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Today we start the first of three episodes where Iain McLachlan – CEO of the New Zealand Veterinary Council – and I, talk about the veterinary shortage, the nursing shortage, why the NZ VC doesn’t include two of the world’s top 10 veterinary science universities in its List of Recognised Institutions, when is it going to update that list of Recognised Institutions, what clinics can do if they absolutely cannot manage their after-hours obligations, and what “limited registration” means.
Back in April this year, VetStaff conducted its annual Veterinary Sector State of the Nation Survey – the results are interesting.
For example, one third of the respondents said they weren’t earning enough to live on and were going backwards financially, one third said they were earning just enough to live on, but not enough to contribute to a rainy day savings account, and one third were earning enough and were able to contribute to a rainy day savings account.
Now, when you hear those numbers it’s pretty easy to think that given two thirds of the respondents were going backwards financially or were earning just enough to survive, that the mix of respondents must have been two-thirds vet nurses and one third vets.
After all, it’s no secret that nurses’ pay rates really do need some serious increases beyond just the CPI.
However, that wasn’t the makeup of respondents at all. In fact, the split of vets and nurses came in exactly equal with 42.7% of the respondents being vets and exactly 42.7% were nurses.
The balance of just under 15% was made up of admin staff – like PMs and HR managers as well as veterinary technicians.
I haven’t crunched the numbers that deep, but it’s kinda fair to surmise that there are some vets who aren’t earning enough to contribute to their rainy day emergency fund.
The Vet Council cannot control pay rates – that’s not its function. Yet I was surprised by the number of respondents who somehow thought that was a power the Council had. I asked lots of other questions of Iain that came from the survey, but I didn’t raise the question of pay rates because it’s beyond his and the Cou
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