Kevin Fitzgerald’s AVMA update centers kindness and conservation
Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald’s latest appearance on AVMA’s My Veterinary Life podcast doesn’t announce a regulatory shift or clinical breakthrough. Instead, it offers something quieter and, for many in the profession, just as relevant: a veteran practitioner’s case for kindness, community involvement, conservation, and lifelong learning as the core habits of a durable veterinary career. In the January 8, 2025, episode, Fitzgerald returns to discuss his memoir, It Started With a Turtle, and reflect on 43 years in veterinary medicine. (podcasts.apple.com)
That framing fits Fitzgerald’s unusually public career. He’s widely known as a small animal veterinarian at Denver’s Alameda East hospital and as a familiar face from Animal Planet’s Emergency Vets and E-Vet Interns, but his professional identity has long stretched beyond companion animal practice. Earlier interviews and profiles describe him as a clinician, educator, comedian, and conservation advocate who has argued for veterinarians to remain woven into the communities they serve and to speak up for animal welfare and biodiversity. (dvm360.com)
The new podcast episode, as described by AVMA’s podcast listing, focuses on Fitzgerald’s memoir update and his retrospective on practice life, including a story from his early career and a repeated emphasis on kindness, community engagement, and continuing growth. That message is consistent with Fitzgerald’s earlier public comments. In a dvm360 interview, he said veterinarians should stay “integrally involved in the fabric of the communities they live in,” contribute to conservation, and remain lifelong students of the profession. He has also warned that the profession risks losing public trust if it loses sight of its obligation to relieve suffering. (podcasts.apple.com)
Recent My Veterinary Life episodes suggest Fitzgerald’s themes are part of a broader editorial thread, not a one-off reflection. In “Be Kind and Be Brave,” Drs. Kristin Jankowski and Sheena Warman discuss the AAVMC’s Spectrum of Care initiative and frame veterinary professionalism around compassion, courage, and practical flexibility in serving clients with different resources. In “Compassion and Compression,” North Carolina State veterinary student Mary Emfinger describes entering the field through shelter parvovirus work, then openly discusses burnout and the nontraditional path she took from a history and theater background into veterinary school. And in an update episode with Dr. Jon Geller, the founder of the Street Dog Coalition recounts using veterinary skills in humanitarian settings, from the Ukraine border to support efforts connected to Gaza, with explicit One Health and infectious-disease implications. Together, those conversations reinforce the same basic idea Fitzgerald advances: veterinary impact extends beyond technical medicine into access, trust, resilience, and public service. (AVMA My Veterinary Life)
Research beyond the podcast adds useful context to why Fitzgerald keeps returning to conservation. He has participated in prairie rattlesnake research in Colorado for years, including work examining rattlesnake natural history and the wildlife-livestock-human interface. A recent Colorado media report said he and collaborators have placed radio transmitters on more than 500 rattlesnakes along the Front Range. His memoir and recent profiles also describe conservation as a through line in his life, alongside clinical work and comedy. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Industry reaction to this specific podcast episode appears limited, but the broader perspective Fitzgerald represents is echoed elsewhere in veterinary media and academia. Cornell’s 2025 podcast with wildlife health leader Dr. Steve Osofsky similarly argues that One Health and planetary health depend on recognizing the links among wildlife, domestic animals, people, and ecosystems. Osofsky describes conservation not as a side interest, but as a health strategy with direct public value. That gives Fitzgerald’s message a wider professional frame: community-minded veterinary work and conservation-minded veterinary work are increasingly being discussed as connected, not separate. (vet.cornell.edu)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, Fitzgerald’s update is useful because it broadens the definition of impact. Practices are under pressure to be efficient, financially sustainable, and clinically current, but Fitzgerald’s career argues that trust is also built through visibility, service, communication, and a clear ethical center. For teams working daily with pet parents, that can mean community outreach, clearer public education, stronger local partnerships, or engagement with welfare and conservation issues that shape animal health upstream. His message also speaks to career longevity: curiosity, outside interests, and purpose beyond throughput may help sustain people in practice over decades. It also lands in a profession actively debating spectrum of care, access to care, student wellbeing, and the emotional cost of training and practice — themes surfaced in recent AVMA podcast episodes with Jankowski, Warman, Emfinger, and Geller. (dvm360.com)
What to watch: Watch for more veterinary organizations and schools to elevate stories that connect practice, public trust, access to care, and One Health, especially as workforce pressures push the profession to rethink what makes a career sustainable and socially credible. AVMA’s recent podcast lineup also suggests continued attention to veterinary leadership beyond the clinic, including education reform, student resilience, and humanitarian response. (vet.cornell.edu)