We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Casara Andre a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Casara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Over the course of your career, have you seen or experienced your field completely flip-flop or change course on something?

Healthcare professionals – across a wide spread of industries – are struggling with declining mental health, chronic pain, and emotional exhaustion. The need of caregiver physical and mental health resources and emotional support can no longer be brushed off or ignored. At a time when the planet and its inhabitants have a lot of healing to do… resourcing of it’s caregivers is necessary.

The veterinary industry provides a snapshot of the larger issue within healthcare professions – the veterinary industry is currently devastated by a mental health crisis, exacerbated profoundly by the COVID19 pandemic. With suicide numbers high and many new graduates leaving long before retirement – a dangerous shortage of working veterinary professionals is growing.
By 2023, there will be a shortage of nearly 15,000 companion-animal veterinarians leaving nearly 75million animals without needed veterinary medical care. The rise in animal behavioral disorders parallels that of humans. The question remains – why… any what stops the bleed of competent veterinary professionals out of the industry.

Our team sees this as an important point in time as an industry-wide, cross-field mental health crisis threatens the wellbeing of the patients (animals) being served. Novel solutions are needed. Novel, durable, and scalable solutions are needed.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello friends, both known and yet-to-meet 👋

I am Dr. Casara Andre. I am a practicing veterinarian in Colorado. I am also a veteran – I served as a veterinarian for the U.S.Army Veterinary Corps during my early career. Currently, my veterinary practice specializes in treating behavioral disorders in animals, particularly those induced by emotional trauma.

As a veteran, the numbers of suicides of among our veteran community are disheartening. 40-44 veterans commit suicide daily. As a veterinarian, the suicide rates are also staggering. 1 in 6 veterinarians considers committing suicide. The mental health of caregivers across veterinary and human medicine is declining rapidly, and yet, this is a time when the state of our planet’s health requires all caregivers, all Healers, to be working – quickly – toward a solution.

As a Healer, it is impossible to not take action and look for durable solutions. Our Care for the Healer (CFTH) nonprofit is a 501(c)(3) organization built by Healers to stand as an advocate for ourselves, our colleagues, and our communities. We are serving the mission of planetary health by serving at the level of the individual and community. It is our belief that by restoring the wellbeing of Healers, it is possible to achieve a planetary state of health.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Our nonprofit supports community partners with aligned missions. One of these partners is the veterinary disaster response team that serves the geographic regions of Colorado to the East of the Continental Divide. The Front Range Veterinary Medical Reserve Corps (vMRC) was closely involved in the support of the veterinary community after Marshall Fire in Boulder County 2021. The tragedy of the fire and animals lost in that disaster deeply affected the mental health of the vMRC team as well as the veterinary community throughout the state.

To protect the psychologic health of the vMRC volunteers, the unit has implemented a psychologic resiliency training program as part of their core competence curriculum, and CFTH has been proud to assist. Care for the Healer has worked in collaboration with the vMRC team and other stakeholders to design a mental health resiliency curriculum that can be adapted to both clinic and field medicine across multiple healthcare industries.

The resiliency of Healers is evident in this curriculum and the professionals that pass through it. Healers sign up for the ‘hard’, the ‘dirty, bloody, smelly’. We’re ready to dig in to help and run forward to support – and we’re stubborn enough to stick around through the hard times. This mental health curriculum was built to keep caregivers healthy and well so they can continue caring for those around them.

CFTH is proud to support the resiliency embedded within every Healer.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

My early career as an Army officer shaped and still continues to impact my leadership style and the culture I build within my businesses and organizations. The importance of ‘leading from the front’ is one of the values that I hope shows clearly across all my work.

It is the consistency of your decisions that builds and defines your reputation within your market. The decisions you make that no one else may ever know about – those define your reputation… they build into the culture that you shape around your endeavors.

Give first. Lean in. Between two choices, always choose the kind one. If there isn’t a generous option, walk away.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.careforthehealer.org
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/careforthehealer/
• Other: https://careforthehealer.substack.com/