I failed…
Well, to be honest, I failed hundreds of thousands of times.
And I will fail again.
Because failing is normal. Humans are fallible. So that makes me a normal human.
There was a time when I was not seeing it this way.
There was a time when I thought that failure was shameful and something to be avoided at all costs.
And I know that I am not alone with this thinking, because the veterinary profession is full of perfectionists…for good reasons:
Because ‘the price of failure’ (thank you for this term Clive Elwood!) can be really high in our line of work.
And so, we strive and learn and accumulate knowledge and skills in an attempt to outwit failure.
But of course, we cannot escape it. And I noticed that -paradoxically- error avoidance made me sometimes more likely to fail.
And so, I slowly learnt to let go of the illusion of perfection. Not that I found it easy and not that I have fully mastered that art of good-enoughness. But I have got a lot better at it, and see as an opportunity to get better at failing!
And I believe that this is something everbody can get a bit better at, and that if we manage to normalise failure - not by letting ourselves off the hook but by learning to deal with it constructively, with caring accountability and collective learning - we will all benefit from it, including our patients!
This is why I am so much looking forward to talking about ‘The Art of Failure and Making Mistakes’ at the SAMSoc pre-BSAVA satellite meeting. I hope to meet some of you there! I will also be around at EAVDI-BID and BSAVA congress on Thursday if you like to have a chat about this 😊
What does failure mean to you?
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