The hardest parts of our job are often the ones we didn’t train for: the moment a client breaks down over a diagnosis, not the one who's furious about an estimate, not the one silently working out what their dog is worth to them while we wait. Anatomy and surgical technique got years of formal instruction. The emotional weight of the exam room got none, and it's often the part of the job that wears on us the most.

As Forbes covered this week, Dr. Angela Henninger, a practicing veterinarian and multi-practice owner, is trying to close that gap through DVM Ascent, which focuses squarely on what vet school leaves out. The article reads a little bit like sponsored content, even though it’s (allegedly) not. But we still felt the topic was important enough to highlight because training for the moments that challenge us is important. It’s the emotional weight of those client interactions that often leads to burn out so learning to address it head on helps us all and the profession.

Dr. Henninger’s Compassionate Curiosity framework offers a sequence rather than a script: name what the client is feeling before doing anything else, ask genuinely open questions instead of reaching for a fix, and only then move into solving the problem together. There's a physiological reason the order matters. A distressed client tends to pull our own nervous system along with theirs, and that state works against the part of the brain we need most for clear thinking. Trying to reason someone out of an emotional moment rarely works, for them or for us.

That's what makes this worth treating as a real clinical skill rather than an innate trait some of us happen to have. Financial conversations need us to take the constraint seriously without over-apologizing for it. End-of-life conversations need us to tolerate silence instead of rushing to fill it. Handling every hard conversation the same way is usually where things go sideways. Given how much burnout, retention, and new-grad confidence are already straining the profession, learning to run the room may end up counting for as much as anything we learned in the surgical suite.

About 18 states still prohibit corporate ownership of veterinary practices, and lawmakers in several others tried to tighten restrictions further this year. Proposed bills in Colorado, Texas, and Arizona would have added new disclosure requirements, ownership caps, or attorney general review to deals many of us could eventually be party to. All three stalled or failed.

Writing in Today's Veterinary Business, Politics & Policy columnist Mark Cushing points out that none of these efforts were backed by documented evidence of harm to animals, clients, or veterinarians, and that our own associations have largely sat this fight out. The Texas VMA and Colorado VMA both opposed anti-corporate bills in their states, and the AVMA has stayed neutral. Before we dive in, let’s just note that this article is an opinion column from a strategist who lobbies for the animal health industry, so treat it as an argument rather than neutral reporting.

Cushing's case is worth taking seriously even if you don't agree with him on everything. He points to Germany, where regulators review veterinary acquisitions on a narrower, more measurable standard: whether the deal actually reduces competition, not whether a corporation is involved at all. The counterargument is straightforward, though. Just because there is no documented harm, doesn't mean there is no risk down the road. Nor does it mean there are not harms that are challenging to document. Its also hard to document a lack of harm to animal when no one is tracking patient outcomes in a meaningful way.

But the European comparison cuts both ways. The UK and Netherlands are both moving toward tighter price transparency rules of their own, so it's not as if regulators there have simply left corporate ownership alone.

What do you think? Is the rise in corporate ownership a problem plaguing our profession or a benign aspect of the landscape? Do laws ensuring practices need to be owned by veterinarians work? Or should they be more focused on the competitive landscape?

The AVMA pulled together seven affinity groups this June for its first-ever belonging and engagement roundtable, hosting representatives from the BlackDVM Network, Pride Veterinary Medical Community, Natives in VetMed, and the Women's Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative, among others, at its Schaumburg headquarters. Over two days, members from each organization traded notes on funding shortfalls, volunteer fatigue, and how to organize as a larger coalition, with AVMA president Dr. Michael Bailey and CEO Janet Donlin also at the table. Nothing concrete came out of it yet beyond early ideas, like a shared directory of affinity groups, but getting these groups in the same room for the first time may turn out to matter more than any single action item.

For practices doing their own culture work rather than waiting on association timelines, Obi's ongoing EDI series with the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association offers a practical parallel. Dr. Jordan Woodsworth's four-part lecture series is being turned into free, RACE-approved on-demand microlearning modules built around the Social Determinants of Health and a One Health lens, treating inclusion as connected to patient outcomes rather than separate from them. More on the series here.