‘Part of the team as opposed to watching from the outside’: Critical incident study of autistic veterinary surgeons’ workdays

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Pickles, K., Houdmont, J., Smits, F., & Hill, B. K. (2024). ‘Part of the team as opposed to watching from the outside’: Critical incident study of autistic veterinary surgeons’ workdays. Veterinary Record, 196(4), e4957-e4957. https://doi.org/10.1002/vetr.4957

Publication date: 2 Dec 2024 Added to AutiHub: 6 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
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Authors

Publication authors
4
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 4 (25.0%)
  1. Kirstie Pickles *
  2. Jonathan Houdmont
  3. Femke Smits
  4. Bradley K Hill

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Autistic individuals experience differences in sensory processing, communication and executive function, which may affect their experience of the workplace. We investigated UK-based autistic clinical veterinary surgeons' experiences to establish contributing factors to a good or difficult workday. METHODS: Purposive sampling was used to conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 15 autistic veterinary surgeons. A critical incident technique was applied to explore the characteristics of a good and a difficult workday. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify recurrent themes and sub-themes in the narratives. RESULTS: Five major themes were identified as contributing to a difficult workday for autistic veterinarians: professional interactions, feeling out of control, the physical environment, role-specific challenges and self-doubt. Four overarching themes were identified as being associated with a good workday: positive interactions, feeling in control, having enough time and a sense of achievement. LIMITATIONS: As this is a qualitative study with a small number of participants, the extent to which these findings reflect the experience of the wider autistic veterinary surgeon community is unclear. CONCLUSION: Strategies to mitigate the effect of the most cited factors leading to difficult workdays, centring around neurodiversity awareness of colleagues and control of work, are likely to be helpful to autistic veterinary surgeons.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Bibliography inclusion overview

These indicators describe the cited bibliography imported for this publication. Cited-reference metrics use the cited-reference total as denominator. Cited-author metrics state whether they use all cited-author occurrences or only occurrences linked to authors already integrated in the AutiHub database. They use cached links between cited authors and authors integrated in the AutiHub database. Last computed: 16 Aug 2026 11:31.

Cited references
31
Total cited references integrated for this publication.
Cited references with an identified autistic author
3 / 31 (9.7%)
Cited author occurrences identified as autistic
8 / 96 (8.3%)
Among occurrences linked to AutiHub author records: 8 / 38 (21.1%). Distinct cited authors identified as autistic: 6 / 91 (6.6%).
Cited author occurrences linked to AutiHub author records
38 / 96 (39.6%)
Distinct linked cited authors: 34 / 91 (37.4%)
Linked cited-author occurrences not identified as autistic
30 / 38 (78.9%)
Among linked cited-author occurrences only. Across all cited-author occurrences: 30 / 96 (31.2%). Distinct linked cited authors not identified as autistic: 28 / 34 (82.4%).
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