The Hospital Environment, Part 2: Exploring Culture

Course overview

This is the second lecture in a two-part series that does a deep dive into the real, physical, objective environment in which we work as veterinary professionals. We will explore the external environment in terms of sensory exposure, and the internal environment in terms of culture. In this second part, we tackle veterinary workplace culture. Culture, by its simplest definition, is everything that is thought of by a group of individuals. It contains all of our ideas, modes of expression, values, hopes, fears, assumptions, and misconceptions as they affect our living and working together. The quality of each of those items (and countless others) gives a sense of the health of a culture and where changes ought to occur. From an organizational perspective, the quality of leadership determines the quality of the culture, and in turn the health of the workforce.