Vets no longer working in outlying area

[MRT]

Charging £90 for a pill that the client has collected is just bad business and bad public relations, especially as the client wasn't fore warned. Sorry, but if my vet did that to me he would get an ear full!

To demonstrate with a example where I attempted to charge something I thought reasonable. I used to do a lot of puppy farmers bitch csections in the middle of the night. We had no duty nurse so had to phone around the nurses and it was the same thin, overworked, anxious woman in her late 60s that answered and came down at 2am to do the anaesthetic and revive the puppies without fail, every time for zero £. I put a £15 OOH nurse sur charge on once. Puppy farmer complained, I got a bollocking, puppy farmer got £15 refund end of story.

 

[Netherfield]

How much student debt are these people going to end up with? could be a factor involved.

 

[Lowland1]

85% of Vet school graduated female with a shelf life of 5 years according to an acquaintance of mine, formerly the principal partner in a major vet group. Seems a waste of five years plus of study and a massive student loan debt. Something wrong with the admissions process in my view.

Being married to a Vet ( female ) I’d say one thing and when you get to a certain age messing around with large animals gets to be hard work. More females will get to be vets because girls study harder however just because you’re clever doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good vet there’s so many other factors involved . Choosing your career at 18 probably isn’t the best.

 

[Gulli]

You hit the nail on the head here. It's nothing to do with women - women have careers nowadays.

It's more that the old "partnership" model is being replaced by aggressive corporate takeovers, putting staff on as low a salary as they can get away with, who now never have a chance to part own their practice.

The same thing happened in care homes.

The corporate vets are sh!t but the local ones to us tend to be more proactive than the partnerships. Possibly because that's the way their pay is driven I don't know.

The biggest problem we have is the money, there's not enough in farm work for the vets system to work like it always used to, often waiting over an hour for an on call vet here and an on call receptionist who couldn't give less of a f**k about why you want a vet urgently, but such is the nature of things nowadays I guess

 

[steveR]

Being married to a Vet ( female ) I’d say one thing and when you get to a certain age messing around with large animals gets to be hard work. More females will get to be vets because girls study harder however just because you’re clever doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good vet there’s so many other factors involved . Choosing your career at 18 probably isn’t the best.

Yep, spot on. Waaaay too young.

 

[Lowland1]

Yep, spot on. Waaaay too young.

Unless it’s farming

 

[M-J-G]

Being married to a Vet ( female ) I’d say one thing and when you get to a certain age messing around with large animals gets to be hard work. More females will get to be vets because girls study harder however just because you’re clever doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good vet there’s so many other factors involved . Choosing your career at 18 probably isn’t the best.

I don't think it's totally the case that females study harder, it seems that veterinary is just not so appealing to males.

I had a conversation about this with one of our university vets this morning and he says that even at school age, a lot of girls want to be a vet, but lads generally just don't.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Sadly i had the vet out in middle of night for a very tricky bad calving that ended with a dead cow and calf , the vet was upset , i said to her dont worry your up against it before you start as i dont phone you for the easy calvers indeed they do it themselves , her comment was yes oir only advantage over yoh guys is the drugs we have access to . During the battle she said she jad spent the afternoon comvincing the practice student that large animals best as get out in the womderfull country side and the famers a much nicer easier to work with than public , good news but i bet the student goes small animal .

last vet to call here said he preferred farm work, as he didn't like dealing with pet owners.

 

[Lowland1]

I don't think it's totally the case that females study harder, it seems that veterinary is just not so appealing to males.

I had a conversation about this with one of our university vets this morning and he says that even at school age, a lot of girls want to be a vet, but lads generally just don't

Having a boy and a girl I’d say probably girls are harder working and as the main selection criteria for starting a veterinary degree at 18 is Alevel grades getting the required grades is really tough and at 16 I’d say a lot of boys would be more put off by the studying than the profession. In my wife’s case she left medical school because she didn’t want to deal with people however she reckons the worse bit of being a vet is dealing with people.

 

[Dry Rot]

Being married to a Vet ( female ) I’d say one thing and when you get to a certain age messing around with large animals gets to be hard work. More females will get to be vets because girls study harder however just because you’re clever doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good vet there’s so many other factors involved . Choosing your career at 18 probably isn’t the best.

Having a gap year should be compulsory. I know it should have been in my case. Straight from boarding school to the flesh pots of under grad life in 1950's/60's liberated London! And to think I could have gone to Australia for £10!

 

[Hilly]

last vet to call here said he preferred farm work, as he didn't like dealing with pet owners.

They all say that here , but sadly the old partnership practices have all gone .

 

[Hilly]

Having a boy and a girl I’d say probably girls are harder working and as the main selection criteria for starting a veterinary degree at 18 is Alevel grades getting the required grades is really tough and at 16 I’d say a lot of boys would be more put off by the studying than the profession. In my wife’s case she left medical school because she didn’t want to deal with people however she reckons the worse bit of being a vet is dealing with people.

Just said yesterday alot of women work darned sight harder than a lot of men .

 

[Top Tip.]

Speaking to a neighbour this morning who uses our corporate vets . He had one of the vets in doing a caesarean on a cow and he had to sign a disclaimer before they started the op. Has anyone else had this?

 

[Hilly]

Speaking to a neighbour this morning who uses our corporate vets . He had one of the vets in doing a caesarean on a cow and he had to sign a disclaimer before they started the op. Has anyone else had this?

No, but
Only
Had 3 caesareans .

 

[Highland Mule]

Speaking to a neighbour this morning who uses our corporate vets . He had one of the vets in doing a caesarean on a cow and he had to sign a disclaimer before they started the op. Has anyone else had this?

Not heard of that but have avoided cattle caesars so far. Certainly didn't have that for ewes.

MCVG?

 

[JP1]

I think it’s the selection process, the bar is set so high. I’m not sure if it’s the same today but it used to be easier to get into medicine than veterinary.

I've said for a long time there needs to be a paramedic grade under the RCVS to enable the likes of blood testing and calving IMHO

 

[BAF]

I said it before on a previous vet thread, there should be scope to train in certain veterinary procedures such as castrating. Yes you could ring the calves young or use burdizzos but people are much happier knowing they've been chopped out. It's not a hard procedure and following the correct training could become fairly routine for some farmers and save them money. A ceasear is more tricky with much larger potential for failure - get a bit stabby and rupture the guts, don't stitch the womb correctly and leak juice into the ewes/cows abdomen - but again with the right training it's not beyond the realms of possibility for a lay man to carry out. If the top brass wanted to weed out any undesirables they could make it mandatory to repeat the training every 3 years or so. You're allowed to train to trim feet without any retraining yet it doesn't take a lot to bugger up a foot. You can disbud calves without any training and that involves sticking a needle full of anaesthetic in the right spot very close to the eye. Rather than close ranks they could actually improve their business model and make money training farmers to do basic procedures themselves and still make money selling them drugs!
Doesn't help the OP very much though

 

[CopperBeech]

It's a young people issue, it's not limited by gender. Plenty of young people train in chosen careers to a high level and then change their mind when life/family/marriage comes along. Small vet work has the Noel Supervet factor to attract new entrants. It's less onerous and you can earn some very good money, plus it's not so anti-social: you're in a practice and work in a team.

Farm animal practice, explain to me the positives? Farmer moaning every visit about the cost of X, arriving on farm to find yet another beast that should have been shot 2 days ago or seen a vet 5 days earlier. Then you have the out of hours and the old favourite, TB testing- must be every young vets dream that job, jabbing hundreds of beasts whilst avoiding a kick in the head/broken arm or leg?

The medical world and other professions, nursing in particular are seeing the exact same issues really. People qualify, do a 5 years and decide it's not worth it. It is like many things, you either 'live' for that kind of work or you don't. I'm sat here now and have to be in work early, yet I genuinely can't sleep yet because of the excitement of going to work. It's like when I was 22 and knowing I'd be given a go on the combine tomorrow.

I don't blame young people for changing their minds. The trouble is, they are pursuing these careers but often don't have any real metric or previous experience of work to compare their eventual jobs with. I've spoken with more than one consultant who has basically told me they are only in the job whilst their children are in private school, after that, they will retire or massively drop their hours as they won't need the money or the grief.

The trouble the vet world will have is that unless people become partners in their practice, their salaries reach a ceiling. And with more and more practices being bought up by corporates, there will be fewer and fewer privately owned practices. The medical world already has an acute shortage of virtually all specialties at all levels so this does not really apply.

You always make a big point of saying how terrible farmers are to work for and how unpleasant it is working on farms etc. Every single opportunity our vet has become a very good friend, so we can’t all be such ars*holes as you insist we are

 

[som farmer]

The corporate vets are sh!t but the local ones to us tend to be more proactive than the partnerships. Possibly because that's the way their pay is driven I don't know.

The biggest problem we have is the money, there's not enough in farm work for the vets system to work like it always used to, often waiting over an hour for an on call vet here and an on call receptionist who couldn't give less of a f**k about why you want a vet urgently, but such is the nature of things nowadays I guess

sold a bunch of calves, 2 hrs ago, rung our local vets, Shepton, 10 mins ago, they will be out monday, bank holiday, to inject them, pre movement test.
always very polite to the girls that answer the phone, chat and banter, never get anything other than brilliant service.

 

[Sheep]

Whenever I was 16 I was picking my A levels for my selected career choice; I was going to go one of three directions, veterinary was one of those.

To do veterinary I'd need two A's and a B, two of them from science based subjects - I didn't select a science based subject in the end meaning even if I'd wanted to veterinary at 18 I wouldn't have got into the course, absolute madness (no regrets about the route I went however).

On another note, I done work experience at a vets at 15 years old. Three days of TB testing outside when it was snowing, PDI'ing in the cold followed by some dehorning. Then I heard the wages that I could expect. I think I really decided then that veterinary wasn't for me, despite being a good young stock farmer that probably would have got the grades.

Decision for career too young
5 years at university to become a vet
Wages not good enough for the work
Poor work environment (*in some cases!)


edit to say that I'm sure its a great job a lot of the time, but you need a lot of things to line up at quite a young age to push you down that route.