160: Toxic Workplaces Just Got Expensive: What The New Psychological Safety Laws Mean For Vet Practices. With Rhonda Andrews

160: Toxic Workplaces Just Got Expensive: What The New Psychological Safety Laws Mean For Vet Practices. With Rhonda Andrews

From The Vet Vault: Fall In Love With Veterinary Science by Dr. Hubert Hiemstra

May 30, 2026 · 56 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the implications of new psychological safety laws for veterinary practices, featuring insights from psychologist Rhonda Andrews.

A surgeon hurls a scalpel across theatre. It clatters off the wall. Nobody looks up. Twenty minutes later he's in the tearoom offering everyone a biscuit, and someone shrugs: "That's just him when he's stressed." If you've worked in veterinary practice for any length of time, you've got your own version of that story - maybe a bit less dramatic, but still things that completely destroy psychological safety. This episode is about that stuff, and the new psychosocial safety laws now rolling out across Australia that say plainly: no, actually, that's not acceptable. To make sense of what that looks like on a normal Tuesday in a normal practice, you'll hear from psychologist Rhonda Andrews, who works across high-pressure industries - emergency departments, the courts, and the veterinary profession - and who has spent years watching them all wrestle with the same problem: people breaking. This conversation is not about “just be more resilient”, but about systems. Rhonda makes a genuinely good-news case that these laws aren't more bureaucracy to dread - they're the push our profession has needed all along. You'll hear Why the things you've always filed under "just part…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Hubert Hiemstra

Guest: Rhonda Andrews

Topics covered

  • psychological safety
  • veterinary practice
  • workplace culture
  • laws
  • mental health
  • resilience

Keywords

  • psychological safety
  • veterinary
  • workplace injury
  • laws
  • performance conversation
  • mental health

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Australia

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