Dr. Dani McVety is the co-founder of Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice, and she often sees animals and their human friends in dark times – when a pet is nearing the end of it’s life. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, St. Petersburg College’s Veterinary Nursing program, along with the Student Government Association and Accessibility Services, sponsored a lunch and learn event Monday, October 8 that featured Dr. McVety, who spoke on the challenges of being a pet hospice provider and the mental fatigue that can ensue.

One big topic Dr. McVety addressed was about different ways that pet care providers can become emotionally distressed. According to McVety, ethical fatigue, which is often associated with difficulties in understanding or accepting a pet owner’s medical decisions – many times specifically related to euthanasia, is a challenge that involves moral issues that can cause physical and even mental distress as well as burnout.

Dr. McVety, who only practices end of life care, spoke about the difficulties of accepting pet owner’s decisions in deciding when is ‘the right time,’ especially when care givers do not have insights into what pet owners are facing in their lives. She stressed that the commitment veterinary professionals make is to consider the pet’s quality of life and prevent or stop suffering, and to provide a quality of death, so that a pet’s passing is one that is peaceful and compassionate.

Physical and mental health awareness is of particular interest to SPC’s veterinary nursing students because mental health is a significant concern for the veterinary profession. There is a high suicide rate, identified as “twice that of the dental professionals, more than twice that of the medical profession, and four times the rate in the general population. (Stoewen, 2015, p. 89). This high rate of depression and suicide is often associated with the role veterinary professionals have in performing euthanasia.