The SAH Community
Schulhof Animal Hospital has worked hard at becoming a friendly, supportive and unique community, facilitated by Partner Christian Benyei, Practice Manager Autumn Wickett, and our in-house professional family systems expert, Dr. Candace Benyei.
Because we are an independent, instead of a corporately owned practice, we have the luxury of deciding who we want and how many we want when it comes to staffing. We are able to choose carefully, making sure the abilities, and even more importantly, the personality of the individuals we choose, so our new hires complement our needs and fit in well with our community. We look for team-mates, not lone strangers, and colleagues who can rally to our collective vision instead of their own idea of how things should be.
Not only is our staff race and gender inclusive, as well as multinational, but we have evolved a truly collaborative problem-solving way of operating, where everyone’s voice is valued, irrespective of their position. This is accomplished in our twice monthly Supervisory Staff Meetings, our once monthly Doctor’s and Supervisory Staff Lunches, and our obligatory monthly All Staff Meetings where lunch is provided to the entire staff.
In these interfaces, issues can be brought up by anyone, and a path forward agreed upon by all. Here we plan and facilitate continuing education, address human resources issues, and decide upon the strategies to keep our facility safe, happy, and running in the face of looming pestilence, like Covid or dog flu, needed restoration like redoing the lead wall lining in the x-ray room and turf installation in the Pet Spa exercise area, not to mention environmental challenges like heavy snow, excess heat, power outages (we now have a whole hospital natural gas generator) and a need to do a third nighttime walk for kenneled dogs.
We also like to Play!
Grismel impersonating Lupe, the Benyei’s dog, for Halloween
Finally, we seek to enable all our staff to be the best that they can be and discover and make use of all their hidden talents.
We work at providing flexible schedules so our staff can partake of institutional schooling of their choice. We have a long-standing intern program for Vet Assistants and Vet Techs from a variety of schools, and an active, individualized training program for our permanent staff, be they Vet Assistants, Vet Techs and our front desk staff whom we call Patient Care Coordinators. We have seen many of our staff go from entry level Kennel Assistants to become Certified Veterinary Technologists and some go on to Vet School and become Veterinarians. We have provided advanced training for our Veterinarians, and we have enabled foreign Veterinarians to progress from Vet Techs to licensed US Veterinarians.
If you would like to see our community in action, please visit our FaceBook page and our Instagram page!