COUNTRYFILE ISSUES WITH JOHN CRAVEN
We need more James Herriots but fewer people want to become rural vets.
“Are unsociable hours a factor in the shortage of rural vets?”
In the UK, which civilian job do you think carries the highest risk of injury? I thought perhaps a firefighter or a construction worker. Wrong! It’s a horse vet, who can expect seven or eight painful, work-limiting injuries during a 30-year-career.
In a bid to make the job as safe as reasonably possible, the British Equine Veterinary Association recently sent its members new draft guidelines on how to limit the risks – and is now studying the feedback. At the same time, concern grows over the shortage of vets prepared to treat large animals in mixed (ie creatures great and small) rural practices.
All types of veterinary work can, of course, be hazardous. Two thirds of those working with pets and other small animals reported that in one year alone they had been injured, mostly scratches and bites. For equine and other large animal vets, the figure was slightly lower but, because of the nature of the beasts, injuries were more severe.
Julian Norton from TV series The Yorkshire Vet – the reality series filmed at James Herriot’s old practice in the market town of Thirsk – has had his fair share of encounters with big, frisky creatures. Some of Julian’s stories could be straight from the pages of Herriot’s books. “In my early days I was tending to a really wild cow, sticking a needle into her abdomen and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back. She’d kicked me in the head and did I know it,” he told me.
“Just a few months ago a horse hit me in the face with a front hoof and my lower teeth went through my lip. And when I was castrating calves one moved unexpectedly and I had a gash down to tendons and bones in my left hand. No matter how careful you are accidents can happen, but many vets these days just don’t want to take on the risks and stress of treating cows and horses.”
HERRIOT’S HERITAGE
Julian appears on Countryfile this month when the programme marks the centenary of his predecessor’s birth and looks at the success of All Creatures Great and Small. He believes a factor in the shortage of rural vets is the unsociable hours. Not everyone wants to leave their bed at 2am to head for a cowshed and a stricken animal. “We recently advertised for a post in our mixed practice and we had 10 replies, some not suitable. A few years ago, there would have been 50 good applicants. The danger is that, if the trend continues, the livestock industry could be badly hit.”
The number of part-time vets, who are probably less likely to take on out-of-hours work, is increasing while around 50% of all practices are now corporateowned and many only deal with small animals; more reasons why mixed surgeries are struggling to get the people they need. And long ago I learned not to question whether women vets were capable of handling large animals. “Skill and technique are needed, not brute force,” was the blunt reply.
The president of the British Veterinary Association, Gudrun Ravetz, tells me that young vets, often from urban areas and straight out of college, who decide to work in isolated areas should be made to feel really at home in their new rural communities. “They need to become embedded and bridges have to be built,” she said. “Vets should be able to feel they are an integral part of farm businesses, dealing with prevention, health and welfare – to feel more in partnership rather than just being called to deal with emergencies like fire-fighters.” Which is where I started.