Psychological Health & Safety in Veterinary Hospitals

Course overview

Psychological health and safety can be best understood as a workplace that actively works to prevent psychological harm to its employees and when harm occurs, it has the knowledge, skills, and capacity to address it. While traditional definitions of workplace safety have focused on preventing and addressing physical harm, there is now a greater appreciation that people deserve workplaces that are actively working to reduce psychological and emotional harm so they can work with greater comfort, safety, and confidence. This has a direct correlation with individual professional quality of life, healthy team dynamics and functioning hospitals with improved relationships and retention. This session will explore the psychosocial factors required to improve professional quality of life including but not limited to organizational norms (clear leadership & expectations, employee involvement & engagement, work-life balance), ways of relating to one another (respect, equity, recognition & reward), and supports provided by employers (growth & development, workload management, psychological/social protection & support).