My Take Tuesday: The Quest For Excellence

The quest to compete is an inherent human feature. We are all born with a natural instinct, striving to be the best we can be. Elite athletes spend thousands of hours practicing; perfecting their swing, throw or shot. Musicians dedicate thousands of hours to practice the instrument of their choice, all in an effort to produce the best product that they are capable of.

I am intrigued that the term used to refer to the art of veterinary medicine is the word “practice”. I think a more appropriate phrase would be deliberate practice.

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. Each day at my veterinary hospital I am presented with an array of cases. They vary from routine health examinations and vaccinations, to allergies, ear infections, fractures and surgical emergencies. In any given day, I perform a half a dozen surgeries and see around 30 appointments. I have been doing this day in and day out over the past 13 years.

Something I quickly learned as a newly practicing veterinarian was that it was impossible for me to know everything. There would always be an elusive diagnosis or a complicated clinical presentation that would completely contradict the veterinary school education and the knowledge of an experienced veterinarian. No matter how much I tried and cared, there would always be patients that I could not save, cases that I could not diagnose and clients that I could not satisfy. This reality was a bitter pill for me to swallow.

While I was a teenager, a cousin of mine named Jesse Bott shared with me an insightful observation. He cogently opined that, “Being better than someone else is nothing. However, being better than your old self is everything.”

This simple concept was life changing for me. My cousin Jesse was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1998, but his counsel will forever guide my career and life choices.

Something that has distinguished me from other veterinarians is simply my desire to do something different. To provide a service or product that is unique. Trying to be better than someone else has really never entered my mind. I simply strive to be the best that I can be. This has brought me successes that I never dreamed possible when I entered veterinary school.

What does it take to succeed? What are the secrets of the most successful people? It has been shown that a certain number of traits including passion, perseverance, imagination, intellectual curiosity, and openness to experience– do significantly explain differences in success, but they are the certainly not the only factors.

An article in an issue of Fortune magazine indicated that we will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. . . . The good news is that[our] lack of a natural gift is irrelevant—talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. . . .
. . . Nobody is great without work. [Geoffrey Colvin, “What It Takes to Be Great,” Fortune 154, no. 9 (30 October 2006): 88]

As a practicing veterinarian, I continually strive to improve my knowledge and performance. Technology is rapidly evolving in the field of veterinary medicine and it is my responsibility to keep up with the research and technological advances that occur constantly.

This week, a majority of the team at Mountain West Animal Hospital are attending the Western Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas, NV. There are thousands of veterinarians and veterinary technicians that attend this massive event. This annual conference is something that we each look forward to. We attend 3 days of continuing education classes given by industry leaders and thinkers. In the exhibit hall, we see and receive hands-on experience with the latest in diagnostic and surgical equipment.

I always come away from this conference with a renewed resolve to be the best that I can possibly be.

As the lyrics of the popular country song, written by Ashley Gorley, read,
“I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, But I’m better than I used to be.”

After all, that is the true measure of success.

And that is my take.
N. Isaac Bott, DVM