Scheduling inflexibility identified as top VN burnout risk factor – study

A lack of scheduling flexibility in veterinary clinics has been identified as the most common burnout risk factor among VNs in a new study.

The paper explored the development of a new VN burnout prevention survey (VNBPS), which was piloted by 67 participants – including both VN leaders and team members – across a range of six diverse veterinary practices in Australia.

The most common risk factor identified was lack of schedule flexibility, ranked in the top three by five (83%) of the participating clinics.

Client communication

Other top risk factors included dealing with clients expressing rude and abusive behaviours and poor management (each identified in the top three by 50% of the participating clinics), and poor communication and poor remuneration (33%).

The existing level of burnout was identified as a common barrier to addressing burnout in 83% of the clinics.

The authors also noted a contrast in how leadership performance was rated by participants; VN leaders rated leadership performance higher than team members in three of the clinics, and in two of those the leaders rated all six aspects of the workplace climate higher than VN team members.

Strategies

Participating clinics were subsequently provided with tailored burnout prevention strategies for the risk factors they identified.

These practical recommendations, which are included in the survey manual available for use in practice now, are based on another recent study by the same authors and developed by a panel of international veterinary leadership and well-being experts.

Regarding schedule flexibility, it is recommended practices regularly review and adjust staffing to meet their needs, for example by performing a needs analysis to determine gaps in staffing and hiring more VNs or non-VN support staff to meet workload, including flexible or part-time roles to increase coverage at busy periods.

Findings

The VNBPS took an average of 6.5 minutes to complete. Of the 14 survey respondents who completed an evaluation questionnaire on it, 100% of them rated it as easy or very easy to complete and all of them felt its findings accurately or very accurately reflected their workplace.

Meanwhile, 11 of the 14 respondents who had read the summary of results (79%) considered the recommendations to be practical or very practical for their clinic.

VNBPS lead developer and study co-author Angela Chapman told the Vet Times Podcast: “We have a huge number of recommendations, and [the ones that] will be used [are] based on what the survey tells you about what your risk factors are and what your barriers are.

“You can then go to these recommended strategies and work out which ones are going to fit best in your clinic, so the work is all done for you – you just have to follow the steps and see which ones are going to work best for you.”