Why is SVC needed?

There’s lots of discussion about what contributes to veterinary industry stress, low career satisfaction and eventual disengagement.

These symptoms stem from a multitude of underlying individual, workplace, professional and public causes.

Public

  • Unrealistic client cost / outcome expectations
  • Dehumanisation of experts
  • Increasingly litigious, low trust society
  • Incomplete understanding of veterinary value proposition

Individual

  • Unconstructive responses to challenging situations (including perfectionism, power assertion, people pleasing etc)
  • High degree of altruism
  • Suboptimal emotional intelligence and communication confidence for difficult conversations
  • Low awareness of own core values and personal purpose (important for intrinsic motivation and job choice)
  • Imbalance between work / rest of life

Professional

  • Emotional burden
  • Fear-driven cultures (from threat or experience of Board investigation, litigation, client dissatisfaction, poor / unexpected patient outcomes, shame from critical judgement from peers)
  • Ethical decision/advocacy load (veterinarian-owner-patient-boss)
  • Low relative pay for education / responsibility / hours
  • Anxiety during Board investigations

Organisational

  • Authoritative, stressed or untrained leadership
  • Long hours, +/- afterhours, and unbalanced work-life integration
  • Social and/or geographical isolation
  • Lack of peer and mentor connections, debriefing opportunities
  • Lack of career development/progression options,
  • Reward systems
  • Cultures that celebrate work volume and independence.
  • Poor feedback systems
  • Diversity management

Every individual will experience these uniquely, and no single organisation spans the range of initiatives required to comprehensively address them. 

However, SVC’s focus on building self-awareness, knowledge and skill across the industry at every level will address the root cause of very many of these issues.

SVC has been developed in response to:

High Suicide Rates

One veterinary professional is lost to suicide every 12 weeks, and levels of anxiety, depression, low engagement and burnout remain above most other health care workers. Earlier work suggests vets’ suicide rate is four times higher than the general public’s rate (Hatch, 2011).

High Attrition

Almost one in five respondent vets were considering ceasing to work as a veterinarian within the following year; a figure that rose 6% in the two years 2016-2018. 54% of these intentions reflected family care giving, study, “personal preference” and working in a non-vet role (AVA 2019).

Recruitment Challenges

Despite a significant increase in annual graduates from Australian veterinary schools during the last decade, employers often struggle to replace vets:   44%  of vacancies took over 6 months to fill (AVA 2019; Professionals Australia 2017).  Recruitment of experienced vet nurses is similarly difficult.

Here, but working differently

Recruitment challenges exist despite an increase in registered vets (VetBoard Victoria, annual report 2019-20). No complete national data currently exists about clinical FTE worked by registered vets, but this suggests that “registered” does not equate to “professional workforce retention”.

Increased Demand

Demand for veterinary services in Australia is predicted to rise despite – and because of – COVID19. Veterinary services are very heavily reliant on a skilled labour force of vets and vet nurses. (Allday 2020; Bowen et al. 2020; Fernyhough 2019; Vincent et al. 2020

Career Disengagement

Professional attrition is just one symptom of career disengagement (Baldoni 2013), alongside absenteeism, presenteeism, reduced productivity and poorer care quality,

Well-being strengthens businesses

Happiness or well-being is associated with successful outcomes at work (Lyubomirsky et al 2005). Krekel and de Neve (2019) concluded that there is a strong business case for promoting worker well-being due to the associated beneficial impacts on productivity, business performance and customer satisfaction.

Different, not just more

Vets are now on the Australian Government’s Prioritised Migrant Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL) and more vets and nurses may ease pressure in the short term. But without widespread change, more people will then be exposed to stress and dissatisfaction and the leaky professional pipeline continues.
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Primary & Secondary Interventions

Primary Interventions

Primary interventions are aimed at reducing or eliminating stressors in the workplace. This could include things like varying the physical conditions of the workplace, redesigning jobs, changing workplace structure, and implementing flexible work practices. Training in problem solving, cognitive reappraisal, increasing self-esteem and locus of control may also help. 

Secondary Interventions

Secondary interventions focus on peoples’ response to stressors and may include stress management training, nutrition advice, relaxation exercises, and exercise programs. Other programs suggested here are negotiation training, conflict resolution skills, and training in CBT. Supervisor support may also buffer the effects of stress.

Tertiary Interventions

Tertiary interventions are directed at symptoms, focusing on coping strategies. Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)are now being seen with more frequency in Australian workplaces – either as an in-house service or an outsourced provider.

Occupational health research demonstrates that primary interventions, which focus more on prevention and take a systems approach across an entire organisation, tend to be most effective for stress management, followed by secondary interventions and then tertiary interventions. This finding supports the common-sense philosophy that it is better to prevent problems than to attempt to resolve them.