“Arm yourself with independent life skills at every opportunity. A great team, whether it’s work, family, or friends, is made up of individuals who are always learning and supporting each other to do so.”
Lindsay Davies is an Emergency and Critical Care Nurse at the Royal Veterinary College. Lindsay has a proactive and solutions-based personality. Having experienced frustrations when looking for high quality training resources for vet nurses, she has harnessed her passion for teaching by setting up Veterinary Webinurse. Lindsay’s career story is incredibly inspiring and heart-felt, and can be read in full here.
“The only thing standing in your way, is yourself”
“I found myself homeless at 16. A friend and I “squatted” a house together on the local council estate for a while, but thanks to the charity Shelter I managed to get a room in a homeless hostel and a few months later my own flat. Obviously, I failed my A levels miserably while this was all happening and felt a bit lost as a result.
I had no idea what to do with myself and felt like a failure. One day, I just thought, well I like animals, I will do an animal management course at the local college and hope that opens a door or two.
As part of the course you are required to do work experience and not having a car or money for transport my only option was the local vets. Well, I was there 2 weeks and they offered me a VN training position. This was an AMAZING opportunity, but naturally imposter syndrome kicked in and I just told them I would like to do some more work experience and would think about it. I could not believe a chance of an actual career was offered to me and I am still so grateful for this, every damn day of my life.
After doing a year’s worth of work experience with them, I decided that I was capable and accepted the opportunity.”
Love of teaching
“Once I had found my feet I thought “Well, there’s nothing I do here that I could not teach any other RVN to do”. With this thought I started to look at how to best do this, firstly, I started an Instagram (@TheECCRVN) to see if people liked what and how I taught.
Following setting this up I realised there were hundreds of RVNs like me, trying to be heard, to teach and learn and all sharing their knowledge freely on Instagram. I love this SO much, and will always continue to do this myself, but this is not recognised CPD, not topping up any wages and the opportunities to be heard are still limited.
As a result, I decided to set up Veterinary Webinurse. A platform where any qualified veterinary professional can upload teaching content, have it peer-reviewed for accuracy AND make a career out of selling their knowledge through the platform. On the flip side of this it provides veterinary professionals around the world a truly diverse and personal continuous professional development and learning opportunities. Now, I just have to find the time to make my own webinars!”
“The only person you can truly rely on is yourself”
– As harsh as it sounds it is true.
I thoroughly encourage everyone to ask for help when they need it and I spend most of my time happily helping and mentoring others. When you ask for help, though, I believe you should be asking to learn how to fix or solve the problem yourself.
Arm yourself with independent life skills at every opportunity. A great team, whether its work, family, or friends, is made up of individuals who are always learning and supporting each other to do so.
Find out more about Veterinary Webinurse here: https://www.veterinarywebinurse.com/veterinary-webinurse
Read more about our other inspirational veterinary role models here.