16 Sept 2022
Outgoing BEVA president Huw Griffiths' plea comes as annual congress is told work-life balance is “here to stay”, while a senior academic insists universities not to blame.
Allister Webb
Job Title
Huw Griffiths.
The outgoing BEVA president has urged the veterinary industry to listen to its newest recruits to tackle the current staff retention crisis.
Huw Griffiths’ plea came as the association’s annual congress was told the work-life balance is “here to stay” and a senior academic insisted universities were not to blame for the problem.
After a summer dominated by economic and staffing concerns, BEVA outlined its own survey on the issue during the four-day gathering in Liverpool.
Although focus group discussions are set to take place before a final report is published, the survey indicated that as many as two-thirds of equine VNs are likely to look for a new job within the next two years.
Around four in five respondents also reported it was either difficult or very difficult to recruit an experienced vet, with roughly half suggesting similar issues attracting newly qualified staff, too.
During his opening address to the congress, Dr Griffiths said the profession must be receptive to the views of those who are new to its ranks.
He recounted his own experience of being laughed at when he set out his own vision of the future as a student leader, telling delegates: “We must make the work fit the workforce and not the workforce fit the work.”
His successor as president, David Rendle, also pledged to build on the survey work.
During a dedicated recruitment and retention session, Bradley Hill, clinical assistant professor in equine clinical practice at the University of Nottingham, criticised the use of what he termed “throwaway comments” like “lifestyle choice” on the subject.
He said: “We really need to move away from that, because work-life balance is definitely here to stay.”
He stressed the problem was not unique either to Great Britain or the veterinary sector, and said the survey work had been “incentivised” by the developing picture in the US.
Earlier, Amy Grice, a veterinary business consultant and former equine vet, said nearly half of American equine vets were considering leaving the profession before retirement.
She said: “It’s getting to a crisis point in the US. There are areas that have difficulty getting service.”
Prof Hill suggested there was a need for “boundaries” with clients, while Dr Griffiths said he felt there was a role for BEVA in delivering some difficult messages about the potential future shape of provision to owners.
He said: “I think it’s essential that we try to educate our horse-owning public that if they’re not willing to meet us somewhere, then they may not have the provision that they want in the future and I think, as a vet, that’s really hard.
“If I push that to my client, it looks like I’m profiteering. If, as an organisation, we do it on your behalf, it looks like we’re helping.”
In an earlier session on equine careers, Ian Bellis, clinical director of the out-of-hours service Equicall, said the term “flexible” now had to be present in any job advert.
He added: “Salaries are improving, and the ability to work a four-day week or less, or a balance of hours, is out there now. I think an employer who wants a vet to work 8 until 6 five days a week and a one-in-four on call is probably behind the times now.”
Questions were also raised at the congress about whether other professions, such as nutritionists, could take pressure off vets, while a number of delegates queried whether the university sector was doing enough to address the crisis.
Chris Proudman, head of the University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine, said the workforce issue was the biggest facing the veterinary industry, but declared he was “a bit fed up” with the criticism being aimed at higher education.
He said it was too early to say whether graduates from newer vet schools like Surrey were more likely to stay in the profession, but argued the current problems would be worse without their students entering the industry.
He said: “There isn’t a recruitment issue. We still manage to recruit plenty of students, but it’s their sticking in the profession that we’re talking about.
“What we’ve got here is a leaky pipeline. We’re losing graduates from the profession, throughout the profession.”
The session also heard that while around 30% of students consider an equine career in the third year of their degrees, that proportion slumps to just 5% in the final year and only 1% at graduation.
Dr Griffiths suggested the reasons for that were complex and could not be solely blamed on vet schools.
Prof Proudman said his experience at Surrey suggested students became less sure of what they want to do as they progress through their courses.
But he welcomed recent changes to RCVS accreditation rules, which are set to put greater emphasis on primary care.
He said: “That could be a really positive change in preparing graduates for the profession they’re about to enter into and enhancing the retention of graduates in the profession once they’re there.”
A mentoring programme, beginning within universities, was suggested from the floor as a potential solution, although Prof Proudman said the idea may have similarities to the scheme for new graduates introduced by the RCVS earlier this year.
