The Cases We Carry Error, Culture, and Patient Safety in Veterinary Medicine

Most veterinary professionals carry at least one case they will never forget. Not the textbook case – the one that returns in the small hours, long after the client has gone home. For decades, human healthcare has been having a serious conversation about systems thinking, human factors, psychological safety and just culture. Veterinary medicine has barely begun. The result is a profession that still meets error with blame, leaving good professionals to carry shame, guilt and loneliness alone. The Cases We Carry is not a quality-improvement manual. It is a book about the culture around error in veterinary medicine – how we speak about it, respond to it, learn from it, and live with it. This isn’t a manual. It’s a reckoning. For everyone who entered this work believing they had to be perfect – and for everyone still carrying a case.