MENTORSHIP... LET'S TALK ABOUT IT
Mentorship can be a little like a unicorn: everyone talks about it, but it can be tough to find the real thing. In veterinary medicine, many clinics say they offer mentorship, but without structure, accountability, or clear expectations, it can become more sparkle than substance. True mentorship should not be mythical. It should be something you can see, ask about, and evaluate before committing to a long-term position.
Our Unicorn Vet Clinic checklist is designed to help prospective team members take a better “peek under the hood” before deciding whether a clinic is the right fit. It helps you look past the glitter and get clear on how support, training, communication, feedback, and growth actually happen in day-to-day clinic life. By asking specific questions and looking for concrete examples, you can better understand whether a clinic’s mentorship culture is real, consistent, and built to help you support, thrive, and grow.
The Work Is Hard Enough. The Environment Doesn’t Have To Be.
We believe veterinary medicine workplace environments can be better, and we want to be part of that change. We also recognize that saying “vet med needs to change” can feel uncomfortable to some people. There are many wonderful clinics, leaders, teams, and mentors already doing meaningful work to support their people, and that deserves to be recognized.
At the same time, we would respectfully disagree with the idea that there is no need for change, or that talking about negative workplace culture is what creates the problem. Toxic workplace culture exists in veterinary medicine. People are still sharing stories of burnout, fear, poor boundaries, lack of support, and feeling like they have to choose between the career they love and their own well-being. Pretending those experiences are rare, exaggerated, or no longer happening does not protect the profession. It causes harm by making people feel unseen and by allowing unhealthy patterns to continue.
For too long, this career has asked passionate, capable people to give everything they have without always giving them the support, boundaries, or sustainable career path they deserve. We want to help shift that culture. For us, wanting vet med to change is not about criticizing everyone in the profession. It is about believing this profession is worth protecting.
At our clinic, we believe great veterinary medicine is built on autonomy, psychological safety, and career growth. If you give people the environment to thrive in, they will. How do we know that? We have seen it first hand. It means team members are trusted to think, contribute, ask questions, keep learning, and take ownership of their work, while also knowing they are supported by a team that has their back.
We believe professional boundaries matter. We believe in looking out for one another. We believe people do their best work when they are on teams that want to see them thrive and when they work for management that wants them to be sustainably successful, not just get the most out of them while they have them.
And we want that for absolutely everyone in veterinary medicine, whether they work at the clinic down the street or in a remote corner of Alberta. The work in vet med is hard enough. The environment does not have to be.
Because the six-year-old version of you who dreamed of becoming a veterinary professional did not imagine making it through years of school, dedication, and sacrifice only to end up hating the career they worked so hard to join. That dream deserves better. Vet med deserves better.
The goal is not to tear veterinary medicine down. The goal is to help it become a place where more people can stay, thrive, and build long-term careers they are proud of.
TL;DR
Mentorship can be a little like a unicorn: everyone talks about it, but it can be tough to find the real thing. Our goal is to help people look past the sparkle and see whether a clinic’s mentorship, culture, and support are actually structured, accountable, and sustainable. We believe veterinary medicine can be better, and we want to be part of that change by encouraging autonomy, psychological safety, career growth, professional boundaries, and teams that genuinely want their people to thrive. The work in vet med is hard enough; the environment does not have to be.