The Fate of Ophelia (Animal Emergency and Specialty Center’s Version)

A veterinary emergency and specialty practice recently gained national attention when a music video they created to celebrate vet tech week went viral and even earned a nod from Taylor Swift herself. 

As Kimberly Hassen, DVM, MA, DVM, CVA, DACVAA, Medical Director of Animal Emergency and Specialty Center (AESC) in Parker, Colorado, was contemplating how to celebrate the veterinary technicians on her team for veterinary technician appreciation week, one of them came to her with a suggestion for their “annual” tech week video. She was a little surprised at first, since their team had only made one video previously for tech week, but clearly the experience had made an impression on the team.  

She quickly embraced her team members’ enthusiasm and asked what they had in mind. The initial suggestion was a take on the title of Taylor Swift’s newest album (and one of the songs on the album), The Life of a Showgirl, changed instead to The Life of a Vet Tech. They had already started brainstorming on this idea when the official music video for another song on the album, The Fate of Ophelia, was released. The team quickly started imagining ways they could recreate scenes in the music video, but with a vet med twist. 

Look what they did

The original video follows Taylor Swift as she assumes various character roles, including multiple references to Hamlet’s Ophelia as well as Vegas-style showgirls, cabaret singers, synchronized swimmers, and even Marilyn Monroe. 

The AESC team replicated many of the scenes with incredible accuracy, but using items, or “Easter eggs” in Swiftie lingo, typically found in a veterinary hospital. For example, whereas the original video included Taylor Swift striking a match and throwing it toward a flame thrower, the vet tech version involved a team member plucking a culturette swab from its tube and tossing it toward another team member who was heat-fixing a microscope slide with a lighter.  

In other scenes, life preservers and swim caps were traded out for e-collars and surgery caps; cabaret dresses were swapped out in favor of isolation gowns; cat litter was thrown to simulate confetti; and instead of tossing a football, they tossed a bag of fluids to a team member. And, as an appropriately dramatic conclusion to the video, a team member runs out of frame and then is seen lying on the practice’s underwater treadmill in her scrubs, submerged in water up to her face, an homage to the original video that finds Taylor Swift lying in a bathtub submerged up to her face in water wearing a bejeweled dress. All of these clever vet med references came together in beautiful alchemy to create a captivating video that highlights all the highly technical work veterinary technicians perform on a daily basis.  

The story of us: Making the video

Hassen, who served as a director and coordinator behind the scenes, said that there were several masterminds on the team who filled in the blank spaces with creative ideas to make the video top notch.  

When it came to filming, they took about a week to film it in parts around caring for patients and other work responsibilities. “That was probably the hardest part of the whole thing because it is generally a very busy hospital,” she said. They had to take advantage of random moments when the hospital wasn’t as busy and start filming right away when those moments arose. And with a staff of about 150 team members that work 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it was often hard to get all the people who wanted to participate in the hospital at the same time.  

For a team that often works midnights, it took lots of coordination and sacrifice to make the project a success. Hassen said that after a team member texted her on the weekend that there was an opportunity to film during a slower moment at the practice, she cancelled her plans to go in and film. “It’s right now or never,” she remembered thinking. 

The way they loved it 

Hassen said that once they started making the video, she knew all too well that it would come together to be something her team would be really proud of. Even so, she didn’t have any way to predict how well it would be received. Some of her colleagues hoped that it might go viral, but it turns out that they didn’t need to knock on wood.  

Since video was released, it has been viewed over a million times and garnered over 143,000 likes on Instagram. It has also been shared more than 5000 times, including within several different veterinary social media groups. And in what can only be described as a sleepless night most only dream of, the video was liked by Taylor Swift herself.  

“I was shaking [and] freaking out,” Hassen said of her response to the Anti-Hero star’s apparent approval of their effort. Even the members of the team who were not Swifties, some of whom still participated in filming the video, were very excited, she added. “I wasn’t in the hospital when it happened. It was on a day I don’t work, but apparently it was very loud and exciting in the hospital.” 

Hassen noted that it wasn’t just other veterinary professionals and Swift who had seen and appreciated the video. Some of the practice’s clients and other members of the local community reached out to congratulate the team on their success and acknowledge vet tech appreciation week. One client even brought flowers for the veterinary technicians, and another person from a neighboring state made a $13 donation to the practice’s angel fund in response to the video (13 is widely recognized as Taylor Swift’s lucky number and is therefore a number often used by fans to make donations in her honor).  

Apart from the video’s viral reception, it achieved success in other respects as well. From the beginning, Hassen said that the main goal of the project from the beginning wasn’t to go viral or even get new clients. “It was to celebrate our vet techs for vet tech week,” she said, “to have fun and that’s it.” 

 And in that sense, this project kept it 100. Hassen said those who participated “had so much fun and were so engaged,” likening the experience to a team building exercise in which team members hone their powers of creativity and collaboration and remember how nice it is to have a friend at work.  

Fearless: Encouraging your team to create

Despite her team’s viral success, Hassen said she does not feel like an expert at music video creation or social media marketing. Her advice to others who want to attempt similar projects with their own teams is to be authentic. “Stay true to yourself and don’t force it,” she counseled. She also said that it was important to keep in mind the physical limitations their hospital presented, both in terms of size, availability of equipment, and scheduling challenges.  

She also commented that the team went into the project with no thoughts of going viral, which meant they were able to focus on being creative and having fun instead of feeling pressure to achieve external validation.  

While the level of attention AESC’s video achieved is not something anyone can count on, one thing is for sure: getting your team in on the planning of their own celebration can result in a unique experience that is fun and uplifting beyond your wildest dreams. 

Photo credit:  Animal Emergency and Specialty Center 

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