February 01, 2021

Dr. Lori Teller, elected to a one-year term as chair of the AVMA Board of Directors last July, has long been a staunch advocate for the profession.

She is a 1990 graduate of Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences as well as a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners in canine and feline practice.

She worked at Meyerland Animal Clinic in Houston for many years, starting at the age of 12 and continuing after graduation from veterinary school. In 2018, she joined the TAMU veterinary faculty as a clinical associate professor of telehealth.

Dr. Teller has held several leadership positions in organized veterinary medicine at both the national and state levels. She was a founding board member of the Women’s Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative, which is dedicated to helping develop female leaders in veterinary medicine.

In 2015, Dr. Teller was elected District VIII representative on the AVMA Board, representing AVMA members living in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Last year, she was the Board’s vice chair, and she is currently a candidate for 2021-22 AVMA president-elect.

Recently, Dr. Teller spoke with JAVMA News about her priorities and hopes for the rest of her term as well as the AVMA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice movement this past year. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What have been your priorities as Board chair?

A. My priorities as Board chair have been facilitating and ensuring the success of AVMA’s strategic plan.

Some of the things we are heavily engaged in right now are the veterinary workforce, particularly as it pertains to veterinary technicians and the role credentialed vet techs play in practice. We’re looking at how veterinary technicians can be better utilized to fully make use of their skill sets so they can make our lives as veterinarians easier and can have higher job satisfaction, along with how can we enhance the role of veterinary technicians, both to our members and to the public.

Another priority is our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and we’re working at two levels. We’ve kicked off the joint commission with the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. Having actionable items that come out of that will make a sustainable difference across the profession. And then there’s those efforts within the AVMA itself. How can we eliminate barriers or create a better pipeline for members to actively engage with the AVMA? How do we recruit a more diverse population into veterinary medicine and, ultimately, have them become members of AVMA and actively engaged in committees, councils, and leadership positions?

Of course, another big issue is nondues revenue. We certainly have the utmost respect and concern for the money that our members entrust to us with their dues. We want the AVMA to be of value to them, and we would like to supplement what we do by increasing nondues revenue so we can continue to bring value to what we offer while being respectful of the financial impact on our members.

Technology will play an increasing role in the profession. I’m excited the AVMA is releasing its overarching telemedicine guidelines. We’ve also been working with the American Animal Hospital Association to create telemedicine guidelines for companion animal practice (see story).

Beyond telemedicine, we’re looking to artificial intelligence and the role machine learning can play in the profession.

But our biggest priority right now is continuing to navigate COVID and then the post-pandemic world. What does that look like as an Association and for our members? How can we get more resources and information to them? They’ve been working their tails off for a while now with curbside service, access-to-care issues, and just keeping a small business afloat.

Q. What are you hearing from members?

A. The big thing from people at the practice level is they can’t even come up for air. Clinics are running with reduced staff because people are out sick or taking care of family, or people are working in shifts. Emergency and general practices are being overloaded. As the AVMA, what can we do to provide resources to help members get through each day?

Sometimes a general practice has to refer to the emergency room because they don’t have the resources or time to see an urgent case, and ERs are overloaded, and it can be a several-hour wait. We can do more public education about how hard veterinarians are working to see patients and accommodate clients. We can highlight the role veterinarians play in public health. If nothing else, COVID has driven this home. We have veterinarians tracking zoonotic diseases and monitoring the impact COVID has on animal and human populations. We have resources we can provide in that realm as well.

We will continue to advocate for the profession on the Hill. We want legislators to continue to recognize we are an essential business and the role we play in this pandemic. Food production and safety continue to be paramount. Companion animals have been tremendous at reducing stress and loneliness for people when they can’t get out as much as they used to.

What resources can the AVMA provide on the wellness front in the pandemic and post-pandemic world just to give our members a breather? What more can we develop?

Q. What do you still hope to accomplish as Board chair?

A. I would like to see the diversity, equity, and inclusion commission fully operational and coming up with initial plans for how to move these efforts forward in the profession.

I would like to see us to meet in person as an AVMA board as well as our committees and councils. That personal engagement is so important to making the AVMA a stronger organization, and I hear this from members all the time—especially our engaged members who serve on entities—how much they miss interpersonal interaction.

I would love to see us pull off an in-person convention by the end of my term. It would be a giant, happy celebration done safely. I look forward to it, and I know everyone on the Board looks forward to that as well.

I would like to see us have a better grasp on how to use veterinary technicians to practice more efficiently, whatever that looks like, with clients in hospitals or curbside or implementing telemedicine in practice.

Q. The Board has taken a number of steps to encourage increasing veterinary technician utilization. What can you say about progress made so far?

A. Veterinary technicians are a huge part of my day every day in private practice or academia. They’ve saved me so many times. They will find lesions on pets I may have missed or say, ‘Dr. Teller, did you see this?’ or ‘A client told me this but didn’t mention it to you.’ They do an excellent job with that. Their skill sets are amazing. It’s so much easier for them to give an IV while I do something else and see more patients.

They are super observant, too. They see patients for a greater period of time than I do and may notice something sooner, so I can intervene earlier.

They are some of our biggest practice advocates when it comes to communicating with clients, whether on nutrition or disease prevention or puppy and kitten training. They play such a huge role in bonding clients to the practice. They make themselves available to answer questions, so I can diagnose and prescribe and treat and all the things that go with being a veterinarian. Some veterinarians have a hard time ceding control, but if you can appropriately delegate your plan to a tech, you can actually get a lot more done.

Q. What do you see as the AVMA’s biggest strengths? Weaknesses?

A. I think our biggest strength is our membership. It’s the people in the profession who provide feedback and input and engage with everything we are doing. We can assimilate that feedback to really be the singular voice of the profession. The people who believe in us are our biggest strength. We can only be as strong as the people who support us.

Our biggest weakness is—something we have recognized the need for improvement and are making great strides in—our responsiveness to issues that impact the profession. I think the AVMA did a tremendous job with its rapid response to the COVID pandemic and the impact it had on the profession. Everybody—from the staff to the volunteer leadership to stakeholders—got on board and up and running, addressing all aspects of the pandemic. It shows how rapidly responsive we can be to members’ needs and how we can provide timely and factual information.

Another area is the DEI commission we are taking part in. It became apparent this summer this is an important issue to many AVMA members, and we had the commission up and running in less than six months. I think the AVMA already has some great resources on the website, and (there will be) more action related to DEI initiatives, and (we’ll see) what develops from the commission.

Finally, we have also become more responsive around policy creation. I’ll mention the DOT’s (Department of Transportation’s) decision on emotional support animals and rules about flying with them (see story). It has been a long-standing problem for veterinarians, and the AVMA convened a group of experts, the airlines, and various trade associations and really worked with them to have sound policies around service and emotional support animals. We can’t control how fast the government moves, but we moved very rapidly. The AVMA is working to be more agile and provide valuable resources to support our members.

Q. You recently had a literature review on telemedicine published in the journal Veterinary Evidence. What are some underutilized aspects of telemedicine, in your opinion?

A. I think telemedicine has tremendous possibilities in the profession. We are currently piloting an access-to-care program at Texas A&M for people of limited financial means to get care for their animals. These are pet owners who are patients of the TAMU Telehealth Behavioral Counseling center. They are part of the program because they don’t have human health care funds or resources, so they receive mental health care through the center. Some identified as being pet owners who can’t afford or access veterinary care, which is why we chose this group. They do not have regular vets, and they were already familiar with telemedicine. We did a wellness clinic for this group in a rural part of Texas and vaccinated, tested for parasites and heartworms, and treated minor wounds and ear infections. We are doing follow ups via telemedicine. We’re just now in our first round of follow-ups; the feedback has been very good. We can further explain things to clients and mail medications to them, if indicated. It will be interesting to see how both the owner’s mental well-being and animal health are affected by having this access to care. It’s a one-year grant. The majority of results will be in by the end of the spring semester.

Q. What are your thoughts on the new administration and legislative priorities?

A. The great thing about the AVMA’s legislative priorities is they are generally not politically divisive. Animal welfare, small-business issues, student debt relief, and all of our legislative priorities are about putting our members’ needs and animal health care at the forefront, which is something all political parties can get behind. We don’t know how the new administration will prioritize those. They have claimed they want to resolve the student debt problem. It would be great if we could finally pass the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Enhancement Act. I hope to see movement in that so veterinarians working in the public sector will get the same tax breaks other health professionals get. It also would be super nice if we could finally get the Fairness to Pet Owners Act taken off the table and (legislators) recognize there is no need for it because veterinarians do provide prescriptions when they’re requested. There is no need for this to be mandated.

Q. You’ve long been a proponent of communicating the importance of veterinary medicine and animal health through media outlets. How do you hope to continue that or encourage others to do so?

A. Public education is a huge part of what the AVMA can continue to promote. We need to continue to amplify our voice. I would love to see us identify more members who can speak on a variety of important issues. Lots of news outlets like to hear from someone local. It would be great if we had members throughout the country to tap into to speak on certain topics. I strongly think that there needs to more networking between veterinarians and local news outlets. We can provide training to our members to develop skills for speaking with the media. Clients like to see their veterinarian in the newspaper providing factual information about veterinary care. I would love to see us be able to branch out and provide that opportunity not only to the AVMA president and members of the Board but also to other people we know who can be influential in the public’s eye and tell our story.