Things I Learned From Vet: Dialogue and Word Choice
The transition from recent graduate to actual vet who sounds like they know what they're doing is a lot about how you present yourself. Far and away the biggest thing I've had to work on is how I talk to clients.
In vet school, they spend years teaching you how to handle complicated medicine cases, how to diagnose things and interpret imaging... and if you're lucky, you get a few hours of practice sessions with actors and oral exams with clinicians to work on your client communication skills. Sure, they taught us about it, but it's not like a few hours of practice is going to prepare you to smoothly speak to clients from all walks of life, 8+ hours a day.
And oh, I've botched my interactions and explanations so horribly. I've confused people by talking them in circles, I've misspoken during highly charged emotional situations, I've forgotten to ask or explain important details and needed to call people up after the fact. I never realized how big a difference one word could make, until one time a client asked if they should continue antibiotics and I said, "Sure," and they complained about it to the front desk.
University students often say they want to go to vet school because they love animals. Sometimes vet school gets chosen over med school because someone doesn't like people. But it's a people-oriented job, all about communication and customer service, and bedside manner is just as important as in human medicine. I've been really forced to analyze my word choices, phrasing, and paralanguage on a daily basis. You also have to read the person, and consider how to tailor each appointment to the client. I talk to physicians differently than I talk to farmers. Pre-med students want a lot more information than Joe Bartender who just wants his cat to stop peeing on the floor. Some people need a lot of hand-holding and encouragement, some people want to be told what to do, some people only want the straightforward facts.
You can guess how this translates to writing. Exposure to different types of people, different styles of speech, and different methods of explanation, all day every day, gives me a wide selection of tools to draw upon for characters. Perhaps most of all, it makes me highly aware of the nuance of word choice...
Example 1
"The alk phos and ALT are associated with liver damage, but to find out about liver function, we need to test the bile acids," vs "There are some elevations in the liver values and I want to check a liver panel for more information."
Example 2
"The x-ray looked fine, no signs of obstruction or anything like that," vs "This is the gas in the stomach, this is the colon, those loops there are the small intestines and they look very uniform and normal. That's the liver, spleen there, bladder and kidneys." (To be honest I probably say both of those 99% of the time)
Example 3
To a client who is desperate to do anything and asks lots of questions: "It looks like she has an intestinal mass, which is most likely lymphoma as that's the most common in cats. We could do an exploratory surgery, or send you down for endoscopic biopsy. The meds we could try include x, y, and z. You're probably looking at such and such survival time, and you can expect to see these symptoms for each course of action..."
To a client who hasn't been to a vet in 10 years and wants to be told it's ok to put the cat down: "It looks like she has cancer. We could try meds to keep her comfortable, even do surgery or referral or all sorts of things like that. However, at best, we're looking at x amount of time / z symptoms progressing, even if we do everything by the book. It wouldn't be a wrong decision to say it's time to say goodbye."
It all depends on what the client says and asks, and paying attention to how I conduct myself is a constant, ongoing learning process! It provides a lot of good fodder for characters and variation in dialogue. Also, my awful gaffes give me some good ways to have characters misunderstand, get angry or hurt, or make poor impressions. So at least some good can come from those terribly embarrassing missteps. :)
In vet school, they spend years teaching you how to handle complicated medicine cases, how to diagnose things and interpret imaging... and if you're lucky, you get a few hours of practice sessions with actors and oral exams with clinicians to work on your client communication skills. Sure, they taught us about it, but it's not like a few hours of practice is going to prepare you to smoothly speak to clients from all walks of life, 8+ hours a day.
And oh, I've botched my interactions and explanations so horribly. I've confused people by talking them in circles, I've misspoken during highly charged emotional situations, I've forgotten to ask or explain important details and needed to call people up after the fact. I never realized how big a difference one word could make, until one time a client asked if they should continue antibiotics and I said, "Sure," and they complained about it to the front desk.
University students often say they want to go to vet school because they love animals. Sometimes vet school gets chosen over med school because someone doesn't like people. But it's a people-oriented job, all about communication and customer service, and bedside manner is just as important as in human medicine. I've been really forced to analyze my word choices, phrasing, and paralanguage on a daily basis. You also have to read the person, and consider how to tailor each appointment to the client. I talk to physicians differently than I talk to farmers. Pre-med students want a lot more information than Joe Bartender who just wants his cat to stop peeing on the floor. Some people need a lot of hand-holding and encouragement, some people want to be told what to do, some people only want the straightforward facts.
You can guess how this translates to writing. Exposure to different types of people, different styles of speech, and different methods of explanation, all day every day, gives me a wide selection of tools to draw upon for characters. Perhaps most of all, it makes me highly aware of the nuance of word choice...
Example 1
"The alk phos and ALT are associated with liver damage, but to find out about liver function, we need to test the bile acids," vs "There are some elevations in the liver values and I want to check a liver panel for more information."
Example 2
"The x-ray looked fine, no signs of obstruction or anything like that," vs "This is the gas in the stomach, this is the colon, those loops there are the small intestines and they look very uniform and normal. That's the liver, spleen there, bladder and kidneys." (To be honest I probably say both of those 99% of the time)
Example 3
To a client who is desperate to do anything and asks lots of questions: "It looks like she has an intestinal mass, which is most likely lymphoma as that's the most common in cats. We could do an exploratory surgery, or send you down for endoscopic biopsy. The meds we could try include x, y, and z. You're probably looking at such and such survival time, and you can expect to see these symptoms for each course of action..."
To a client who hasn't been to a vet in 10 years and wants to be told it's ok to put the cat down: "It looks like she has cancer. We could try meds to keep her comfortable, even do surgery or referral or all sorts of things like that. However, at best, we're looking at x amount of time / z symptoms progressing, even if we do everything by the book. It wouldn't be a wrong decision to say it's time to say goodbye."
It all depends on what the client says and asks, and paying attention to how I conduct myself is a constant, ongoing learning process! It provides a lot of good fodder for characters and variation in dialogue. Also, my awful gaffes give me some good ways to have characters misunderstand, get angry or hurt, or make poor impressions. So at least some good can come from those terribly embarrassing missteps. :)
Had the same experience becoming a lawyer. Talking to clients is a lot like teaching.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet. Teachers and professors must have a ton of experience with this.
ReplyDelete