In my first year of general practice, a dog came in with a corneal laceration so severe that the aqueous fluid had leaked out and the eye had completely deflated. Referral wasn’t an option, so I sat down with the client for an honest conversation, and it was clear they wanted to save the eye. I knew how to remove it — that was the procedure I’d learned in school — but I had no idea how to save it.
That’s where my mentor came in. We talked it through together: close the cornea, refill the eye with saline, support it with a third eyelid flap, and hope it held. We told the client honestly that it probably wouldn’t work, and that if they were willing to take that risk with us because they wanted to save the eye, we were willing to try it with them. They said yes, and we did it, and it worked.
That case taught me more about risk than almost anything else in my career. It also taught me what a mentor actually does, because before I ever walked into that exam room, my mentor had role-played the client conversation with me. The medicine wasn’t the only part that could have gone badly. I don’t want that fear — of the medicine or the conversation — to be the reason a new vet doesn’t take a risk that could help the patient in front of them.
Why New Veterinarians Leave Vet School Afraid to Take Risks
Vet school spends a lot of time teaching you what can go wrong. You hear about liability, about malpractice, about board complaints, and you shadow specialists who will kindly tell you that a certain case probably isn’t one to attempt on your own yet. All of that exists for good reason, and none of it is wrong to teach. But by the time you graduate, a lot of new vets have absorbed a lesson nobody meant to teach them: that risk itself is the enemy, and the safest move is always the smallest one.
You Already Have the Skills to Practice Independently
So much of what we do for our patients and the people who love them requires taking a risk, whether that’s a diagnosis you’re not fully certain of, a procedure you’ve only done under supervision, or a conversation you don’t know how to start. You were not handed a license without also being handed the tools to use it, and you don’t always need someone standing next to you the very first time you do every new thing. The training already happened, and what’s left is trusting it.
Fear is not the same thing as failure, and it took me a long time to actually believe that. You can walk into an exam room with your hands a little unsteady and still be exactly the right person for that patient. The fear itself is usually a sign that you understand what’s at stake, and that kind of awareness is worth more than false confidence.
How a Mentor Builds Your Confidence to Take Risks
What actually let me take that risk with the eye wasn’t my mentor doing the surgery for me. It was everything that happened before I walked into that room, and everything that happened after. We talked through the medicine together, and then he coached me on something just as important: telling the client in advance what could go wrong, so the decision to move forward was one we made together. A mentor is an intentional, consistent presence, someone who already stood where you’re standing and can help you prepare for what’s ahead of you, not just clean up what’s behind you. That kind of backup changes how you act in the room, even when the mentor isn’t standing in it.
The Gap Between What’s Promised and What’s Delivered
Nearly every new graduate wants mentorship, and nearly every practice promises it during the interview. According to the 2024 and 2025 AVMA Graduating Senior Surveys, mentorship was the biggest reason new grads gave for accepting a job offer, ahead of location, people, and even compensation. Only 46 percent of new grads say they actually received the mentorship they were promised, though, and a lack of mentorship remains the top reason new grads leave their first job.
That gap is exactly what the Ready, Vet, Go mentorship program was designed to fill, sitting alongside the mentorship happening in your clinic rather than replacing it, so the backup you need doesn’t depend entirely on which practice you happened to land in.
What a Good Mentee Brings to a Mentorship Relationship
Mentorship isn’t something that only happens to you. It’s something you help build, and that looks different in practice than most people expect. It means doing the self-directed learning that makes your time with a mentor useful, identifying someone whose experience you want to learn from and actually inviting them into that role, being honest about what you need from the relationship as it develops, and giving feedback as openly as you receive it. The mentee who shows up and contributes ends up with a different relationship than the one who waits to be poured into.
Lessons For New Veterinarians From My First Years in Practice
A few things have stuck with me since that first deflated eye. Vet med is fun, and it’s worth remembering that on the hard days. The humans attached to your patients deserve the same patience your patients do. Small wins are worth celebrating on their own terms, not just as steps toward a bigger one. And leaning into your community, whether that’s a mentor, a classmate, or a group of colleagues a few years ahead of you, changes how the whole thing feels.
Taking the Leap as a New Veterinarian
If you can’t see yet where any of this leads, that’s the exciting part, not the scary one. The cases that unsettled me most early in my career are the ones I’m most grateful for now, because they’re where I actually became a clinician instead of just someone who had passed the boards. Take the risk your training has already prepared you for, and let the people around you be the scaffolding instead of the reason you hesitate. If you stumble somewhere along the way, that’s part of walking the road, not proof you took a wrong turn.