Flynn’s Walk is proud to present the Cultivet Well-being Workshop in partnership with GoWell by GapOnly - supporting veterinary wellness.

We're bringing our workshop to Sydney for the first time! You are invited to participate in a full-day workshop at The Tote Building in Zetland, central Sydney, on Thursday July 20.

We encourage you, and your team, to connect and grow with the compassionate guidance of two of the best in our industry Dr Cathy Warburton & Dr Vanessa Rohlf.

About the workshop...

We promise this is not another sit down lecture-style-death-by-powerpoint day that leaves you overwhelmed with information and a page of notes you'll never read again.

In this workshop, we are providing the time and space to focus on the 'soft skills' of veterinary work - the non-clinical stuff! Our facilitators are crafting an agenda that will spend time on defining mental health and how you can keep fuel in the tank, building resilience, practicing mindfulness and most importantly, how you bring these things into your daily personal and working lives - in a way that works for you.

You'll hear and learn from two wonderful facilitators - Dr Cathy Warburton & Dr Vanessa Rohlf - who will share their insights and experiences from the veterinary well-being sphere. There's lots more info about them below!

“It was very relevant to our work and it was a safe space where we could speak and have a discussion.” - previous workshop attendee

So why is this workshop different?

This one has been designed for you. The facilitators understand the challenges you may be facing. They've worked in the veterinary field and understand it. It's designed for all members of the clinic team. We recognise that the issues of stress, burnout and compassion fatigue can have the tendency to plague not just vets or nurses, and we all need a little help to implement coping strategies to collectively thrive.

What can you expect on the day...

Engaging content and plenty of breaks
A blend of speaker time, small group work and open discussion
Evidence based coping strategies that you can take away and use
We're sorting lunch - so you don't need to worry about that, we'll just get some dietary info from you once you've booked
Limited and timed on-street parking
Green Square train station close by (12 mins walk)

Here's a little more about our speakers...

Dr Cathy Warburton graduated from Murdoch University in 1989 as a veterinarian. She worked as a clinician, trainer and manager in private, university and corporate practices for 25 years, mostly in the pressure cooker environment of Emergency and Critical Care.

During her career, Cathy progressed from being very animal and clinical focused to becoming more and more interested in the people – the clients and her colleagues. As a manager in 24 hour emergency centres, her role was to maintain a team of well-trained, physically and mentally healthy people ready and able to deliver high quality patient and client care. Through this experience, along with her own trials and tribulations around mental health, Cathy’s passion for training and empowering people to increase their psychological resources and well-being was born.

The experiences and training that inform Cathy’s work are her long involvement with the industry and a humanistic outlook intermingled with training in positive psychology, coaching, group work, spiritual care and meaning-centred therapy. Cathy is a Mental Health First Aider.

Dr. Vanessa Rohlf has a Ph.D. with a specialisation in psychology (human-animal interactions) and a Master’s degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy. She has blended her knowledge of human psychology and human-animal interactions in a number of previous roles over the last 20 years. These include veterinary nursing, a psychology lecturer at Monash University, and an animal welfare researcher at the Animal Welfare Science Centre, The University of Melbourne.

Vanessa is an associate member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), member of the American Psychological Association (APA), and has registration with the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), as well as further qualifications in mindfulness, animal bereavement, suicide prevention and certification as a compassion fatigue educator and therapist with the Green Cross Academy of Traumatology. Vanessa is a research fellow in the School of Psychology & Public Health at La Trobe University and regularly presents her work in peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as at international and national conferences.

Vanessa works with a range of animal care industries including animal shelters and pounds, veterinary clinics, zoos, and research facilities. She also provides individual counselling and support to companion animal owners and professional animal caregivers from a range of industries.