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March 2024: The Behavior Issue
What Energizing and Empowering Veterinary Teams Looks Like
Alyssa Mages, BS, CVT, discusses her journey as a resilient veterinary educator, trainer, coach, and entrepreneur. Mages is the chief visionary officer of the company she co-founded, Empowering Veterinary Teams (EVT), where she oversees the content development, clinical skills training, and overall vision of the company.
A Conversation with Alyssa Mages, BS, CVT
In this excerpt from an episode of Central Line: The AAHA Podcast, Alyssa Mages, BS, CVT, discusses her journey as a resilient veterinary educator, trainer, coach, and entrepreneur. Mages is the chief visionary officer of the company she co-founded, Empowering Veterinary Teams (EVT), where she oversees the content development, clinical skills training, and overall vision of the company. EVT provides training programs, materials, and coaching/learning opportunities for veterinary practices, as well as content development and training directives for veterinary industry service providers.
Mages is an unwavering empowerment enthusiast who shares her passion for advancing veterinary teams and the pivotal role of veterinary technicians in shaping the industry’s future. Read on to discover what it means to level up for a brighter tomorrow and gain inspiration from Mages as she outlines her vision for a thriving future in our field.
Katie Berlin: So, Alyssa, I was wondering if you have a “third space;” you know, you wear so many hats that require you to be present in a way that isn’t about you. You’re a mom, you’re a wife, you’re a very prolific speaker, an educator, and business owner. So where do you go when you don’t want to be any of those things? Just be Alyssa.
Alyssa Mages: I have a third—and a fourth—space. Am I allowed to have two?
KB: Yes.
AM: Okay. So the first is, I need the water. I’ve been a swimmer since I was 10 or 12-ish, somewhere around there. And then I shifted into synchronized swimming. And there are two other synchronized swimmers in veterinary medicine. Shout out to Karen Shenoy and Teva Stone. Yes. I did, I outed you guys. Sorry.
I no longer compete. I’ve had a whack ton of knee surgeries, but I get in the water and I just can disappear—that’s my meditation. I’m not good at doing the sitting-still meditation. But if I get into that zone of either lap swimming or simply just being on a paddleboard in the middle of somewhere, that’s where I don’t have to be anything. I can just be.
And then my fourth space is on a stage singing. I’m in a Tom Petty tribute band called Hypnotic Guy, and I do all the background vocals and hand percussion. And then every once in a while they let me sing a Stevie Nicks song because she and Petty were really good friends.
I throw on a wig, and I get to disappear even though I’m in the spotlights, but I’m just in the moment, I’m in the music, and I’m just rocking out.
KB: At AAHA Con 2023, our theme was “Level Up.” And I love that theme because I feel like it could encompass so much, you know, you really can think about what area of your life you want to apply that to. But for you specifically, looking ahead at the next 6–12 months, what does leveling up mean to you?
AM: Bringing everyone up with me. So for me, it’s hard to look back and reflect and celebrate the little moments. I’m not great at that. Because we’re like, oh, we’ve got to get to the next place. We’ve got to go to the next thing.
My goal over the next 6–12 months is that everyone knows who the EVT team is, and they get their chance to shine, and they get to step up. And I get to step back because as a het cis white woman, I don’t need to be in the spotlight at all. I’ve been there enough. And it’s really important for anyone that has been othered in their experience to shine. So I am ready to just take both hands and get everyone up and push them up and just be that boost that they need.
“It hurts me in a different way when I hear people say that vet med is broken. Are there parts of it that need a lot of fine tuning and fixing? Yes. 100%. I’m not denying that, but to say it’s broken implies that it’s irreparable. And I can’t agree with that.”
ALYSSA MAGES, BS, CVT
KB: That’s something you do really well. And it’s one of the things that when we met, I felt that your energy always says there’s enough for everyone. It’s an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset—you don’t have to compete. We can actually all just share—there’s more than enough resources, more than enough space and stage for everybody. So, I love that.
AM: Thank you.
KB: So many other groups are working towards that same goal right now. And that feels really good to be here at this moment in vet med.
AM: I agree. And it hurts me in a different way when I hear people say that vet med is broken. Are there parts of it that need a lot of fine tuning and fixing? Yes. 100%. I’m not denying that, but to say it’s broken implies that it’s irreparable. And I can’t agree with that. Looking at all the work that Niccole Bruno’s doing with blendVET, looking at what Valerie Marcano’s doing with PAWSibilities.
And with all the conversations that we’re starting to have more readily, the big organizations are starting to notice. And they’re stepping in. Every time you throw a pebble, it spreads. So you do one good thing, it’s going to affect so many people. So it’s rusty, and the axle may be a little bit loose, but the red wagon’s okay. It’s going to push along.
KB: I told you that one of the things that I love the most is the concept of kintsugi, the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with gold. When something actually breaks into multiple pieces, they glue it together with this gold epoxy. And it’s really, really beautiful afterwards. I feel like maybe that’s how I want to think of vet med right now, as it is a little bit broken in the sense of there are pieces that aren’t aligning the way that they should, but we are seeing so many people wanting to be that gold glue that puts it together.
AM: I love that. And that’s a better analogy. And I think that’s a much more apt description, because to your point, there are disparate pieces. So, all right. It is a little broken. But . . .
KB: But at the end we’re going to have something that’s . . .
AM: It’s a piece of art. And what is medicine?
KB: It’s an art.
AM: That was good.
KB: All right, so at AAHA, as in many places. I feel like October has sort of turned into national technician month because we had the 2023 AAHA Technician Utilization Guidelines come out in October 2023, and you were on the task force that created those. I’m really curious to know what that process was like because that task force had a lot of very strong personalities.
AM: I’m not gonna lie, I had a little bit of imposter syndrome. Like, you want me here? But then when I got there, I was like, I need to be here. And every voice that was there needed to be there. It was such a labor of love for everyone. And you could get that sense. There was such a feeling of camaraderie and collaboration, there were no egos involved at all.
And it gets challenging in our profession regardless of being a technician or a veterinarian because there’s so many different governing bodies and associations and who does what and who takes care of this and who do we report to. And it’s all state by state.
How can we have cohesion when it’s state by state? Well, we have a national standard. And we all take that exam. So I’m a CVT in Pennsylvania. But there’s LVTs. I can’t list all the states because there’s too many, and I don’t want to mess up. But I do know that Tennessee is LVMTs.
KB: Tennessee is the outlier there, but yeah.
“What I think the underlying message needs to be is that we are all coming at this from the same angle. We want to have a unified body, we want to have title protection, we want to have the recognition and the ability to work to the highest level of our licensure. And in many practices, that’s just not the case.”
ALYSSA MAGES, BS, CVT
AM: And then we have our RVTs, and that’s all of Canada now. I think there’s so much we could learn from Canada. I may be a little biased. I lived there for five years, and my daughter was born there.
What I think the underlying message needs to be is that we are all coming at this from the same angle. We want to have a unified body, we want to have title protection, we want to have the recognition and the ability to work to the highest level of our licensure. And in many practices, that’s just not the case.
Even in Pennsylvania, it’s not required to have a credential to be called a technician. And I absolutely respect someone who’s been on-the-job trained and has worked there for 20 years, oh my gosh, yes. Because they’re going to be able to get that 17-year-old dehydrated, hyperthyroid cat that’s trying to eat everybody in one poke, 100%. I’m not questioning their skills.
And their knowledge is based in what they’ve learned there. They know what to do and they’re damn good at it, but why are they doing it? Do you understand the mechanisms of action? Do you appreciate what the lifecycle of this parasite is and why you need two different parasiticides?
So it would be akin to me, having had my credentials now for 13 years, saying “Well, I could have been a vet three times over, so call me Dr. Mages.” And I’m not.
KB: Yeah. And legally my job as a veterinarian is protected from you being able to call yourself a veterinarian or do a lot of the things that I do.
AM: Correct.
KB: In every state that’s protected, but that is not the case in a lot of states for technicians.
AM: Right. And there’s really only four things we can’t do. And that is prescribe, diagnose, give a prognosis, and perform surgery. That leaves it open to a lot of other things.
It’s an important part to have on-the-job training. Yes. But how can you do on-the-job training and your full-time job? So as a trainer on the job, when you’re training an assistant, what does that look like? How do we define that? What is an assistant? I don’t know.
You can say oh, I met this really great girl at Starbucks. And she was really kind and she was really smart, and she doesn’t mess up her orders. So we’re going to hire her and then train her. And in three months, not only are they going to call them a technician, they’re going to call them a nurse. There’s that other can of worms that I love to mess with. We do nursing skills.
And it goes along with everything else though. You know, we do phlebotomy, we do radiology. And if you get trained in a specialty center, you might be doing oncology anesthesia and then you can even go onwards to get your specialty. So much you can do, I don’t want to be limited to a nurse. That’s one aspect of that. And in a lot of states it’s protected for human medicine. Honestly, I don’t disagree with that. We should have a unified title, but we don’t yet.
So adding another title to me doesn’t make sense until we have figured out what we should all be called collectively, and how we can standardize that and protect it. And then we can go onward from there.
So it’s really making sure that we not only educate our profession about what a veterinary technician does and how we can utilize them appropriately, but we have to educate our clients and the public. Because when you tell them you’re a veterinary technician, they look at you like that, right? The head tilted, they’re trying to make that make sense. “What does that mean?”
So it’s a multifaceted, really wiggling collection of cans. So that’s what we were really trying to tackle with the guidelines.
KB: So many organizations are starting to realize that even if they’ve only been talking about clinical medicine for a very long time, the so-called soft sciences like psychology, communication, and leadership are so essential to running a successful veterinary clinic and to and to keeping a team happy and fulfilled and together. I’m just really excited about that change that I’m seeing all over the profession.
AM: It’s really encouraging. And it goes back to putting the gold pieces in.
KB: Yeah, that’s the gold.
AM: It’s human skills. It’s how we human. We’re so focused on can you place a jug cath? Can you maintain TIVA? All of those things which are absolutely critical. But what about the humans that are performing those skills? Because if you focus solely on your clinical skills and you stress out over that, what happens to your well-being? And if one suffers, so does the other. So we’ve got to do all of it. And that seems like a lot, but there are a lot of resources out there and a lot of organizations that can help.
KB: Okay, another question for you. If you could wish something for National Veterinary Technician Week, what would it be?
AM: My wish for veterinary technicians, is for my credential cohort. I love all of you in the support roles in veterinary medicine. Truly. Please hear me that I respect and appreciate all the work that you do. But this Veterinary Technician Week/Month is for credentialed veterinary technicians. I wish for recognition, appreciation, and appropriate utilization with the accompanying compensation. Well, that should be easy. And while I’m still wishing I’d like a pony ‘cause I never got one.
KB: I don’t want to say that maybe you’d be more likely to get a pony than to have those other things happen really soon. But I really hope that that’s not right. I really hope that those things are going to come sooner rather than later, because I think they will come. It’s just a matter of when.
AM: Right. We simply have to get a unified front together. If we have title recognition and protection, the rest will follow. Because once that is cohesive and standardized, nationally recognized, once you’ve achieved that, then we can establish standards of pay. We can establish standards of implementation and utilization. But we’ve got to start there. So we have to stop fighting about what we call each other.
KB: I think you’re totally right. We could spend all of our energy and resources chasing after something that we’re just not ready for because we haven’t gotten past the first step. So we’re trying to jump over that step, and we just can’t. So hopefully it will happen.
The technicians at the hospital where I last worked, Shiloh Veterinary Hospital in York, Pennsylvania, had so many credentialed technicians, and they were really able to do a lot. And I saw the full capability of that, not just that technician degree, but of the people who go after that degree and do the necessary CE to keep it and want to go to conferences every year and get a CE allowance and use it and ask, can I try this or can I learn this?
Being around that really made me realize how little I saw of that in other places. I wish every veterinarian would have the chance to work in a practice like that, where you come into the culture and that’s already the culture, because that will shape how I see technicians from now until forever based on looking at those strong people doing what they were trained to do and loving it.
AM: And what did that do for your workflow?
KB: I mean, I will say that I am not the most efficient or fastest, but it’s not because the technicians were not drawing all the blood and doing all the radiographs and monitoring anesthesia like bosses. It made surgery so much less stressful. And we had a treatment technician that ran that place like a ship, you know, like that treatment technician could have run, you know, like a military operation.
“I’m not great at everything. But I know people who are great at other things. So you can identify the existing strengths within your team and make them shine and say, ‘Hey, you can do this at the next level. This is how we make this happen.’”
ALYSSA MAGES, BS, CVT
AM: If they’re given that chance. And that is so lovely to hear because that is the type of culture we’re looking to create, right? Where as an assistant, you can see what you can level up and strive towards. And again, it’s not saying that an assistant or someone who’s been on-the-job trained is not qualified and isn’t valuable and shouldn’t have those opportunities. Absolutely they should. And the recognition. That’s why there’s a Veterinary Assistant Week. I was a veterinary assistant for years before I went back and got my degree.
KB: I was one before vet school.
AM: And when you have that sense of team, then you know, okay, I can stay in this lane. I can merge here. I’m going to come back over here because I’m not really comfortable there.
And I like being under the umbrella of a doctor. It’s all on you. I’m happy to sit over here and play with the things that I like. I’ll stay in my corner of the sandbox. But really it is making sure that I recognize that where my skills are and where my skills are not.
One of my lead trainers is currently a practice manager. So when we’re talking about management and leadership, that’s him. And he’s got a certificate in anesthesia. When we’re talking about education development, I have another trainer who has a master’s degree in education, so we’re talking to her to make sure that that’s relevant.
I’m not great at everything. But I know people who are great at other things. So you can identify the existing strengths within your team and make them shine and say, “Hey, you can do this at the next level. This is how we make this happen. This is a distance program. This is how you can get the certificate. You want to go back to school and do all these things? How can I facilitate that for you? What do you want to do? Don’t leave vet med.”
I had to get out of clinics for many reasons, but I didn’t ever want to leave the profession.
So how do we make that happen? How can you as a veterinarian support that? Recognizing it, championing it, talking about it, highlighting it, and lifting it. And that’s what you do. And that’s one of the many millions of reasons I love you.
KB: Well, thank you, Alyssa. I talk to so many vets now who sound different than the veterinarians I was talking to 10 years ago. And all the ways that we’re reaching people now, I think we’re getting through.
AM: It’s coming.
KB: I’m really hopeful. And you make me hopeful.
AM: Thank you.
Central Line: The AAHA Podcast is generously sponsored by CareCredit.
Catch the full episode, and every other episode of Central Line: The AAHA Podcast, on major podcast platforms, YouTube, and at aaha.org/podcast.
Find Alyssa Mages, BS, CVT, at empoweringveterinaryteams.com, nurtur.co, and mentorvet.net/tech.
Alyssa Mages, BS, CVT, is a veterinary educator, trainer, coach, and entrepreneur. She is the chief visionary officer for Empowering Veterinary Teams, a women-owned company that provides training and education to veterinary teams. |
Katie Berlin, DVM, is the host of Central Line: The AAHA Podcast. |
Photo credits: ©AAHA/Alison Silverman, PeopleImages/iStock via Getty Images Plus, ljubaphoto/E+ via Getty Images, tdub303/E+ via Getty Images, SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images