Empathy, Ethics and Autonomy in Vet Medicine with Dr Karen Hiestand

This week we are joined by the fantastic Karen Hiestand!

Karen shares her experiences training as a vet in New Zealand and practicing veterinary medicine in both NZ and the UK while also volunteering in many more countries.

We discuss how problems with clients affect your self-worth and how the industry can improve working environments to deal with traumatic situations through ethics and reflection. We also share out experience with personal ethics tests and Karen reveals fascinating results regarding ethics in veterinary professionals!

Karen has master’s degrees in applied animal behaviour and welfare, medical ethics and law, a BSc in psychology and is a resident of the European college of animal welfare and behavioural medicine.

She explains the preliminary findings of her PhD investigating the role of animal empathy in human-companion animal relationships and we learn some intriguing facts about how cats’ and dogs’ brains work.

Lastly, Karen delivers a wonderful 60-Second CPD about the idea of the autonomy principle and how it’s used in veterinary medicine!