Second-year veterinary student Abigail Schnapper role-plays having a difficult conversation with a client, played by fourth-year veterinary student Kat Murphy. College alumnus Dr. Harrison Reid observes and provides feedback.
July 24, 2025
Words and photo by Jens Odegaard
Veterinarians spend their time making medical and healthcare decisions for patients that can’t verbally communicate. So, veterinary students need to be able to effectively communicate with the clients who own or care for these animals.
Dr. Lilian Wong, clinical skills instructor at the Oregon State University Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine, builds client communication skills into her curriculum for second-year students, right alongside the medical skills students need to master.
Wong recruits actors to pose as clients in a variety of role-playing scenarios. Students then take turns practicing their communication skills with these actors. Wong also recruits veterinary mentors to lead the students through each scenario, provide feedback and offer practical guidance based on their own experience.
Scenarios include communication about euthanasia, overweight pets and one of the more difficult conversations that veterinarians need to have the skills to handle: an angry client.
In this year’s clinical skills course, the angry client scenario involved an owner of a sick bunny. The bunny was a present to the client’s child from a grandparent, and the child was no longer caring for the pet, placing the burden of care on the client. On top of being disgruntled about having to spend time and money on a bunny they didn’t really want, the owner was upset with being made to wait to see the veterinarian who was running late from a prior appointment.
Students needed to navigate the conversation to build rapport with the client, conduct a health exam of the bunny, make a diagnosis of the ailments and provide a range of treatment and future care options to the client.
Wong recruited local veterinary volunteers Dr. Amy Pelton, and husband and wife team Drs. Harrison and Jaclyn Reid to lead the scenario. Fourth-year veterinary student Kat Murphy volunteered as one of the angry client actors.
Pelton specializes in providing “a comfortable end-of-life experience for beloved pets, realizing what an impact this final moment can have on families.”
She views compassionate and effective communication as essential for all veterinarians, no matter what type of practice they work in.
“Truly, truly, I think that communication is 90% of the job,” Pelton said. “You can have all the medical knowledge in the world, you can be the best surgeon in the world, but until you can persuade somebody to do that test or do that surgery, there's no opportunity for you to do it. Dogs and cats don't have the ability to sign a form, and they don't have money. And so your communication with the owner is all that matters in those situations.”
Harrison Reid concurs: “Your job is to advocate for the animal and to figure out what's going on with the animal. If you're a good communicator, people will leave thinking, ‘Man, I just got an education. I understand what's going on with my critter.’”
According to Pelton, being able to build rapport with an angry client enables a veterinarian to get an animal needed treatment rather than having a client walk out. “Sure, that might've been emotionally taxing for you, but at the end of the day, the animal got the help that it needed. So that's why I feel so passionate about it,” she said.
Role-playing scenarios help students learn to develop this rapport. “There's a lot of things that you can learn from studying communication, but it's like with anything, unless you're doing it and actually saying words out loud, it can be really tough to get good at or hone those skills,” Jaclyn Reid said.
For second-year student Abigail Schnapper, the chance to practice difficult conversations was perfect for helping develop her “doctor personality.”
“Everyone totally has a different doctor personality, and I think it will be well received by some clients and not well received by others,” Schnapper said. “It's a lot of discovering who you are and how you communicate, and then how you should best modify that to communicate. There are people that have a softer tone, and they communicate a certain way. I'm often very blunt in conversations. And so, finding the best ways to navigate that: when to pull it back, but when it's also useful.”
Fourth-year student Kat Murphy, who volunteered as an angry actor, found that through her educational experience at OSU she became comfortable with her own doctor personality.
“In year one I was like, I can't show emotions; I need to be a professional doctor. With the communication skills I learned and having the experience the last few years and the mentorship of our professors, I learned to understand it's OK to connect with your clients,” Murphy said. “I like to think about vet med as pediatric medicine, like people are bringing their children and you have to deal with all the emotions that are involved with that. And it's OK to show emotion, and connect with them, and be vulnerable and show that you're invested as well.”
Schnapper was paired with Murphy for the angry client scenario. Murphy used her experience in interacting with clients herself to play a very convincing angry bunny owner for Schnapper. With Harrison Reid observing, Schapper worked her way through the conversation and eventually formed a consensus with Murphy on what treatment plan and next steps would be best for the bunny.
“The scenarios were very nerve wracking, but the nerves motivate you to do more self-reflection and more research on how to interact with people,” said Schnapper. “All the feedback I've gotten from every session I plan on trying to remember and incorporate: things that worked and things that didn't work for me. It was really useful to be able to be in the doctor position and practice.”