionals of diverse backgrounds, cultures and nationalities.

Along the years of her professional training, Liv has been mentoring and providing mental health support to her colleagues. The passion for veterinary wellbeing led her to undertaking the Masters degree programme in Applied Positive Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, UK, where Liv received the life-coaching and appreciative inquiry training credentials. Based on several years of veterinary and peer-support experience, combined with Positive Psychology training, Liv created the Vet Gone Real platform, through which multiple individuals and veterinary teams receive coaching and mental support. Liv is deeply passionate about the veterinary workplace wellbeing, emotional intelligence, psychological safety and creating tools that help veterinary practitioners to thrive in their career and personal life.

Liv presented her innovative approach to building human-friendly veterinary workplaces on the international congresses and she puts her teachings into practice through serving veterinary teams as their Clinical Wellbeing Coach. She is also a certified workplace conflict mediator.