Our series on “Champions for Change” features people of any gender in any role who are making a difference and creating positive change for women in the veterinary sector – enabling aspirations, inspiring and supporting others to grow and follow their passions, and empowering our community.
Samantha Lympany-Tier has a passion for supporting colleagues’ wellbeing and progression, advocating for patient emotional welfare in clinical practice and advocating for the role of the veterinary care assistant (VCA). Working as Education and Development Officer for Optivet Referrals, she reflects on her career experiences from falconer, through VCA, to graduate in Clinical Animal Behaviour to make a meaningful impact on animal welfare and empower others to advocate for themselves, and their patients.
Please provide a brief bio/summary of your career story:
I tick the ‘other’ box as a veterinary paraprofessional, and I certainly didn’t take the quick route into the world of companion animal welfare. I started my career as a falconer and education officer, working within zoological collections. Despite my enjoyment of the job, the industry wasn’t quite the right fit for me, but I found a real passion for education and welfare. After some consideration, I went back to university to do my MSc in Clinical Animal Behaviour, as my lifelong companionship of cats made me reflect on how my background could apply to helping owners better understand their feline friends. During this time, I worked as a lecturer for animal management, and as a veterinary care assistant (VCA). I finally landed at Optivet as an experienced VCA and was provided the opportunity to develop my niche by providing emotional and behaviour support for our clients. Upon completion of my MSC, my background and work as a VCA mentor allowed me to develop the role I am in now as an education and development officer, providing mentoring and continual development opportunities for my colleagues. With a cheeky bit of feline behaviour consultancy as my personal side hustle.
Please summarise how you are working towards change in the veterinary professions and why do you feel this is important?
Coming from a weird and wonderful background into an entry level position gave me a unique perspective on how VCAs are viewed within the veterinary industry. I did not come into the role to be a nurse one day; I came with a specific view to directly impact of welfare of the patients in my care. I was lucky at Optivet; they allowed me to pursue my interests and ultimately, create a role and department based on my previous experience. So alongside other likeminded professionals in the industry, I am working towards recognition of the VCA as a role in and of itself, a speciality within our field. This will hopefully inspire not only other VCAs, but other businesses to allow their VCAs to grow and develop based on their skillsets and previous experience.
Within Optivet, I am creating an internal knowledge framework to ensure our VCAs are offered the same opportunities to develop and learn as our other clinical staff. They have access to CPD allowance and regular development opportunities and are encouraged to take ownership of projects that they can take forward to whatever route they chose to take.
My true passion, however, lies in animal welfare. As a VCA, I noticed that although we measured and controlled pain, we fell short in looking at our patients holistically. My colleagues at Optivet are great at recognising the need for anxiolytics, but there is no measured framework to try and clinically understand and recognise how our patients felt during their stay. My MSc thesis looked at the attitudes and perceptions of veterinary professionals towards emotional welfare, and whilst I won’t offer any spoilers it certainly raised some interesting points. So, alongside my colleagues we developed an emotional welfare assessment for our patients, to encourage us to look clinically at an individual patient’s mental state and evaluate how this might be impacting their behavioural and physiological responses. The aim is that this assessment will empower and allow veterinary staff to recognise stress more confidently in their patients, and then offer a more holistic and contextualised treatment plan to not only treat the physical problem, but the emotional state of the patient.
How do you feel this is making a difference?
It is early days for both aspects of change progression, we are still in the planning stage of getting all this off the ground, for both VCAs and patient emotional wellbeing. However, within our business we are already noticing a difference.
VCAs work closely with both RVNs and vets to discuss the holistic view of a patient’s clinical journey and feel empowered and respected within their role. Having an induction programme based on a solid foundation of learning has allowed our VCAs a more comprehensive understanding of their role within the practice, giving them more confidence to work within the team to make impactful contributions to the clinical team and our patients. By working with external organisations, hopefully we can make this a standard for other VCAs within the industry.
As far as our patients’ emotional welfare goes, the team is solidly behind the assessments. We are seeing a positive difference to how we manage our patients’ emotional welfare, and if we have a stressed animal coming into the hospital, we have seen, through application of the assessment and carefully tailored interventions, a positive impact on emotional state.
What motivated you to want to change things?
Having come from an industry where I felt powerless to change things on behalf of the animal, I felt encouraged and reassured within my role that I was able to make a meaningful impact to an animals’ welfare. So, when the chance came to push that impact further, and pioneer a change in something that is poorly recognised clinically, but holistically valued, it felt like a step I had to take. Likewise, starting in the veterinary industry on what was considered the bottom rung of the ladder gave me a fresh perspective as to how I would want others to feel at that stage in their career. Although I was confident enough to ensure my voice was heard in the early stages of my veterinary journey, I am aware it is not as easy for others. So, if I can provide the megaphone to empower others to advocate for themselves, and their patients, I have done my job.
“Everyone is different, and by recognising how we can create change in our own specialised way we can create something robust, and that is bigger than ourselves.”
How have you encouraged other people to get on board with your ideas?
Having come from a background in public engagement, I love to inspire! I truly believe in empowerment, and to build buy-in to a new idea, I found giving people the information and the tools to make a change themselves the best way. If you are presented with information that challenges what you already believe, you find it hard to integrate that new knowledge into your in-built system. However, if you can utilise this new knowledge and synthesise it in a way that makes sense to you, and you can see positive results, it’s more likely to stick. Everyone is different, and by recognising how we can create change in our own specialised way we can create something robust, and that is bigger than ourselves. People are the key to change; it’s reaching them that can be the hard bit! But if you’re passionate enough about something, you find your people!
What are the biggest challenges you have encountered in this journey and how have you overcome them?
The biggest hurdles for this journey were very personal; when I started my career at Optivet, I was hit with grief from multiple aspects of my life. I am lucky to have such a strong support system at home, and likewise within the workplace! My leads have been incredibly supportive; not only did they offer me the flexibility and adaptability during my personal times of need, but they have actively encouraged me to chase for the change the industry needs, and my developed role has given me the scope to do that. At times, the industry’s natural hierarchy has posed some challenges, but as a true scientist, I found that presenting an evidence-based approach for positive outcomes helped overcome the challenge. Sometimes, I still feel like an imposter having come from a non-clinical background, but I am slowly realising my ability to push for positive change.
What has most helped and motivated you along the way?
Seeing the positive impact that the change has made; our patients have a better system in place to support their emotional wellbeing, and our clinical support staff have a tool whereby they can see these beneficial changes. This empowers them to continue making the change, and witnessing first hand this sense of victory has helped me to keep ploughing the path for change! Being able to provide a safe space to encourage growth, and then seeing that growth and confidence in my colleagues continues to inspire me, every day.
What is the best advice you’ve been given, or that you would give to someone else, about driving positive change?
A fantastic comedian once said; Reality is like a dog’s penis… it’s ugly, but you can’t help but stare right at it! The same I guess goes for driving behaviour change, it can be ugly, but you must stare it in the face and just keep on going! You should never strive for perfectionism, but you should always strive for happiness.
What are your next steps to continue creating change for the better?
Keep putting my fingers in many, many pies! Get to know people, talk about their journeys and successes and hopefully find some fun collaborations along the way! I am having exciting talks with some amazing veterinary associations about their work on supporting the VCA role as its own speciality, and I am hoping to validate our emotional welfare assessment. Maybe, if I have time, I get round to publishing my thesis to support the culture growth around emotional welfare.
Perhaps most importantly, I will continue to provide a safe space for growth for my colleagues. They are the most dedicated, knowledgeable team of individuals I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and it is truly an honour to help them find their voice and grow.
Our thanks to Samantha for sharing her inspiring story of how she is championing change. If you would like to nominate a Champion for Change or share your story, please let us know.
For exclusive access to more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly newsletter
You may also like:
Veterinary Woman ‘Champions for Change’
Champions for Change – Kerrie Hedley
Champions for Change – Perdi Welsh