Symbiosis in Systems: Helping Families Through Animal Injury, Illness, and Death

It is well-documented that animals have become fully integrated members of many American families. Less well known is what happens to the functioning of these families when a veterinary crisis strikes. How can veterinary teams – and veterinary social workers – most effectively help clients and their families maintain stability and resilience when animals are injured, ill, or dying? This workshop will provide practitioners with real-time tools to reduce helplessness, increase coping, and create meaning for patient’s families during all stages of veterinary care.

Objectives:

1) To introduce and apply the Family Systems Illness Model (Rolland, 1994) to contemporary veterinary practice and frame the family – not the patient – as the “unit of care.”

2) To explore the effects of animal illness on family coping, communication, and adaptation.

3) To present veterinary social workers as “ecosystems consultants” on the veterinary team, and explain how to utilize these professionals most effectively.

4) To review concrete, phase-based tools for improving communication, enhancing collaboration, and building resilience with patients’ families.

(NOTE: Presentation files once available have been removed.)

Jeannine is a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in human-animal relationships, grief counseling, and animal-assisted therapy. Jeannine served as the founding director of Veterinary Social Services at the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Medical Center and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work. She is currently developing a similar program for North Carolina State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Health Complex, where she provides crisis intervention, medical case consultation, and grief counseling for clients, and skills training for veterinary students, staff, and faculty. Jeannine provides training on the human-animal bond, family-centered veterinary care, and compassion fatigue to mental health, veterinary medicine, and animal welfare professionals across the country. Her scholarly interests include practice standards for pet loss professionals, animal-assisted intervention methodologies, secondary traumatic stress, and the horse-human bond.