3 Minutes That Could Change How Vet Teams Talk to Each Other

A new study asks what happens when the hard conversation isn't with a client, but with the vet standing next to you

Most of what veterinary medicine teaches us about communication is aimed outward. We learn how to deliver a euthanasia conversation with compassion, how to explain a cancer diagnosis without losing a client to fear, how to talk someone through a treatment plan they cannot afford. What almost nobody trains us for is the conversation that happens five feet away, between colleagues, in the middle of a twelve hour shift, when something needs to be said and nobody has the words for it.

That gap is the starting point for a new national study, Interpersonal Skill Preparedness and Expectations During the Transition From Veterinary Training to Independent Practice, led by Matthew Love, Psy.D., a licensed psychologist, alongside sub-investigator Edwina Love, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology). Their working title for the ACVIM Forum abstract says it plainly: Beyond Client Communication: Measuring Intra-Team Interpersonal Preparedness Across Career Stages.

The idea is simple and, frankly, overdue. Veterinary training pours enormous energy into client-facing skill, and rightly so. But the profession's burnout and attrition numbers keep pointing back to something else entirely: how prepared we feel to navigate conflict, feedback, and hard conversations with the people we work alongside. Interns, residents, and associates are often thrown into high stakes team dynamics with no more preparation than a semester of client communication skills borrowed for a completely different purpose.

The study is open now to rotating and specialty interns, residents, and practicing veterinarians at every career stage, whether you graduated last May or twenty years ago. It takes about 13 to 16 minutes, it is completely anonymous, and it does not collect identifying information of any kind, including IP address. Every response simply adds another data point to a question the profession has never formally asked itself.

Take the survey: survey.alchemer.com/s3/8903530/Interpersonal-Preparedness

Data collection runs through December 31, 2026. The study has been reviewed and approved by WCG IRB (Tracking #20262466), and it is unfunded and non-commercial. It is also registered on the Open Science Framework, which anyone can review before deciding to participate.

OSF registration: osf.io/s56jy

Once data collection closes, the team's aim is to publish the full findings in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, with other peer-reviewed veterinary journals as a backup home if that is not the right fit. In the meantime, an abstract has already been submitted to the 2027 ACVIM Forum in Montreal.

Here is the part we like best. This is not a study about what is wrong with vets. It is a study about giving the profession language and data for something we have all felt and rarely named: that walking into your first team meeting as a new associate, or your first difficult feedback conversation as a resident, can feel just as unscripted as walking into an oncology consult felt on day one. The client conversation eventually gets easier because someone taught it to us. This study is asking whether the same could be true for the conversations we have with each other.

Dr. Love has offered to come back to Vet Candy once results are in, so our readers get to see exactly what their participation helped uncover. Until then, if you have ever sat in a break room searching for the right words to say to a colleague, this is your chance to help build the research that finally looks at that moment too.

About the research team

Matthew Love, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist and the principal investigator on this study. Edwina Love, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology), serves as sub-investigator. Questions about the study can be directed to research@matthewlovepsyd.com.