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CACVT’s Winter Wellness Event- When the Nervous System Comes to Work: A Two-Part Veterinary Wellness CE Experience

November 22 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

When the Nervous System Comes to Work

A Two-Part Veterinary Wellness CE Experience

Winter Wellness takes a fresh approach to professional wellbeing by helping veterinary professionals explore the many factors that shape their experience at work—both within their environment and within their own sphere of influence. Attendees will build greater awareness of their patterns, reactions, needs, and choices, empowering them to focus their energy where they can create meaningful change and make more intentional decisions about their future in veterinary medicine.

You can’t control everything that happens at work. You can understand what’s yours to carry, what’s yours to change, and what’s yours to put down.

Join CACVT and Alana Connelly, RVT, MBA, MA; PhD Candidate in Humanistic Clinical Psychology, for a two-part CE experience exploring what we bring with us into veterinary medicine, how our nervous systems respond when the work gets difficult, and practical ways to navigate those moments with greater awareness and flexibility.

Your registration includes both sessions totaling 2.5 hours of non-medical CE.

PART 1 | ON-DEMAND

Apparently, My Baggage Clocked in Too™

ACEs, Emotional Regulation, and the Patterns We Bring into Veterinary Medicine

None of us clocks into the veterinary hospital as a blank slate. Our experiences and learned patterns can influence how we respond to stress, conflict, responsibility, boundaries, and emotionally difficult cases.

Using a trauma-informed, non-pathologizing approach, this session explores ACEs, protective experiences, emotional regulation, perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsibility, and boundaries. Participants will gain greater awareness of the patterns they bring to work and learn how curiosity and flexibility can help them respond differently when those patterns are no longer serving them.

This pre-recorded session will be available to registered participants to watch on their own schedule before or after the live event.

PART 2 | LIVE & INTERACTIVE

My Nervous System Did Not Read the Schedule™

Emotional Regulation Under Pressure in Veterinary Medicine

Sunday, November 22 | 10:00–11:30 AM MT

The schedule may say it’s time for the next patient, but your nervous system may have other plans. Veterinary professionals routinely move from emergencies, patient loss, difficult clients, medical errors, and other high-pressure situations directly into their next responsibility.

In this interactive session, participants will learn to recognize signs of nervous system activation and practice realistic regulation strategies that can be used during the veterinary workday. Through veterinary-specific scenarios, participants will explore emotional regulation, co-regulation, psychological safety, and recovery—and create a personalized “5% Plan” for noticing earlier, responding sooner, and recovering more effectively.

Can’t Attend Live?

Both sessions will be available on-demand through June 30, 2027. Register even if the live date doesn’t work for you and complete the full 2.5 hours of CE on your own schedule.

Registration

CACVT Members: $25
CACVT Student & Retired Members: $15
Non-Members: $40

Includes both sessions totaling 2.5 hours of non-medical CE

Register Here

Meet our Speaker:

Alana Connelly, RVT, MBA, MA, is a Registered Veterinary Technician with over 30 years of experience in veterinary medicine, including emergency and critical care, hospital leadership, education, training, and veterinary practice management. She holds an MBA and an MA in Clinical Psychology and is currently a PhD candidate in Humanistic Clinical Psychology.

Alana’s professional interests bring together her extensive veterinary background with her work in psychology, trauma, grief, and emotional well-being. Her doctoral research focuses on disenfranchised grief following companion-animal loss, and her broader work explores the psychological and emotional experiences of both veterinary professionals and the people they serve.

Having spent decades working alongside veterinary teams, Alana is particularly interested in moving conversations beyond traditional discussions of burnout and self-care. Her work focuses on cumulative occupational stress and trauma exposure, moral distress, grief, emotional regulation, psychological safety, and the personal and organizational factors that influence well-being in veterinary medicine.

Her approach combines current psychological and veterinary research with the realities of clinical practice, with the goal of helping veterinary professionals better understand themselves, support one another, and build healthier, more sustainable careers in the profession they care deeply about.

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