Why people telling you to be more confident is rarely the right answer 

My second year as a newly-qualified vet was not great. I had moved from a very supportive but too intense first job to a job in a large corporation. The day to day often sole charge work was tricky for me but manageable. The team was really nice. The weekends, however, were hellish. 

With one year of experience under my belt I was catapulted into covering the weekend cases for the 26 practices that fed into the hospital. The worst aspect of it was that for about 80% of those weekends I was the most experienced vet of the three in the building. I would only have to endure this every 6 weeks, but I dreaded it for over a week before. 

I was lucky as my previous job had involved a lot of emergency work and so could manage most of the cases that came in. In that role I always had the option of a back up vet for trickier cases. In my new role the back up vet was technically supposed to be available but would often not materialise (claiming to be too far away or ill). I felt incredibly vulnerable and unprotected. I had a fair bit of experience for a 1 year qualified vet but I knew that I had major holes. I had never done some of the key emergency abdominal surgeries. I had scrubbed in on a couple but certainly not enough to confidently repeat them on my own. I was constantly terrified that if a GDV collapsed through the door that they would pass away due to my incompetence and that if another vet had been there the animal would have lived. I saw this lacking in my ability as a major safety and liability issue for the hospital. My colleagues also agreed that we should have a better spread of experience for this reason. It was stressful for them too. 

As the diligent employee that I was, I raised this issue with our manager. I then proceeded to have a completely useless meeting where I was told that I should ‘just be more confident’. I felt like shouting back, ‘I am 100% confident that I am not confident doing an enterotomy on my own.’ Instead I meekly replied that I didn’t think confidence was the issue. 

She then told me I was suffering from imposter syndrome and that I should look into it. I did. Here are my thoughts. 

What is imposter syndrome? 

The Oxford English Dictionary states that it is: 

‘the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.’

Others describe it as a feeling of inadequacy despite evidence of success. Another way, you feel like you are winging it or pretending to do the job that you are actually doing just fine. 

Do most new vets suffer from imposter syndrome? 

Our job is so complicated that it is incredibly easy to look at all the bits that you don’t know and feel like a fraud. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, you know? 

When you are starting out, it can feel like a constant stream of information is running past and you need to grab what you can every day. At that point, it can definitely feel like the 5 years of training just weren’t enough and no one should listen or pay for your not-so-expert opinion. That is normal, you are not an imposter, just a New Grad who needs to keep going. 

I found, as the months (and years) ticked by, more and more knowledge and diagnostic flow charts settled into the routine part of my mind. Suddenly it clicks. Suddenly you reach a point where you’re only getting one or two new things to learn a day. The job is much less intense and you start to trust your opinion on cases. This is what it is to have experience. 

That is not the same as imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome can only happen when you know the answer, but still feel like a fraud. If you feel like you shouldn’t be taken seriously whilst you are learning a new skill and trying to present it, that is self doubt. If you feel like you shouldn’t be giving advice when discussing how to manage otitis externa for the 1000th time, then you should probably look into discussing imposter syndrome with a professional. 

Toxic Imposter Syndrome 

I believe imposter syndrome is being used as a lazy way of managers putting blame onto inexperienced vets. 

When I was told I ‘just needed to be more confident,’ that manager was making it clear that this was my problem to change and not theirs. I think that lots of people think that they are feeling imposter syndrome when they actually don’t feel adequately supported or provided for. 

To illustrate my point: 

If you are not sure of a case during a consultation but go and discuss the case with someone more experienced and make a plan together – do you feel as if you are making it up or as if the owner is getting a sub-standard service? No, because you know that the plan is based on solid experience. 

If you scrub in with someone to do a surgery and then have them watch you do the next one and then when confident do the surgery on your own with them in the building – do you feel like an imposter? No, because you are supported the whole way and you know that if you had made a mistake it would have been caught. 

Looking back, I would never expect a New Grad to be completely confident in their abilities as a practicing vet because, odds are, they haven’t fully developed them yet. To be fully confident right from the beginning is to be lacking in a lot of self-awareness. I am always suspicious of a newly qualified vet who doesn’t ask for help. There is so much of the job to learn on the job and so I worry things are getting missed. 

So, if you feel like you are an imposter, don’t just assume that there is something wrong with you and you alone. A lot of imposter syndrome comes from the environment you are in. 

Please consider whether you actually need more support or training. 

Going back to my example, to actually solve the problem and give me the ‘more confidence’ the manager clearly thought I needed, actual solutions such as having a more experienced vet either in the building or available on the phone would have been great. Enrolling me on a surgical course or even getting me to scrub in on the emergency surgeries would have also helped. Simply telling me I have a syndrome only made me feel inadequate and that I couldn’t cope with being a vet. Thinking about it now, the corporation clearly did not want to actually invest in either their team or my development. Putting the problem back onto me was a smart way of not needing to spend any money. They didn’t need to pay for my therapy. 

After this meeting I thought I could not hack being a clinical vet and started looking for non-clinical work. I’m so glad I moved jobs instead for ‘one last try’. I couldn’t see myself doing any other job now. 

Please share your thoughts and tips on imposter syndrome below!