We get more and more comments from pet owners saying that they can’t find a vet. Yes, in an emergency, someone will pretty much always see their animal – even if it’s nearly an hour’s drive and they have to pay a steep surcharge. But for routine or even non-urgent care, in many parts of the country this is getting harder and harder. But why is this?
Table of contents
Ultimately, the veterinary profession in the UK is in crisis. There are too many practices who aren’t able to recruit enough vets to fill their rotas. And out of hours care is similarly in trouble.
Vet Dewi Jones has recently been concerned about the wider impacts of this:
“Our profession is in crisis, staff shortages are a reality for the majority of us here and those left working are buckling under the pressure. When will the pet owning public realise that pet owners are heading into uncharted territory of not being able to find a vet to accommodate them. Animal welfare will be the biggest loser here.”
Is this just an excuse to push prices up?
An excuse – definitely not. There are a lot of possible reasons for the recent price rises, and shortage of vets is only one factor.
Other important issues are…
- Historically, vets have massively undercharged for their work. This is only now starting to be corrected.
- Veterinary medicines in particular are expensive to buy, but even more expensive to stock and store in the right quantities – and often vets can’t legally buy them at the prices online retailers sell them.
- Veterinary medicine has come a long way, and the treatments available now are far more advanced and far more likely to be effective than 20 or 30 years ago – but as a result, they’re also far more expensive.
- This medical price inflation isn’t just a veterinary issue – but here in the UK we have our NHS free at the point of use, so we don’t really realise just how expensive stuff is.
- Over 50% of UK practices are now owned by corporate companies, who want to make money for their shareholders and owners – the vets aren’t getting paid that much more, but there’s now an extra tier (or three, or five) of management and investors who want their money out of the business.
So why are we worried about it?
Back to Dewi again –
“The biggest concern however is lack of vets and pet owners unable to find vets to register. We’ve closed our books to new clients but still get multiple requests a day. The problem then is passed to our neighbouring vets which will eventually do the same and and close their books. This is my concern, no vets for all those pets which impacts animal welfare. We’re managing by sacrificing client care, for example taking longer to report results and phone calls. Currently patient care isn’t suffering but this is only because we’re managing the situation by limiting pets coming in through the front door.”
If there aren’t enough vets available, pets and other animals suffer. It’s that simple.
So why is it happening?
Now we come to the issue. No-one really knows. There are more vets graduating each year than there ever have been, but there are also more pets, and a lot more practices.
Some people are blaming the increase in women in the profession
Over 80% of new vets now identify as female. Leaving aside the problem of “let’s blame the women” (which is always a bad answer to any question), it is true that women are more likely to take career breaks, and more likely to want to work part time for childcare, while men seem to be less likely to take up shared parental leave etc. This is a wider social issue, but it affects our profession too.
Some people are blaming Brexit
A lot of EU qualified vets are leaving the UK. While this has doubtless worsened the issue, the problems of recruitment and staffing have been there for years, so this doesn’t seem to be the only problem.
A bigger question is being asked about vet retention.
Why do so many vets leave or want to leave? I don’t do much clinical practice any more (although in my case it was injury-related). Mental health is a huge part of this problem – vets are much more likely to take their own lives than other professionals. Yes, vets tend to be perfectionists, but other factors include the (however surprising from the outside) stresses of the job, very poor work/life balance, and very long hours. And of course, right now that is so much worse than usual because of Covid… There’s the catching after lockdown, but also the reduced efficiency from trying to work in often poorly designed buildings in a Covid-safe manner, and the constant risk of a team member having to self-isolate making the situation even worse.
It might just be that we now have a generation of vets coming through who aren’t willing to sacrifice themselves for the profession.
Some vets blame unreasonable behaviour by some pet owners.
Now, it definitely does happen – but the majority of pet owners are great, and more than compensate for the obnoxious minority.
Others blame the corporates
Many are concerned about new managers imposing a stressful “KPI culture”. Along with a perceived loss of autonomy as a professional, this has driven a number of people I know out of practice. But while it might explain why they don’t want to work for that employer, if they don’t like the management style, it doesn’t explain why they’re leaving the profession as a whole.
So what’s the solution?
I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone does. As some readers have already pointed out, it’s a “perfect storm” of problems all hitting at once.
But here’s how you can help to be part of the solution.
If your practice is struggling to fit you in – don’t kick up a fuss at the receptionist or the nurse or the vet. They don’t like it any more than you do. But if they’re short staffed, and having to cover two people’s workload, they don’t need to be told there’s a problem: they already know that!
And if you’re happy with what your vet has done – tell them! Let them know you appreciate them. If you don’t want to do it face to face, that’s fine, so leave a positive review of the practice.
And if you’ve got any other ideas, let us know in the comments!
Discussion
David, Please forgive my mistake in addressing you as Densi!
Hahaha no problem!
Hi Densi,
Your blog raises issues which for me, resonate with both medicine and dentistry. The common factor is early loss of graduates after qualifying. The anecdotal evidence is that as many as 40% of junior doctors leave before they have completed their two foundation years. It is difficult to obtain more reliable data but I have made some slightly more accurate estimations from information derived from Medical Schools graduation figures compared with annual losses and gains in the Register of the Medical Council ( for details see : http://box5682.temp.domains/~godbuddh/appendix/#manpower ). It does appear that between 30 to 40% of medical graduates never register to practice medicine in the UK.
There are many suggested reasons, but high on the list is the stress of the working environment of the junior doctor. Were this stress only derived from long hours, poor pay, and under supervision, it might be hoped that the young doctors would tough out the two difficult years to achieve their ambitions. And most clearly do. It is possible that others, discover, for the first time, that patients are in need and can be demanding; patients want a doctor who is caring and compassionate rather than a brainy academic. This may be the moment when the top level academic student discovers that body fluids, particularly tears, are an unwelcome surprise and uncomfortable. Medicine does not have the glamour and excitement of televised hospital drama. I expect there is the same disjunction between the young school leaver’s vision of life as a vet and the reality of a vet’s life.
If this is a valid assumption it suggests that there is a need to question the current student selection criteria if they are based primarily on academic record. The intense competition for places pushes up the bar to include only those who are unusually bright. Unfortunately it may exclude those applicants who are less strong academically but who have other skills; a strong capacity to care for others. There are several of your respondents who have experienced this exclusion.
Those who design and implement student selection may quite rightly reply that there is no point in admission criteria that select students who are not academically strong enough to complete the course. So we are left looking at the curriculum for answers. Is it a course peppered with high jumps, against the clock which requires intensive “revision” and Olympic feats of memory? Some students certainly seem to experience it this way.
It is always worth looking at a discipline based curriculum with a critical eye and comparing it to a case based one with the emphasis on developing clinical skills which are integrated with the required scientific foundation.
Are these views valid and if so do they have any relevance to a need to redirect the curriculum towards a less academic and greater clinical focus and to place greater emphasis on work experience in selecting students?
Yes, this is very similar to the discussions we’ve been having in our profession. The thing that worries me is that since we’ve been less academically selective in our intake to vet schools (which are down to 2 applicants per place now), the retention has got worse and worse. And the integrated programmes and curricula that were introduced a decade ago also don’t seem to have made anything like as much of an impact as expected.
I’m leaning towards saying that there’s a problem in the workplace environment; and potentially that otherwise good educational programmes aren’t preparing students for that workplace. But this becomes a circular argument, because if you replicate the conditions at university, you get students dropping out for which the university is penalised.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s interesting to know it’s happing in our sister professions too.
I never realized that veterinary medicines are expensive. I hope to find a veterinarian that can help me out. Someone that can help make the medicine more affordable.
My daughter is a junior vet..three years out of university
She earns a living but her pay is far below her university friends she graduated with and she studied for 6 years whereas her friends studied for 3 years
Junior vets are paid a pittance and are asked to work long hours
One day she worked 8 am to 11 pm
All her vet contemporaries are looking for out of the profession or certainly out of vet practice
Every one deserves a life work balance and at the moment junior vets are being subjected to unfair expectations
Her hours are ridiculously long and she is permanently tired
She is dedicated and competent but she will be lost to the profession if things don’t change
Yes, it’s a tough profession and the pay is nowhere near what most people think it is!
All the best to her – most of us eventually find our niche in a practice that suits us, but not all, and it’s getting harder and harder.
Could it be the lack of appropriate zoning for new veterinarians to open clinics?
Out-dated classification of the vet clinic being a noise nuissance in residential areas has pushed the zones available to veterinarian use to the outskirts of towns, only for vets to compete there with car dealerships for unecessarily vast spaces!
This makes it not only impractical to open a clinic in these locations, but also prohibitively expensive.
Meanwhile, big corp is out-bidding the same small business veterinarian for the exisiting clinics already grandfathered into the residential zones.
How can the veterinarian win, if the dream of owning a clinic (operating for however many hours they wish per week) cannot be realized?
Why should veterinarians tolerate having to work for an un-medically-trained non-veterinarian owner, focussed on profit and selling their own brands rather than allowing the vets to use their training, and to be scolded for lack of production for their shareholders!
Its ludicrous! Maybe this is why they “don’t want to work”
Cities need to allow the planning and zoning departments to open the doors for veterinarian owned businesses and allow them to care for patients in town, unless they don’t care that untrained nonvet-owned clinics are going to care for the 70% of households in their districts that own pets.
Is it any wonder the vets are leaving the profession burnt out working like racehorses for non-vet owners. Give the vets a chance to work their own profession on their terms, with their latest cutting edge knowledge.
Thanks for that US perspective – it sounds like you have similar issues to us, although zoning isn’t really a massive issue over here.
Having worked as a lay member in two different practices over 20 years I have seen many changes. One of the biggest problems we see now is the huge number of young adults who purchase pets and did not grow up with pets as children because they were told this it was not practical or kind to leave them alone all day while the whole family were at work or school. They now get a pet as soon they are living independently despite the fact they have to put them in a creche all day or pay a dog walker, just so they can post pictures of themselves on instagram with their latest aquisition , and then they are surprised how much care they need , how much they cost but most importantly they have no common sense and expect vets to socialise , train , groom and medicate their pets on a monthly basis , particularly if they have signed up to a monthly care plan. During Covid they feel they have been ‘ripped off ‘ by not having all these options from vets and nurses supplied on demand , and start to kick off on social media or over the phone . Now the shortages of staff mean these services still cannot be delivered and they still need guidance on the most basic aspects of pet care – God help the NHS when they all start having kids.
(80% of) vets don’t “identify as female” they simply are female by dint of biology – sex matters and sexism is rife in the profession – females can’t identify out of it any more than they can identify out of pregnancy.
It isn’t a recruitment problem, it’s a retention problem and until the profession and the RCVS recognise that nothing will change. RCVS holds up Mind Matters like a fig leaf while piling on more pressure with changes to CPD and recent horrendous sham consultation on legislative change. Working conditions are significantly worse that when I qualified many years ago – 11-12 hr days without even a toilet break sometimes. Consult take longer because of things like cascade, having to discuss everything in minute detail because of fears of complaints, having to produce multiple estimates for every option because of lack of finances. Lack of client common sense or personal responsibility leaves animals suffering which the client then blames on the vet. I am sick to death of being emotionally blackmailed, bullied and yelled at (and at times physically attacked, stalked and threatened) by clients for their, often self generated, predicaments eg parvo cases, pyometras. My job is to diagnose and treat – not plan their finances, transport and holiday issues. Many vets I know are on the verge of leaving and virtually every practice in the area is short staffed. I have had enough and will not renew my RCVS membership next year
I agree with every word of this. I would add that I only worked as a vet for money. By the time I left the profession, I didn’t really care about animals any more and resented the very existence of the humans that owned them. I hated working 8,30am till gone 7pm plus weekend rotas. The hours were looking and the pay simply not worth it. I think the corporates, in particular, exploit the caring side of vets and nurses too work them like dogs and pay them like slaves.
In fairness gender distribution is self reported in vets; I certainly don’t remember needing a genital exam or a DNA test to sign on the register, so “80% of new vets identify as female” is not only more inclusive, but also more accurate.
I fully agree with the rest of your comment, just feel uncomfortable with your first assertion.
Sincerely, an MRCVS who ticked ‘female’ on my registration and hasn’t had to provide any corroborating evidence.
We talked about this and in the end used the phrase “identify as female” as it is more inclusive; anything else would risk making the statement that trans women were not women which is an editorial stance we aren’t happy to take.
I disagree with you on the RCVS: they are the regulator, blaming them for the problem is to miss the point that this is a massively multifactorial issue, without any easy solutions. And the legislative reform consultation was very recent, and carried out on their behalf by an independent specialist, so I’m not sure it’s really relevant to the recruitment crisis.
However, I agree that the change in attitudes has been a major factor, along with an increasingly litigious culture (which I agree is a disaster). The Cascade is also really frustrating (although we can genuinely blame the EU for that one!), but I think your point about the role of the vet having changed from a professional in charge of diagnosing and treating animals into a sort of extension of the social worker is also really important.
Thanks for your comments though – and I am so sorry to hear that you’re leaving the profession. I hope you can find something that gives you a better life balance and workplace satisfaction; good luck.
I’m a trans woman and I’m NOT female. I was born male. I’m sick of the “trans activists” and woke idiots speaking on my behalf without my consent. This aggressive woke BS is fuelling a rise in transphobia that simply didn’t exist ten years ago
Very well and courageously said Emily.
Thanks for sharing that with us. It’s something where as a society we are going to have to come to some decisions on these matters.
Some people feel that “female” is a sex and “woman” is an identity – as you do – but others have said they feel that female should also be used as an adjective for gender identity. This is the position taken by Stonewall and it’s what we’ve tried to abide by in this piece, to be maximally inclusive around this difficult area.
I’m sorry, though, that you don’t feel that we’ve achieved that.
Given Stonewall’s really shocking behaviour recently, the attacks on Alison Bailley and referring to lesbians refusing to have sex with fully male-genitaled trans women as ‘sexual apartheid,’ don’t you think you should re-think your policy ?
Let’s just say that this article and the comments were written 12 months ago and I probably wouldn’t take the same editorial decision now…
By far the biggest issue is the rise in part-time working. Everyone in the profession wants 4day weeks or less, and preferably no OOH. Dropping from 5 to 4 day working week means you need 20% more vets overnight. With rise in corporate ownership there is no incentive to work full time as there nothing to work towards in terms of ownership. The only way to increase numbers is to recruit more new/recent graduates which means then puts greater strain on more experienced colleagues to supervise and support them. Many of these senior vets are looking at a role with increased levels of hassle and no prospect of meaningful financial reward and are leaving or cutting their hours, and so the cycle goes on.
The answer, compulsory full time employment and OOH for graduates in the PDP phase of their careers
I am a locum and since IR35 instigation on the 5th of April 2021. I have noticed the demand for Locums has seriously increased but the supply has declined. I am not surprised given a lot of those previously working as a ltd company will not work through an umbrella company. Those working as sole traders being forced to work through an umbrella company even though IR35 does not apply to them., thus not working as much Plus day / hourly rates having to go up by about a third to cover umbrella costs to the vet, making them considerably more expensive to use.
I think that’s a good point. The wide availability of locums have been papering over the cracks, but now the bigger companies are enforcing their rigid IR35 policies, that safety margin has disappeared.
I think they made a big mistake not recognising vet nurses as professionals when that petition was done a couple of years ago. Yes they may have to be paid more but they could have received additional training for more routine health care work including vaccines to free up more space for vets to see sick animals. Less nurses would leave if they felt there was more room for professional development with better pay. Owners who store up a list of problems to address at their annual health/ vaccine check could be told that they would have to book an additional vet appointment if the vaccines were done by nurses. We might end up missing some health issues that vets sometimes pick up when the owner has not noticed, but that’s a necessary shift of responsibility onto owners to accommodate the 3million extra pets acquired in lockdown.
After the 2015 Royal Charter was issues, get nurses are professionals, regulated and accountable in their own right.
That said I agree, there is definitely a role for a “nurse prescriber” for some routine preventative treatments. Hopefully the recent Legislative Reform consultation will lead to something along those lines.
Well said. Over 300k registered doctors in the UK and less than 20k vets.
To the people who have animals that truly suffer and need to be seen immediately (because of active bleeding, fractures, shock) you will be hard pressed to find a vet that will not go above and beyond to accommodate you. We do go the extra mile, we do work more than we need to, we do get paid less than our doctors, but we do care for you animal.
It took me almost 3 years before I found my “perfect” practice but not everyone is lucky.
We are doing our very best to see your animals, but we are at the edge of our line, this is why a “thank you” goes a long way.
You forgot the mind-altering boredom of the job. Vets shouldn’t be wasting their time with vaccine consults or parasite checks or anal glands or, my personal bugbear, nail clips. For Pete’s sake I’m a doctor not a groomer.
I hated every minute of my ten years in clinical practice, and my choice to go to vet school (which is hell by the way, and most of it IRRELEVANT to the actual job). I’d never, EVER, go back to it
From my own personal experience, I found that the vet schools in the UK are so focused on admitting the straight A students, most of the time they do not have the right attitude to work in the industry and as a result will leave the profession soon after. I tried for years to get into vet school, but never even got an interview because I was one grade off, despite having put many years of work experience and having a broad understanding of the what the job entails. I ended up on another course in Animal Science when I went to University, and lived with a number of vet students during that time. A number of these students on the vet course even said they didn’t want to practice as vets once they graduated. Add on top of that to enter the vet med course as a post graduate student is wildly expensive, I gave up on ever becoming a vet.
Personally, I don’t think the course should be an undergraduate degree. Most 18 year olds straight from school have no idea what it fully means to be a vet. I think it should be a post graduate course which should be eligible for student loans, the Universities should give stricter entry requirements on the work experience needed (much more than 6 weeks), and slightly less on the grades, looking at the candidates as a whole. This I think would lead to a higher calibre of people entering with better understanding of the profession and more likely to stay long term.
I’m 100% in the same boat as you. Didn’t get into vet school, went and did a different degree then qualified as a VN. Would still love to be a vet and have worked in the profession long enough to know I’m here to stay, just can’t afford the extortionate fees to study a second degree.
It’s an interesting point, and one that’s been discussed a lot in the profession. The concern with relying more on work experience etc is that this dramatically disadvantages candidates from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (which is why most of the vet schools now put a cap on how much they will consider).
I do agree with a two phase course though: it’s already a Masters level course, so why not treat it as any other postgraduate Masters?
I am not a vet I am a nurse,
But it’s very similar to our work life balance as a nurse. The reason there is not enough vets is the under pay/ the amount of work they are expected to do and the hours which are ridiculous with no breaks and the effect that has on mental health. The amount of mental health concerns is huge at vet school and it’s no different in the real world. Vets need to be appreciated more and paid appropriately for the hard work they do, and leave at the time they are supposed to leave. Then you will have less locums and more permanent vets back in practice and a reason for people to go into the profession again. Most vets I work with wouldn’t become a vet again if they had the choice and I believe that is because the tremendous amount of stress from the job.
As a dog owner, I have experienced this, this week. My dog had a sore paw when I got up in the morning and could not weight bare on it. I called my usual vets, they were not answering the phone, I finally got through 4 hours later, but then to be told that they could not see my dog and that I had to call back the next day at 8.00am but before 8.15 am . I explained that I had been trying since 8.30 am but was unable to get through. But was told to just ring tomorrow.
I then tried 2 other vets, they offered me a same day appointment but when they realised that I was not a patient with them, they told me that they would not be able to help me and my dog. I finally found a vet that would see my dog, which was half an hour away. I was so distressed at that end of it all, it had taken 4 hours to get help for my dog ! How can this be right ? No one was interested that my dog was in pain or suffering. I have never experienced anything like this before. This experience and the huge prices of taking your pet to the vets, surely will lead to animals suffering.
Part of the problem is that vets’ pay is a long way behind that of professionals with similar training (doctors and dentists for example), and the conditions of work are relatively bad (just like the NHS is frantically busy at the moment with catch-up work, vet practices are too). The most logical solution to getting more vets is to improve the pay scales and the workload; however, that means reducing the number of clients each vet sees per day, which would worsen the situation in the short term. It would also probably mean putting prices up (vets are very bad at charging correctly for their time and usually end up undercharging, especially for longer procedures) which wouldn’t help pet owners.
So it really isn’t clear what the solution is – or rather, it is clear that there isn’t just one solution!
What vet becomes a parent with a plan to leave the profession? None do. Parents come back to work after a few months parental leave, and work incredibly hard, pushing themselves at work and at home. But we rely on childcare to look after our children and it just doesn’t work when your practice requires you to routinely work finish late to ‘complete your clinical duties’, but your child needs to be collected. Or your practice requires you to be flexible which hours and days you work, but you have fixed childcare arrangements. After months of rushing out of work late, rushing to childcare late, of feeling stressed, exhausted, and that you are letting your work and family down, parents finally realise it’s not possible to work in the profession when you have young children, and leave. Yes, most vets will have children. Yes, most vets will have childcare responsibilities. Please let’s not make it a women’s’ problem, it is 2021. If practices where more sympathetic to the fact that vets are people, with families and family responsibilities, there would be a whole lot more vets still in practice. Also, you have forgotten to point out that are only 22000 registered vets ( vs 300000 registered doctors) to cope with millions of animals in the UK.
This is perfectly argued.
The problem is twofold – supply and demand. On the demand side there are more animals and Brexit has pushed the requirement for OVs. A double-whammy. On the supply side there are fewer and fewer vets being recruited into the industry. For years we’ve relied on EU immigrants, but they either don’t want to come now or simply can’t. The barriers to entry are too high – the language tests imposed by the Royal College make it almost impossible for them to become registered in the UK. It’s a nonsense.
Yes, low wages, Brexit, Covid, corporates/managers greed, ignorant owners.
I’ve been a vet in UK for 8 years. I think we are finally at a point where the industry needs to align itself to the needs of the vet, as he is the backbone. Maybe these corporates will understand that it’s not all about profits, and the owner will understand that they are not entitled to everything.
I am sure it will get worse before it gets better!
Old fashioned attitudes do not help. I was pretty much forced out of a job for wanting to reduce my hours for childcare. My partner’s job was seen as “playing” that kept me away from work. The managers even called my family members to keep me at work when I was supposed to be looking after our children. Btw, I am the father.
:0O I would argue that there isn’t really a mystery or ‘one thing’ to blame here, just a combination of things, coinciding. Covid and Brexit hitting side by side shouldn’t be underplayed (vet availability, particularly locums, did go down at that time). College places have always been given to vets with near-straight-A results and a tendency to over-push themselves, which does appear to lead to mental health problems and competitive, bullying cultures later on. Every vet I know has seen bullying and had a friend or colleague who sadly committed suicide at the top of their game. This appears to have a huge effect.
I am disappointed that you listed maternity leave rather than parental leave: people will continue to need parental leave, regardless of their gender – and the gender gap in taking parental leave is slowly evening up. My husband, who is conveniently not a vet, took most of ours. There is certainly a huge demand for shorter hours for all sorts of reasons (illnesses, too) and bosses making an effort to provide those opportunities would keep people both male and female in the profession. Out of hours services are a surprisingly popular working pattern with new parents.
I agree it’s parental leave – but we do have a social problem in that although it is evening up, we’re nowhere near level yet.
A really good point about shorter working hours: but again, this means more vets are required to provide the service, and as you say, it’s a perfect storm of problems hitting all at once.
There is also a group of veterinary professionals that suffer with chronic illness.( I was one of them) This could be because of the job itself eg back and knee injuries or those diagnosed later on in life with asthma, allergies to animals – the list is endless. The fast paced demanding life of a veterinary clinic will undoubtedly affect these individuals. Amendments to the job role or hours need to be considered but I fear rarely occur, therefore vet professionals leave and put their physical plus mental health first.
Absolutely agree – it’s why I’m not in full time practice any more myself.