The Uncharted Veterinary Podcast · Uncharted Veterinary Community

393 - What Do We Do When We Are Too Slow? (Hall of Fame)

April 8, 2026·51 min·4 clips

Dr. Andy Rourke invites veterinary practice owners to an all-inclusive summit at Disney Coronado Springs Resort in May.

1. The Uncharted Veterinary Podcast episode 393, a Hall of Fame replay, addresses what practice leaders should do when appointment volume drops and staff have too much downtime. 2. Dr. Andy Rourke hosts alongside Stephanie Goss, Uncharted's co-founder, who returns from three weeks of back-to-back travel that included hurricane-related internet outages. 3. The episode's core question — submitted by a listener manager — is how to keep a purpose-driven team engaged and productive when the work they came to do, patient care, is no longer filling their days. 4. Stephanie Goss reads the mailbag question verbatim: client satisfaction is unchanged, but visit volume has fallen for no identifiable reason, and the initial relief of a lighter schedule has given way to team disengagement and cut hours. 5. Andy opens with a headspace framing: leaders must distinguish between a blip and a trend, and he says one or two bad weeks do not justify restructuring, but by week six, 'I believe this now.' 6. Andy references a sketch he created about front-desk life where a vet cycles through contradictory demands — 'why is it so crazy?' on Monday and 'get on the phone and book appointments' on Tuesday — to illustrate the yo-yo dynamic leaders must rise above. 7. Andy shares that his father, a surgeon, told him he never solved the feast-or-famine cycle: 'too many cases, I would be stomping around... no cases, I would be absolutely panicking.' 8. Stephanie Goss validates the feelings of both leaders, who feel responsible for protecting staff hours, and frontline staff, who did not enter vet medicine to clean kennels. 9. Andy makes the argument that vet medicine staff accept below-market wages in exchange for purposeful patient-care work, not facility maintenance, and that the 'if you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean' frame is toxic. 10. Andy contrasts his own perspective — he personally finds meaning in the full client experience including a clean waiting room — with how most staff find meaning exclusively in direct patient interaction. 11. Stephanie connects to the point about being heard: an introverted team member told to go staff a community festival booth without input will be resistant, but the same person may volunteer if asked what they enjoy and given a role that matches it. 12. Andy introduces the action framework: state the mission, be transparent about the trend, ask for input, and then exercise leadership discipline to maintain urgency when the waiting room is empty. 13. Andy argues that training and upskilling should be the first tool deployed rather than schedule cuts, noting that well-trained teams provide better patient care and may open new revenue streams such as ultrasound services. 14. Stephanie says she always resisted the knee-jerk reaction of cutting labor hours and instead used slowdowns to do team-bonding conversations about why each person entered vet medicine. 15. Andy introduces the Eisenhower matrix as a framework for prioritizing tasks during slow periods, distinguishing between urgent-and-important versus important-but-not-urgent work. 16. Andy delivers the formula 'impact equals the quality of the idea times the buy-in,' arguing that a mediocre idea the team owns outperforms a great idea the team resents. 17. The episode is conversational and informal, with Andy and Stephanie trading personal anecdotes — hurricane travel, teenage daughters' music tastes, Andy's dad's surgical practice — before getting to the structured action steps. 18. The tone is empathetic and non-judgmental toward both frustrated leaders and disengaged staff, treating the tension as structurally predictable rather than a failure of either party. 19. Veterinary practice owners, managers, and team leads navigating a post-pandemic demand normalization will find this episode most useful. 20. Listeners wanting a data-driven or financially-focused response to declining revenue, rather than a culture-and-purpose-first approach, may find the episode too soft.

As heard by us

A slow clinic day becomes a test of leadership, with the focus on honest talk, valid frustration, and whether the slowdown is temporary or something more lasting.

This Hall of Fame revisit looks at a clinic day that goes thin on patient care and heavy on charts, phones, and cleanup. The strongest part is that it takes the staff's frustration seriously instead of treating it like a character flaw.

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Why you'd press play

When the day gets slow and your team starts asking what to do next

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