Empowering Veterinary Nurses for Career Longevity - Laura Harvey - President NZVNA

Julie South [00:00:04]:
Welcome to Veterinary Voices episode 202. I'm your host, Julie south. This podcast celebrates all that's great about working in New Zealand's veterinary industry. It reaches listeners in 1400 cities worldwide. For back copies, visit veterinaryVoices dot NZ did you know that according to very recent research, approximately 41% of kiwi veterinary nurses are expected to stay in the animal health profession for fewer than five years? Or that only 26% of veterinary nurses expect to still be working as vet nurses by the time they release retire?

Julie South [00:00:59]:
No, I didn't know that either.

Julie South [00:01:01]:
That's why I invited associate Professor Laura Harvey onto today's show to talk me through the numbers. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by vet staff, New Zealand's only recruitment agency specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs they're excited about going to on Monday mornings in kiwi clinics. Vetstaff Co dot NZ associate Professor Laura Harvey is current head of environmental and animal sciences at Unitec in Auckland, New Zealand. She's also the president of the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing association and it's in that role that I'm especially excited about chatting with her today. Laura first graduated with her diploma in veterinary nursing from Unitec in 2007 when she started her career as a veterinary nurse. After spending time in clinical practice both in New Zealand and in the UK, her career focus led her towards education and leadership. I say first graduated with a diploma in vet nursing because in addition to her main role at Unitech, Laura's continued her own study. She also now holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a postgrad certificate in veterinary education and more recently completed her master's in science in advanced practice in veterinary.

Julie South [00:02:45]:
To back all of those and support her continuing education. Laura is absolutely passionate about research as you'll hear a bit today, she has a focus on the psychosocial challenges of veterinary nursing. Laura's been part of the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing association since 2013 and continues to enjoy being a voice and an advocate for veterinary nurses in New Zealand. The NZVNA has seen some major changes over recent years, including the move to voluntary registration, which is now under the purview of the AVPRC, the Allied veterinary Professional Regulatory Council and the increasing support and guidance provided to New Zealand veterinary nurses. As you'll hear, Laura's proud to be part of an organisation leading the way for veterinary nurses and looks forward to seeing this drive for the advancement of the profession continue. When she's not working, studying or researching, you'll find Laura taking her staffy cross to the park or the beach or tending to her new garden. Listen out because, like a passionate veterinary professional, you'll be able to hear Laura's fur baby min join the conversation. Partway through our conversation as well, we decided that the first topic of conversation that Laura and I would have to kick off the NZVNA's guest slot on veterinary voices would be to talk about the Bowringer taking animal health forward white paper and research that she's been involved with.

Julie South [00:04:29]:
So let's join the conversation. I start here, where I ask Laura to tell me how this research originally came about and what surprises she found in the results.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:04:46]:
Yeah, sure, Julie. So Boehringer had decided to see what they could do to support the industry through gathering some more data. Once we know more, once we know where some of the challenges that are facing our workforce lie specifically, then we can do more, we can target the support that is needed better. So Boehringer decided to do this survey open to all veterinary professionals with a reasonably good response rate. They had just over 600 responses from around the country and it's really just taken off from there.

Julie South [00:05:29]:
Was it deliberately just New Zealand, like you specifically wanted it for the New Zealand market?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:05:36]:
Yeah. So it's information that's been shared with the New Zealand market in terms of the outcomes of it, and it's been shared wider. But we need to recognise that the challenges that face our New Zealand workforce, whilst they might be similar to those internationally, they're not exactly the same. We are quite unique here in New Zealand. We have a relatively small veterinary workforce compared to, say, somewhere like Australia, where they're our closest neighbour. Venery practice over there is fairly similar to here, but we do still have some different workforce challenges. And again, when you compare to the UK and the US, which are the other kind of veterinary sectors that we're compared to, we do have those unique challenges here. Our cities aren't as big, we have that really deep connection with our rural communities and then there's the cultural aspects to bring into it as well.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:06:33]:
So it was really important that the data that was collected was unique to New Zealand and we knew exactly what that New Zealand position was around our workforce challenges.

Julie South [00:06:43]:
What surprises did you come across?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:06:46]:
Oh, there were some that weren't surprises, but there were definite some surprises. One I think that stands out to me was the figure around 26% of vet nurses expect to stay in the profession until they retire. That's a really small number. So we're losing a lot of really well educated, skilled professionals who aren't planning on staying in the profession until they retire. And there's a number of reasons behind that, but that really high turnover has a big impact on consistency of care. But the big one is the ability to have those skilled people in industry helping to train the newbies.

Julie South [00:07:34]:
Just so we have clarification, can you say that percentage again, please?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:07:40]:
26. Only 26% of vet nurses plan to stay in the profession until they retire.

Julie South [00:07:49]:
Why do you think three quarters plan.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:07:53]:
To leave before they retire?

Julie South [00:07:55]:
Why do you think that is?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:07:58]:
I think there's a number of reasons for that. Some of those we know through conversations with vet nurses. Part of my role with the Vet nursing association is to support members, and to do that, we need to know what their challenges are. But some of it comes through in the research that's been done, not just the boring research, but previous studies as well. And they relate to a few different things. One is remuneration. We know that historically, veterinary nursing has been a poorly paid profession, and whilst there are some big improvements happening there, it's not happening across the board. There are still some fairly poorly paid vet nurses out there and it's not happening quickly enough.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:08:43]:
We know that career progression is a big challenge for a number of veterinary nurses. They want to be in a career where they can see what comes next, where they can grow, they can develop, they can challenge themselves, and that often isn't clear to them. It might be because the practice that they're in or the few that they've worked in up until that point have been relatively small. So those options for career progression aren't obvious to them or might be limited. But even within some of the bigger groups of practices, it might not be something that is made clear to nurses around what their career options are, but also the various options outside of clinical practice. We know that they're on a third kind of issue. We know that there is a high level of bullying and incivility within the profession, and I'd like to think that that's something that everybody is working towards reducing. But I do think there's also aspects of it where people just aren't aware of it.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:09:53]:
I remember a conversation I had, oh, it was probably a good couple of years ago now with a vet in a small practice, great team, and mentioned that we knew that this was an issue, we had data to back it up and he just wasn't aware of it. He's like, oh, I've never seen any of that. And he'd been into a few different clinics. And so I think there is partly. I think it is just a lack of awareness that this is going on or we've just normalised it so much that people don't call it out anymore and then a big one is just being part of the team. Nurses are a vital part of the team and you talk to almost anybody in any vet clinic across the country and they will absolutely say, you know, their receptionists, their animal healthcare assistants, their vet nurses, whatever the role is within that environment, that everybody is an essential part of the team. But we need to see that reflected in the way that vet nurses are treated and the way they are remunerated for their work and the way that their careers are able to progress.

Julie South [00:11:02]:
Are you able to tell me, like right now you've just been talking about, as I understand it, the emphasis has been on veterinary nurses, which is great because you are the president of the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing association. What was the breakdown, the split between in respondents from vets and vet nurses?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:11:23]:
I don't have that data.

Julie South [00:11:25]:
So it could be. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. If you don't know the split, it could be that 76% of vets are not going to hang around.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:11:39]:
The data did, in terms of the responses did separate out how many that percentage of vets versus nurses. So the 26% of nurses not staying in the profession is nurses. It wasn't respondents. So vets have got separate data and I think from memory theirs was something around 40 something percent. What we don't know is how many nurses, of those 600 that completed the survey, how many of those are vet nurses? Having said that, we can be reasonably sure that that data does accurately represent the profession because it does align with other research that has been done.

Julie South [00:12:20]:
Do you think that. I mean, I'm not denying or decrying or down talking. Is it possible? I was thinking about this last night, 76%, 40%? Whichever way you look at it, it's pretty. It's pretty horrifying and I don't like using adjectives like that, but it's critical, it's important. It's unsustainable, really. Do you think that is because the majority of people who choose veterinary as a career are female?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:13:02]:
I've thought about this quite a bit and I highly suspect that that has something to do with some of that data that we're seeing. What truth there is to that is harder to measure. I'm a scientist, I like to have numbers to back things up. But when we look at the workforce as a whole, you know, receptionists, nurses, technicians, vets, the vast, vast majority. I think the last number that I saw on this was around the 96% of nurses are female and the majority of vets graduating from vet school are female. So we definitely have a very female sway profession. And when you think about needing to take time off if they want to have children, females generally have the bulk of the responsibility within running a household. So there's all the additional kind of emotional demands on, on females as well.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:14:06]:
And veterinary practice traditionally hasn't been a very flexible environment. Long hours, weekend work, it hasn't really designed itself to work around having young children, for example, that may need dropping off at daycare in the morning and picking up in the afternoon. So I do think that, that some of the challenges that we're seeing around people not staying in the profession will have something to do with that, along with some of the other things we've already discussed. But unfortunately, we just don't have the specific detail around that to know exactly how much of a factor in this whole kind of bigger picture that aspect plays.

Julie South [00:14:52]:
One thing that really surprised me when.

Julie South [00:14:55]:
I joined the sector in 2019 was that clinics are utilising their highly skilled, qualified vet nurses as receptionists. Now, I'm not saying that vet nurses can't be receptionists, I'm not denying the professionalism and the skills that going. That are required to be a receptionist.

Julie South [00:15:27]:
However, I think they are two completely.

Julie South [00:15:30]:
Different skill sets which need to be recognised as two completely different skill sets. Nurses can be receptionists, but receptionists cannot be nurses without the skill, without the training.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:15:46]:
So I. Yeah, I would absolutely agree with you on that one. And if we look at what is happening globally, there is very much a shift towards clearly defining and separating those roles. Outside of New Zealand, we're not really a big enough sector to warrant at this stage. But what we are seeing internationally are things like veterinary receptionist associations recognising that that is a distinct role, that the people that do those roles have their own distinct skill set that they bring, and that is separate from a nurse. And I think it's really important that if we're to grow as a profession, if we're to fully embrace veterinary nurses as veterinary nurses, doing all of the things that they are trained and experienced and able to do within the bounds of the law, there'll always be that legislation that sits over it. But if we want to make full use of our veterinary nurses to take the pressure off of our vets where they can, and actually have veterinary nurses bringing an income into the practice, then we do need to separate out the different roles within the clinic and the receptionist. Veterinary nurse separation is just one of them.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:17:13]:
How many times have you been speaking to a nurse? And they're also the one that walks the inpatients and cleans the litter trays and feeds and all of those other things that animal healthcare assistants should be doing. And they will have their own congression options and their own remuneration bans that will be different. So we can separate out the different roles and work out the challenges that are facing those individual roles separately. But it allows nurses within a practice to actually be veterinary nurses, rather than also trying to be an animal healthcare assistant and also trying to be a receptionist on top of those. It's really important, I think, to recognise that reception staff have a very difficult job and some nurses will really want to do that. Some will love their interaction with clients, some won't. Some will have gotten into the profession to be a nurse, not to be a receptionist. So having that lit there and looking at what those different roles are, I think one of the challenges that we have in New Zealand around fully implementing some of those roles is that some of our clinics are really small.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:18:23]:
If you've got a one or two vet practice, you probably aren't going to be having the income to have a separate receptionist and a separate animal healthcare system and then a couple of nurses. So there are challenges to implementing that. Absolutely acknowledge that.

Julie South [00:18:39]:
Can I just interrupt you, because I want to challenge you on that assumption and on that belief. Here at Vetstaff, we are working with a handful of amazing small, like one to two vetted practices, one and a half vet practices. Fortunately for us, they trust us. It took a bit of getting there and I think that trust came from the point that each of the clinics had got to a dire situation and it's like, we need help. So, fortunately, they came to us with these clinics. What we've done is they've gone from a single vet clinic to a one and a half or more clinic. They've gone from a one vet, two nurse situation. We have shown them how to grow because Tanya, who is with vet staff, is a former head of orthopaedic vet nurse, so she knows what it's like in clinic.

Julie South [00:19:58]:
Together, we've supported and shown these clinics how they can move from having their nurses sitting at the front desk to being nurses, supporting their vets with a dedicated receptionist who is not a nurse working in the clinic. And now these clinics need bigger premises.

Julie South [00:20:27]:
There's the challenge.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:20:28]:
I'm glad you challenged me on that one. Yep, and I'm really excited to hear you say that. That is awesome. So we have got, if I understand you correctly, we've got what started off as quite small businesses, quite small vet clinics that have taken that advice to separate out those different roles, employ the correct staff into the correct role and it's allowing their business to grow.

Julie South [00:20:55]:
Correct.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:20:57]:
That is fantastic to hear. I'm really, really pleased that you shared that with me and that information. What you've described aligns really well with some of the research that we have seen come out. I'm pretty sure you're familiar and some of your listeners might be with the research that Francesca Brown has been doing around the utilisation of staff within a vet clinic. So it's really exciting to see that those changes are happening. Yeah, the future is exciting, but we do need everybody to get on board.

Julie South [00:21:34]:
I'm not saying it was easy, I'm not saying that it was without its challenges for us. It was easy.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:21:44]:
Right.

Julie South [00:21:44]:
You know, we could see it from.

Julie South [00:21:46]:
We're looking at that from the outside.

Julie South [00:21:48]:
Looking in for the clinics. I think the biggest part for them was, and they've got the growth mindset, so I think that's the first. You know, you've got to have a willingness to do things differently. Just because everybody does it one way.

Julie South [00:22:09]:
Doesn'T mean to say it needs to.

Julie South [00:22:10]:
Continue to be that way.

Julie South [00:22:12]:
That way might have worked five years.

Julie South [00:22:14]:
Ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago. Things have changed and times have changed and conditions, situations have changed. So the biggest thing, I think, for the clinic was, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does and it has and it's great. So I. Those clinics listening, you know who you are, and I salute their courage because it did take a lot of courage on their part to do it completely.

Julie South [00:22:48]:
Different to how the majority of their.

Julie South [00:22:51]:
Competitors and their peers and their colleagues run their businesses.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:22:58]:
It's like that saying goes, you know, oh, but we've always done it this way.

Julie South [00:23:04]:
Yeah.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:23:04]:
We need to throw that statement out like it never existed.

Julie South [00:23:08]:
Yeah.

Julie South [00:23:08]:
And if you always do what you've.

Julie South [00:23:10]:
Always done, you'll always get what you've always got. And what got us here won't get us there.

Julie South [00:23:20]:
I just want to interrupt this chat for a very brief moment to share something exciting for clinics that want to do their own recruitment, to diy their own recruitment. Vetclinicjobs.com, you probably already know that traditional recruitment methods aren't cutting it anymore, so a different approach is necessary. Instead, clinics now need to showcase what makes your clinic a great place to work. Vetclinicjobs.com boosts your employer brand, which isn't to be confused with your client marketing brand. And it's also very affordable. Give your recruitment marketing the oomph it needs@vetclinicjobs.com. now let's get back to today's show.

Julie South [00:24:18]:
I'm going to throw another challenge to you.

Julie South [00:24:22]:
If you could white create a completely.

Julie South [00:24:25]:
White clean whiteboard and design a clinic utilising vet nurses to their absolute nth degree, what would that look like? What would you change taking pretending that money is not an issue, that you've got enough staff to be able to do what you want to do. What would the clinic, according to Laura Harvey, look like?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:25:04]:
Oh, that is a challenging question and it's an exciting one. Okay, what would it look like? For starters, it would have dedicated staff for the different roles within the clinic. So as we've mentioned, there would be dedicated veterinary receptionists with the appropriate skill set and training that's needed for that role. There would be dedicated animal healthcare assistants that are looking after the non clinical aspects, aspects of patient care. The clinic would have cleaners rather than vet nurses doing those roles and the vet nurses themselves would be doing the job that they trained to do. They would be doing all of the different aspects of patient care. It might be something really simple that clinics, a number of clinics could probably implement relatively quickly. Something as simple as having a dedicated veterinary nursing consult room so that all of those patients, all of those clients that come in that need advice around nutrition or weight loss or geriatric care or end of life care can all be seen by a veterinary nurse without the time pressures of a vet consult in a dedicated veterinary nursing consult room.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:26:47]:
All of your pre op and post op checks, all of your admits and discharges triaging, all of your to free up vets to do what vets and only vets can do. That's what I would really like to see. And there are some clinics out there that are doing this. They're doing some amazing structure to their day. And you talk to those nurses and they love their job because they get to really utilise their veterinary nursing skills every day. They don't have to answer the phone, they don't have to walk the dogs, they are doing nursing all day, every day. And that's what they're trained to do and that hopefully, is what we're paying them to do.

Julie South [00:27:31]:
Very similar, I think. And in the cases of the clinics that I mentioned earlier, that was one of the very first things that they implemented was looking at where and how they can create vet nurse consults.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:27:48]:
That's awesome.

Julie South [00:27:49]:
Because some things did need to be jiggled and juggled in the clinics to make, you know, it was always, when I say it was always, it was on their.

Julie South [00:28:02]:
Dream list, if you like.

Julie South [00:28:04]:
But they hadn't actually thought about how it could work in their clinic because they were just head down, tail up, doing everything the way they had always done it.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:28:17]:
Absolutely. And busy clinics probably don't have a huge amount of bare brain capacity to put into some of that planning.

Julie South [00:28:24]:
That's right. Yeah.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:28:25]:
So hopefully they kind of listen to something like this and go, maybe if we just put aside a bit of time to look at what the next kind of 510, maybe even 20 years will look like.

Julie South [00:28:37]:
The other thing that we looked at, because my background is marketing, it was also around, let's look at what your ideal client looks like and set the language in your clinic up to support that, to support more of those. And what does your nightmare client look like? Because it's one thing to say that we want more of this type of client, but it's another thing to say we actually don't want those types of clients. And to be able to recognize what those types of clients look like and sound like so that when they come into the clinic, it's right. This is not our ideal client that we will, and I use air quotes here, we will fire this client after we've dealt with this emergency or whatever it is, and then look at the. What did we do that brought that client? What were we saying? What were we presenting that brought that.

Julie South [00:29:45]:
Type of client into our clinic so.

Julie South [00:29:48]:
We can stop doing whatever that was. And that takes a bit of analysis, too. And we started, you know, it's like quite a few clients got fired and. Or were redirected to other clinics that were a better fit of. For that client.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:30:07]:
And that's the thing. Every client, there will be a clinic that they gel with. That is their place, and it's just redirecting them to where they fit.

Julie South [00:30:20]:
Yeah, absolutely. Before we wrap up, is there one or two things that you would especially like listeners to know about working in the veterinary sector in New Zealand?

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:30:37]:
I think there's two things. One would be directed at any of your listeners that are currently within the veterinary sector, and that would be. I'm trying to think of the right way to word this, and it probably simply comes down to two words. Be kind. You know, be kind to yourself, because we know the job is hard. Be kind to each other because your colleagues are facing the same challenges that you are. And I think the second message would be to any members of the public that are listening, and that would be. It would probably be the same two words, be kind.

Associate Professor Laura Harvey [00:31:23]:
The challenges that are facing the veterinary sector at the moment are substantial. We are still in the environment of having a shortage of vets, a shortage of vet nurses, so clinics are understaffed. Adding to that, they are massively overworked because the pet population during COVID absolutely exploded. So you've got veterinary teams that are doing the best that they can with limited resources, limited staffing. So just be kind.

Julie South [00:32:02]:
I think. Excellent comment. Because when we think about it, I actually don't know anybody who goes to work to do a horrible job to upset people. We all go to work to do the absolute best that we can do and we don't know. Everybody's got a story that is outside of work. We don't know what's happened in that person's life. Absolutely. Be kind.

Julie South [00:32:34]:
I hope you found that interesting. I'll put links to the Bohringer research we were talking about at VeterinaryVoices NZ for you so that you can see those numbers that Laura talked about and more for yourself if you found this interesting. Can I ask you, please, to do Laura and me a favour? One way of helping to spread this word is to use the power of the social media algorithms. So please share this episode with your social media friends and followers. Not only will it help get the word out about the research that Laura's done with Bohringer, it'll also help spread the celebratory word about how great it is to work in veterinary in New Zealand. Thank you for doing that. I hope that you'll be able to join me next week as well, where I catch up with Catherine Neezer Brady, who's a licensed immigration consultant. Catherine and I talk about the upcoming visa fee increases that kick in in a couple of weeks on the 1 October, so make sure that you tune in.

Julie South [00:33:41]:
Visit veterinaryvoices dot NZ and you can hit follow there. This is Julie south signing off and inviting you to go out there and be the most fantabulous version of you you can be. Until next week, kaketi ano.