Overworked vets feel pandemic’s bite
Safety protocols take toll on staff already facing a surge in pet ownership
Jackie Logie knew something wasn’t right when her 14-yearold Labrador retriever, Flinstone, suddenly stopped walking last month.
She already had a yearly appointment with a veterinarian booked the following week — one that took her almost a month to land — but when she tried to move it up, she was unsuccessful. The clinic suggested she call around to other places but warned she’d face similar challenges.
Before COVID-19, she had never been faced with a wait even for small issues. But long waits for emergency and routine treatment have become standard as vets wrangle surging pet ownership and staff shortages. Both have worsened in the pandemic. People are adopting pets more than ever. And staffing shortages, a growing problem for years, is now so bad retired vets are even being called back into service.
Dr. Kristen Brown of the Rossland Animal Hospital, where Logie first tried to book an appointment for Flinstone, told the Star this is the new norm for veterinarian clinics in Ontario. “Our hospital is seeing more patients per month, and more new patients than we’ve ever seen before.”
In addition, Brown points out, enhanced public health protocols to keep everyone safe are in place, including extra sanitation and disinfection.
“The majority of us have been practising curbside medicine, which means patients are the only ones coming in the building,” Brown said. “Every appointment takes that much longer because we’re doing it really safely.”
The pandemic has pulled a lot of clinic staff out of the workplace, she said.
“We are a female-dominated profession, and with COVID taking place, a lot of moms need to be home taking care of their kids, or parents, or grandparents. A lot of people had to leave the industry or at least go part time to try and deal with their children and their families.”
The Ontario Veterinary Medical Association has asked retired veterinarians to return to work to support clinics with staffing shortages.
“The veterinary profession is experiencing an extraordinary challenge with increased demand and reduced access to care,” John Stevens, CEO of the OVMA, told the Star.
Like health-care workers for humans, veterinarians have been deemed essential throughout the pandemic. And similarly, the OVMA said, the profession is also experiencing high rates of burnout, stress and other mental-health concerns. Brown said animal doctors and clinicians are often subjected to the same kind of anger from the public as doctors and nurses caring for humans.
Brown said more needs to be done soon if the field is to keep up with the demand — whether that means admitting more veterinarian students into college and university programs or preventing loss of current employees due to things like burnout and stress.
For Logie, when she as unable to get an appointment at an animal clinic, she turned to an emergency hospital instead. She was added to a wait-list, but told it could be upward of 10 hours before she’d be called in.
It was eight hours before Logie finally got a call from the Toronto Veterinary Emergency Hospital in Scarborough to bring Flinstone in for his emergency. She sat in her car in a parking lot outside the hospital at 1 a.m. waiting for him to be seen. And although it was the middle of the night, Logie said other pet owners could be seen in their cars doing the same.
Logie said the hospital had animal triage signs posted on the walls. “They give you a list of who will be seen first … I’ve been there (many) times before the pandemic, and it just wasn’t like this.”
“There is a shortage of both veterinarians and registered veterinary technicians within the industry,” said Phil Nichols, chief operating officer for the Toronto Humane Society.
Nichols suggested increased fees as a solution to the staffing challenges clinics are experiencing. He acknowledges, though, higher fees make the care less accessible.
“The only way the industry can compensate is by increasing their prices so that the staff that are working in the industry can afford to work and have a type of lifestyle that is relevant and respective of their investment.”
Dr. Stephen Manning, the associate dean of clinical programs at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, said, to some extent, the staffing issue is systemic and predates the pandemic across the whole country.
The University of Saskatchewan’s veterinary medical centre is the only 24-hour emergency hospital for small animals in the Saskatoon area. “There are more positions available across Canada in veterinary practices than there are veterinarians available. It’s been that way for several years,” Manning said.
According to Greg Keefe, dean of the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, the veterinarian shortage in P.E.I. is chronic and widespread. Keefe said some key solutions would be to increase the number of students who receive training, and to ask for support from others in the veterinarian industry.
As for Flinstone, Logie said she never did find out exactly what was wrong with him. He’d had a chronic neurological issue his whole life, and seemed to be battling vestibular disease, a sort of canine vertigo common in older dogs.
The hospital said the only way to root out the problem was a doggy MRI, but Logie opted out of putting him through the procedure. The hospital prescribed pain meds, which Logie said has him “back to his usual self acting like a puppy when he’s 14.”