AVMA update with Kevin Fitzgerald highlights kindness and conservation

CURRENT BRIEF VERSION: AVMA’s My Veterinary Life has brought back Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald for an update centered on kindness, community, and conservation, revisiting a career that spans small animal practice, public communication, comedy, and wildlife advocacy. Fitzgerald is widely known as a longtime Denver veterinarian and former Emergency Vets personality, and outside practice he has served on the Denver Zoo’s board and supported conservation work, including projects tied to Mongolia. The update also lands within a broader My Veterinary Life editorial pattern: recent episodes have highlighted spectrum-of-care access work, student entrepreneurship and resilience, and humanitarian veterinary response in conflict settings, reinforcing the idea that the profession’s public identity now reaches well beyond the exam room. (colorado.edu)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the episode is less about a new policy or product launch and more about what kind of leadership the field wants to reward: visible kindness, local community engagement, and a willingness to connect companion animal medicine with conservation and public-facing advocacy. That framing also echoes adjacent conversations in veterinary media, including AVMA podcast episodes on Spectrum of Care and access to treatment options, as well as Cornell’s recent podcast with Dr. Steve Osofsky on One Health and planetary health, which argues that veterinarians can help translate conservation into broader health value for society. (vet.cornell.edu)

What to watch: Expect more veterinary media and professional groups to keep elevating stories that tie clinical identity to community service, access to care, wildlife health, and cross-sector advocacy. (vet.cornell.edu)