by Kate Knutson, DVM
view from AAHA Rising From Te Ashes
FROM THE PRESIDENT
phoe·nix [fee-niks] noun 1. A mythical bird of great beauty
fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope. 2. A fantastic yearly conference and
catalyst for awesome inspiring ideas for the future.
When Phoenix was chosen as the 2013
convention site 4 years ago, who could have portended how apropos this choice would be? We were just becoming aware that our future patient visits were in jeop- ardy and that the recession was shielding us from the numbers we needed in order to understand our profession was in trouble. No-lo practices, unsustainable student
numbers and debt load was just start- ing to loom on everyone’s horizon. For years, we’d been chugging along nicely in small-animal companion medicine, often being told by economic experts that as a profession we were immune to the whims and cycles of the economy. It is now 2013, and we have lived
through the downturns. Thankfully, we have been given the opportunity to rede- fine ourselves and rise up out of the ashes of our professional slump. The most visible way that we can institute changes is with AAHA and AVMA’s Partners for Healthy Pets,
partnersforhealthypets.com. This campaign, which will be launch-
ing to clients this summer, will be semi- nal in teaching our clients the importance of preventive health care for their pets. We, as AAHA members, need to be pre- pared to implement the armamentarium of tools that have been designed to help our patients lead healthier lives.
It is this endeavor and a multitude of
others that will allow us recovery of our economic position, along with providing much-needed medical services for North American pets and their people. Many of the talks at the convention
focused on how we could provide bet- ter health care delivery to our patients. I encourage all to go to
aahanet.org (click on the Education tab) to find a list of the educational opportunities presented. We discussed post-convention letdown
during a couple of my speaking engage- ments in Phoenix. There is a chance for the phoenix to arise, but it will be dif- ficult to get motivated. It’s still snowing here in Minnesota. I returned from the AAHA Phoenix Yearly Conference to find my mailbox DIS—Dead in Snowbank— sadly defeated in a big plow versus little mailbox fight. That took me right out of my convention state of well-being, back to “winter-is-not-over-in-Minnesota” and the post-convention letdown I am certain we all experience. Now, firmly ensconced in post-con-
vention mode, all of those brilliant ideas are oozing out of my brain, away from the excitement and fervor of convention and back into the action lists of daily work. So how do I get all, or at least some, of those excellent ideas implemented?
Number One Commit time for planning. Remember,
in the daily bustle, time needs to be pur- posefully carved out for the rejuvenation of ideas and action plans. We cannot con- tinue to run our businesses in the present without thinking about the future. AAHA has a multitude of tools that will increase both profitability and health care delivery to our patients, but they won’t magically appear without planning.
Trends magazine, May 2013
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