Vets share on-call workload so both pets and stock well covered

Friday, 5 October 2018

Vets on Alabama's Helen Murphy and the Vet Centre Marlborough's Stuart Burrough have teamed up to make sure there is always a vet on-call for pets and livestock.

Specialised vets who normally work in one field are struggling to cover after-hours shifts when any animal can get crook.

Veterinary medicine has moved away from a 'jack-of-all-trades' approach to a master-of-one, but that industry standard has left smaller centres in the lurch come the late-night roster.

Veterinary medicine is becoming more specialised, with vets experts in a particular field.

Add to that people's changing attitudes towards pets, from companions to 'fur babies', and vets are feeling the pressure.

That's why two veterinary clinics in Blenheim have teamed up to support each other with the on-call side of the job.

Teamwork makes the dream work. From left, Helen Murphy, Stuart Burrough, Byrony Knowles, Elizabeth Patterson-Green and Mark Wiseman.

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Vet Centre Marlborough and Vets on Alabama will provide a shared roster to ensure there is always an after-hours vet on call for pets, and one for livestock.

Vets on Alabama vet Helen Murphy said if the trial went well, they hoped Springlands Veterinary Clinic would join too.

'So we would have a Blenheim-wide shared after-hours care. That's the long-term plan, but this is just the three-month trial to start with.'

Murphy worked in clinics in the United Kingdom that shared after-hours with other clinics.

'It works incredibly well … because you had a vet that was just concentrating on companion animals and another vet that was concentrating on production [farm] animals.'

Many big centres in New Zealand had dedicated after-hours vet centres, but Blenheim was too small for that, Murphy said.

Other small towns were getting together to provide after-hours care, because the work was stressful, she said.

'As a vet, you could be on-call every third night for example, and then having to work fulltime during the day.

'This way, by sharing, it takes that pressure off, but also it means you've got that service where you're not having to go from dealing with a cow one minute to a kitten the next.'

Vet Centre Marlborough owner Stuart Burrough said the change was prompted by veterinary medicine becoming more specialised.

'The typical James Herriot [famous British vet] type vet that does a bit of everything is becoming a thing of the past.'

'Confronted with an emergency with an animal species that you're not used to dealing with can be very stressful and people can be quite out of their depth, which is not good for the owners or the animal.'

People's expectations of vets had increased, and they were more likely to make complaints to the Veterinary Council, Burrough said.

'I guess people's attitudes towards pets have changed over time. People talk about their fur babies, and people do treat their companion pets as being a member of the family.'

Veterinary Council New Zealand professional advisor Wayne Ricketts said there was a lot of reasons for the 'slight' upward trend in the number of complaints.

'We follow the US, I guess, and we've become more litigious and I think animals and certainly pets have become perhaps more a family member than what they used to be.

'If something goes wrong, then they're more likely to make a complaint.'

The Veterinary Council received about 60 complaints a year, across 3000 registered veterinarians.

The profession becoming more specialised could be a real challenge for vets working after-hours, Ricketts said.

'If you're say the only veterinarian in an isolated place, often you have to do these things or there is nobody else to do it.'

Complaints were often based on money, when something went wrong, and people didn't want to pay, Ricketts said.

Before the three-month trial started in Blenheim, on October 1, Vet Centre Marlborough and Vets on Alabama provided their own after-hours service, Burrough said.

'Very often there would be three vets in the town all on-call. Some nights you don't get any call-outs and most nights it would be unusual to get more than one.'

Vets were on-call from home, but after-hours work still caused stress and interference with normal family life and was the main reason people left the profession, he said.

Burrough's vet staff had previously been on-call one night a week and did one weekend a month. The change would mean most of his staff would be on-call about half as often.