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Vet Futures has published a guest blog by Laura Kidd MRCVS which asks how the profession can increase the number of veterinary nurses entering and staying within the profession?
In her blog, Laura, a VN lecturer and clinical skills tutor for veterinary students, argues that the year-on-year increases in the number of veterinary nurses seems to be insufficient to meet demand. Furthermore, there is a trend towards people leaving the profession relatively early, with the average age being just over 30.
She writes: “Identifying the reasons for VNs leaving the profession at a young age and addressing these, is one potential way of increasing VN numbers in the future.”
Laura argues that poor pay, stress, not feeling rewarded or valued and perceived lack of career progression all contribute to people leaving the profession, although she welcomes initiatives from the British Veterinary Nursing Association (BVNA), BVA, RCVS and others to increase the status of the profession, create more diverse career opportunities and improve the profession’s mental wellbeing.
However, she adds that: “perhaps we may, reluctantly, have to accept that, for the time-being, veterinary nursing is a young profession with a high turnover.”
With this in mind she suggests that training more veterinary nurses will be the key to increasing the number of qualified members of the profession in the immediate future. In order to do this she believes that more practices need to be supported to become RCVS-approved Training Practices offering clinical training and work experience for student veterinary nurses and that an alternative training pathway for veterinary nurses may need to be looked at.
She adds: “The entry requirements for the VN Diploma are relatively low, yet the qualification is academically demanding: the volume and depth of knowledge is considerable for the level and qualification and the requirement to demonstrate critical reflection through academic writing can be challenging.
“It is regrettable that some student veterinary nurses, who appear to have the qualities to be very good VNs, are lost to the profession, unable to pass awarding body exams. Should we be developing an additional VN training pathway which allows more students to demonstrate they have the required skills to provide high quality nursing to their patients?”
In response to her proposal, this month’s poll will ask visitors “Is there a need for another VN training option?” To read the blog, leave a comment and take part in the poll please visit www.vetfutures.org.uk/discuss
Last month’s poll asked if vets always acted as animal welfare advocates. This was in response to an article by animal welfare expect Professor David Main in which he argues that the profession should do more to demonstrate its animal welfare credentials and introduce safeguards against excessive profit-seeking. Although just 22 people took part in the poll, around two-thirds (68%) of them said that vets do not always act as animal welfare advocates.
PS: Whilst you're here, take a moment to see our latest job opportunities for vet nurses.
oh boy where shall I start?
Stop mucking around with the training.
Establish a good basic training that will benefit everybody that can then be built on and leave the more specialist/ academic stuff for an add on qualification for those who need or want it. This will shorten training, bring down costs and may even encourage more practices to train.
Get back to basics - stop trying to over complicate things. Create yet another VN training pathway? - how many do you want for goodness sake? we don't need another pathway we just need to sort out the shambles we already have, its over priced, over complicated, and overly time consuming.
Try asking the practices that train nurses(or those that would train nurses if the training wasn't so costly and onerous) what they would like rather than taking on the opinions of those those that don't train but poach everybody elses qualified nurses.
Reward practices that train and bring in a yearly charge for those that don't - which can then be used to subsidise the cost of nurse training, ie cutting the cost of registration for trainees, cutting the cost of exams - but don't use this as an excuse to generate more income for the RCVS.
Encourage more practical skills and take the academic side down several notches, lets get the job done rather than pontificating on how it should be done.
Stop bigging the job up into something it isn't and this may result in less dissatisfaction and better retention of qualified nurses, people are often being given unreasonable expectations from the very start.
Experienced nurses will continue to leave the profession unless there is a dramatic change in salaries. Many practices do not value experience and/or are not willing to pay for it, while they can pay newly qualified nurses a pitence.
Pay is a massive issue and needs to be looked at thoroughly as qualified nurses, no matter how passionate, will continue to leave if they cannot support their own lives with such low salaries. I am uncertain whether I will take a permanent role again after being locum for the past 12 months, the money is too good and I feel much more valued for my time and experience. I have been offered permanent roles but have declined purely on salary. I would hope that if the veterinary nurse title was to be officially recognised as a profession then the salary would reflect the qualification, in the manner vets are rewarded.
This is a very interesting subject... I myself am currently a student very near to qualifying. And honestly I really can't see myself staying in the profession when qualified, as much as I love where I work and the people I work with, I do find/feel that I am undervalued and like you have mentioned the poor pay for the work and the amount of effort we put in just seems to go unrecognised. This unfortunately does seem to be a trait across the profession.