Not quite a vet student

26, finishing off my fourth year of my Bachelors in Animal Health (prevet) in the corner of Australia. Work at a large emergency vet clinic. Used to study film animation. Have a cat named Archie and two cockatiels named Kael and Pippa

[sheepsbian]

@zoologicallyobsessed this is all I can think about while watching/participating in these stupid arguments about outdoor cats

[fumblebeefae]

This is 100% what it feels like. Now I get why so many scientists hate scicomm so much, it’s like talking to a brick wall.

[drferox]

Actual ‘Big Pharma‘ Douchebaggery in Vet Medicine

There is a lot that could be said about ‘Big Pharma’, and most of it comes from the human medicine side, probably because it is a larger market and, well, USA. But even in the veterinary sphere I am seeing more generalized ‘douchebag moves’ made by large pharmaceutical companies.

A lot of the Anti-Pharma movement is just memes for the cult of health, that seems to think that vegetables and fresh air will cure all your ills. This is simply not the case, there are serious, legitimate needs for pharmaceutical products, but putting all those disingenuous memes aside, large pharmaceutical companies are definitely not playing nice.

The difficulty is that we need these companies to be conducting the research and development that advances veterinary medicine, but every time there is an advance there is significant push to capitalize on that advance which goes far beyond recouping investment if the share prices are anything to judge by.

And as a veterinarian, I often get blamed for the high price of treating animals. There are lots of factors that come into this, but the wholesale price of prescription (and non-prescription) medication is something that I can’t control.

Keep reading

[gettingintovet]

I feel awful when an animal NEEDS apoquel long term, flinch giving the the invoice at reception.

[gettingintovet]

"The phenotype of death is irreversible"

Lecturer talking about missmatching blood groups

[vetschoolvacay]

When you overhear someone casually giving horribly incorrect veterinary advice at a random social gathering…

Garlic isn’t the secret to curing your dogs bad breath. I promise.

[gettingintovet]

“Oh hey there, I definitely would not give your dog the rest of your antibiotic course you didn’t finish” 

[catsindoors]

One thing that gets me with the “My outdoor cat lived to 18″ folks, aside from their not understanding they’re the lucky exception and not the rule, is how did your cat die at 18? I won’t deny their are some free-roaming cats who defeat the odds and die of age-related causes, but if your cat lived to 18, 19, 20 then was… say, killed by a coyote, or developed an abscess fighting with another cat and died from that, you crowing about their long life still doesn’t fuckin’ count because they could have lived longer if you were responsible. 

[gettingintovet]

This, omg! The exception is not the rule! 

*in room for euthanasia, for old decrepit indoor/outdoor cat who’s probably had kidney disease for 3+ years AT LEAST + their skinny backside from possible crippling arthritis* 

“Oh she’s been such a good cat, we’ve never had to take her to the vet because she’s always been so healthy :) “ 

*gritts teeth*  

or

*cat dying of dog mauling* “He’s always gone outside when he wants to, he’s had such a good life” 

*until he dragged himself home in agony for the last 2 hours before you found him* 

[gettingintovet]

Please don’t go on a rant to vet staff about how overpriced and absurdly terrible other vet clinics are, it’s awkward and we in good conscious cannot opinionate or professionally react to your ranting. Any vet staff that throws another clinic under the bus is not a vet I would be going to. 

Like, I get that you are upset, but being in the industry I am 300% certain that every vet/nurse/receptionist listens but is fully aware that there is an entire consult, diagnosis, reason of why that happened and everything you’re saying is probably missing a massive chunk of detail. 

Legit all I can do is respond with is “oh that’s terrible”, “you could always get a second opinion”. 

I don’t believe for a second that a “simple ringworm diagnosis” cost you $3000 and the 5mL vile of gel cost you $300. 

The vet is not trying to rip you off asking how the other leg is going at every vaccination, cruciate tears frequently happen on both legs.

Rescues are not “all about money” by asking for a small adoption fee, no I don’t know where you can adopt a small-white-fluffy for free for your elderly mother. 

I’m sure that the good vet is not trying to rip you off by asking for a blood test for your elderly lethargic dog.

The vet probably won’t treat for free because you abused them on how you can’t pay, not because he finds joy in killing cats. 

[drferox]

How do you feel about the way Greencross is seemingly trying to build a monopoly of vet practices in Australia? Concerning, or not as alarming as people think it is?

Mate, I have many potent, insider opinions about GreenX and the rise of corporate medicine. I have been considering writing on this topic for a while, but now seems as good a time as any.

But first, full disclosure of where I stand within the veterinary industry. I am an associate veterinarian, which means I work in a practice but don’t own it, and I work two jobs. My full time job is in private practice owned by a single vet who actually works there. My casual job is at an emergency center, owned by GreenX. I have also done relief work at a GreenX clinic.

And frankly, the more I work for GreenX, the more it makes me cheer on worker-owned co-ops.

GreenX is just one of the multi-practice corporate vet chains which are popping up not just in Australia, but overseas. GreenX is just the largest and is actually on the stock exchange. You can buy shares in GreenX. That means GreenX is accountable to its shareholders and expected to make a healthy profit.

GreenX owns large numbers of vet practices across Australia, but also owns all the Animal Emergency Centers, all the Petbarn brand pet stores, an external veterinary diagnostic laboratory, at least one crematorium, a number of specialist hospitals and runs the admin side for at least one university teaching hospital.

It also currently operates a ‘Healthy Pets Plus’ program, where for just $450 a year you can get free consults, and is working on bringing out its own pet insurance line.

How are you feeling about this? A little uneasy?

I have concerns about a monopoly, because in my neck of the woods GreenX owns the 4 closest 24 hour emergency vet clinics, in addition to all the others around the city, so I don’t really have much of a choice where to send my patients. They also own quite a lot of the general practices in my local region, so that’s hard to compete with.

For a few years there, they also sent a letter to my boss every year offering to buy his practice. Just a form letter, which I assume they sent out to lots of practices in a similar way.

They pay for all their vet employees to be Australian Veterinary Association members, which grants us all a voice and vote in relevant matters, but not to receive the Australian Veterinary Journal. I don’t know whether GreenX gets corporate discounts for signing up so many members. This makes me uneasy because Banfield in the USA, which is owned by Mars, financially rewards its employees for taking up leadership positions with the various representative organizations over there. Which means if it ever comes up, corporation is paying for a lot of people to be there if an important vote ever comes up…

I mean, I’m not a conspiracy nut, but I’m not exactly happy.

But that is the corporation side, the people on the ground are not the corporation. They are by and large decent vets and nurses hamstrung by the corporate rules they’re obliged to follow. For some this works out fine, particularly in their early years. They have a structured training plan and can see where to advance in the corporation. It provides a willing buyer for a practice owner who might otherwise have been unable to receive the price they were seeking (another issue for another day). It has removed some of the management stress from vets in many clinics and dispersed it, allowing a pool of locums to be drawn from to fill in absences.

Doing so has added a lot of middle management and a lot of red tape. They are frequently recruiting at industry events, and promoting their chain at events like the Dog Lovers Show.

Working on the ground as one of their casual emergency vets I am profoundly dissatisfied. Considering we are supposed to be a top of the line intensive care clinic some of my complaints and concerns have included:

The introduction of Healthy Pets Plus robbing the clinic of its emergency consult fee ($165) and crediting only $10 to our ‘income’ for that month.

Then having the gall to turn around and say that because we are not making as much money this quarter as we used to, our budget is reduced.

Not offering staff a worthwhile wage to do night shift, so unable to retain them very long.

Not paying emergency nurses anything above the award wage (minimum wage for the industry), even if they have been employed at that practice multiple years.

Nowhere to advance unless you pursue a position in management.

Not granting even a cost of living pay rise (in line with inflation) despite meeting expected profit targets for three years.

Telling employees they are not allowed to discuss their wages with each other, which I’m pretty damn sure is illegal and is definitely shady.

Not paying superannuation properly.

Not paying vets and nurses in management positions their backpay in a timely manner.

Making it ridiculously difficult to access your payslips to see if you were paid properly.

Needing to get approval months in advance to order extra stock for busy times of year

Watching the sheer stress of being a manager at these clinics wear good people down to the bone or brink of madness.

Once GreenX has bought into a practice, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them.

Acquiring a practice and promising ‘nothing will change’, that all the things we like will stay the same. Only to change those things, slowly, over the following 3-5 years to match the other clinics in the chain.

Mandatory tea break.

I have also listened to management-types of GreenX make arguments for having unpaid internships in general practice for newly graduated veterinarians, for 12 weeks.

And just about lost my banana over it.

Unpaid. For Twelve weeks. Straight after graduation where they’ve qualified as veterinarians.

Oh hell no.

Interns typically get paid less anyway, and a new grad vet wage isn’t all that much. But they wanted to pay nothing for the first 3 months.

Why? Because new graduate vets are not profitable at the start, they typically cost the practice money as they get themselves established. Everyone knows this, it’s part of the deal when you take on a new grad.

Having to work 3 months straight out of uni for zero pay is insane, it’s almost murderous, and it’s simply evil. This plan was ripe for abuse.

It was also vocally shouted down at the PANPAC conference where it was suggested, thankfully, but these are non-vet, corporate types of people trying to run a series of vet practices for profit.

I just want to be the friendly neighborhood vet on the corner, you know? Just local, quality service where I can get to know the pets over time, and schoolkids aren’t afraid to bring in an injured bird if they find one in the playground. To be part of that community.

And this is what most vet practices have been. You own your job, you don’t need to make a massive profit, just enough to keep doing what you want to do.

But now GreenX has shareholders. The business owners are not on the ground with the rest of us. I have concerns and I don’t like it.

That is not to be negative to those working for Greencross, the boots on the ground that are probably not being treated as well as they should, but need a job to keep the lights on. For some the structure suits them. For some it’s just a job. It is the team on the ground that is the only reason I started working for them in the first place, and stayed.

But do I wish it was something other than GreenX? Yes.

UPDATE: I’d like to contribute in this discussion some ‘advice’ that was shared on Facebook. Members of this particular group are warned to be careful what they post as it’s not a private group and anybody can take a screenshot, so I think that’s fair game.

I do not like this. I do not like this at all. I can’t even tell if it’s satire or trolling, because it’s too close to the truth.

Not only does it make it look like it’s now all about the money (which it is, for the shareholders) it reduces veterinary medicine to a numbers game. By this metric, a ‘good vet’ is one that earns $300 per consult, and twice as much of their billing comes from lab fees as consult fees. They also admit almost a third of their consults.

Doesn’t matter if clients like them, if they solve cases or achieve good medical outcomes. All the qualitative stuff is gone, just the dollar values.

(Oh, and if you meet those metrics, you’re in no way guaranteed to get a pay rise. From experience).

Now it is entirely possible to meet those metrics just by working your cases appropriately and seeing a lot of them, but thinking like this pushes vets, especially young vets who want a pay rise so they can afford their own car, home, etc, to be thinking of the dollars and not the animal or client as they practice.

Maybe I am old fashioned or a dying breed during the rise of corporate veterinary medicine, but I am profoundly uncomfortable with this. Worse, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, and a strong feeling of this is not my veterinary medicine.

I am heartened to see most of the comments on that thread from angry, like-minded vets insulted at being reduced to ‘trained monkeys’ and focusing on these metrics instead of patient outcomes and client satisfaction, but as GreenX picks up more and more young vets, training them to fit its mold, I am afraid of more of them being modeled into what GreenX wants, or becoming disillusioned and leaving the profession early.

[gettingintovet]

I’ve heard the goss that they offer to buy clinics, and when they’re rejected they go all “fine, we will open a clinic so close to you, you will be forced to close down from lack of business” and pretty much bully small clinics into selling. 

Vets I know who’ve worked there say the staff are fine, they’re just normal people, but you feel a bit trapped and like one of the jerks just working for the company. 

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

I refer patients to specialists a lot. Sometimes owners are disappointed because they think it means I don’t know what I’m doing (sometimes they are right) but to me, knowing when you need to refer is a skill. If my patients can get better care somewhere else or would benefit from a procedure I don’t have the skills or equipment to do I always offer referral. I know many older veterinarians were educated in a time before specialists and referrals so were taught that they could and should do it all. I’ve heard of many stories where a vet did a procedure for the first time with a book held open in front of them and tools cobbled together in their garage. This was fine at one time because there was no other way for these pets to get help. Now that there are specialists it just isn’t ethical to do that unless the owner refuses referral.

Imagine my surprise when an owner who demands we do absolutely everything for their pet that they just cannot live without will decline referral because it is “too far” or “not convenient”. I see the same on Tumblr and other social media, “there isn’t a _____ near me.” Often when I Google search there will be a specialist or ER within a 2-3 hour drive. I agree that a 2 hour drive isn’t ideal but isn’t the life of your pet worth it? Let’s not forget either that euthanasia is an option, always. I know it isn’t ideal or pleasant but if your pet is so sick that it needs a specialist and you cannot provide that kind of care, the most caring and unselfish option is euthanasia. The alternative-taking your pet home to suffer and possibly die of a disease is not humane nor caring but at least a few times a week I see a pet that that the owner declines specialty care for and there is nothing I can do for them other than euthanasia, and they take the pet home to die. It hurts my soul every single time.

And to prove that I practice what I preach, I just took my own dog to a specialist. I work up early on my day off and drove two plus hours to a specialty hospital. Because it was so far I couldn’t just turn around and go home so I spent the entire day there. When it was over I forked over somewhere around $1,200 and made the two hour drive home. It sucked. Nobody wants to spend a day off at any kind of hospital nor do they want to spend thousands of dollars on medical care. But my dog needed care that I couldn’t provide and so I did it, because that’s what pet ownership is. So I feel you, but please don’t deny your pet care because you don’t want to travel a few hours out of the way.

[drferox]

hey doc! have you ever volunteers/coop students at your clinic? i'm shadowing a vet currently and i was wondering if what vets would like to see from them. question tax: do you like amusement park rides?

At the risk of sounding like some kind of disgruntled baby boomer with a vendetta against ‘kids these days’, the following:

Get off your phone in the clinic.

Recognize we have jobs to do, and it’s not to entertain you.

Learn to use the washing machine. If you have somehow reached your teenage years without knowing how, the nurses will gladly teach you.

Don’t touch animals you’ve been specifically told not to touch and don’t open their cages. In fact, only touch animals you’ve been invited to touch.

Talk to and listen to the nurses. I can’t emphasize how important this is.

Ask questions. If it’s busy you can write them down and ask later, but it’s so frustrating to get to the end of the week and ask if they have any questions to get a simple ‘No’. I mean you could ask about vet courses, university, the career, mental health, the job market, remuneration, anything that suggests you’ve been paying attention.

Do not sit on a spinny chair and spin instead of watching the surgery

But if it makes you queasy say something so you don’t faint in surgery.

Be active, ask what you can do to help. (Hint: Ask nurses too)

Get the heck out of the way when we’re doing CPR

Do not take pictures of people’s pets for your social media. Do not.

Seriously, some interaction and questions wouldn’t go astray rather than staring blankly.

It’s a nice gesture to bake something and bring it in on the last day.

Seriously, just respect that you are in our space, learn what you can, and make the most of the opportunity.

[gettingintovet]

At the risk of sounding like I’m promoting my own blog - I wrote a long post of things not to do while on your clinic placement (based on my own experiences, and as someone who now works there) 

http://gettingintovet.tumblr.com/post/163706391457/first-weeks-of-work-experience

[davvic]

My cat Bishop sits outside my door every morning once she hears the alarm clock go off.

[pandaflavouredcookies]

The morning murps

[gettingintovet]

My kitty "good morning" trills like this 😍❤

[vetschooltruths]

POSITIVE PARVOVIRUS TESTS

[gettingintovet]

Always bad *everyone evacuates room, one person comes back in a hazmat suit*

[gifsofprocesses]

Cat Claw retraction 

[vetschoolvacay]

When I get to tell the raw food people we are not allowed to feed raw food in the hospital...

[gettingintovet]

Seriously though 🤣🤣

[gettingintovet]

“Hi this is Bella Smith, we came in last week” 

*looks down at small white fluffy. System comes up with 4,000 dogs with the same name* “What... is your name?”

- I swear at least 10% of dog owners name their female puppy Bella. 

[getyourveton]

Vet mental health

So in my country, the University is starting research into our country’s veterinarians well-being and mental health, stating that it is abysmal and there have been a lot of job-related-suicides in our field. Nothing new for anyone here. 

So, as things go, this news article can be shared on social media.

The facebook reactions to this article are absolutely f***ing HORRIFYING. People are all but laughing at this, claiming that they’re always spending so much money at the vets and how vets are free to schedule their own hours, and if we would just settle for less, we would not be having burnouts as much.

I am absolutely disgusted.

[gettingintovet]

I can’t read facebook comments under veterinary-related mental health issues or vet-related stories. They just make me mad, and the ignorance is so built up you can’t argue with it or risk being attacked. 

A single comment could be that someone had to pay for fluffy’s emergency treatment upfront and the vets are absolute shameful scum because they couldn’t go on a payment plan. *Cue 35 reply comments all agreeing and amping up each other's stories on why vets are scum* - times this for 60% of the comments. If someone defends a comment they’re ganged up on and attacked with lines that they spend so much money there they pay for the building. 

I just don’t click on the comments anymore, it’s just sad and I don’t need the negativity.

[gettingintovet]

(1)!Hello! I’d like to ask you for advice, maybe you as a vet have any suggestions. So there’s a shelter in the city I live and they recently started to cut a part of cat's ear to mark them, so if they’re on the streets again people will know that this cat was in a shelter and is castrated/ sterilized. While I think that’s a great idea because this way they don’t go through anesthesia again, but cutting parts of their ears is very hurtful and decreases their chance of being adopted.

(2) and microchipping, unfortunately, is not a realistic option because it’s expensive and they have a lot of cats and dogs, so they can’t possibly do it to everyone. Maybe you have experience with a similar situation and know a better option? Thanks in advance and have a nice day!

First I would just like to point out that I am not a vet, I am a student that works in an emergency vet clinic, an Australian vet clinic at that. 

Feral cats in Australia… we just euthanize them, the ferals... we just try to take them out of the ecosystem. So I can’t say I’ve ever known any vet that’s participated in a TNR program.

 I have given this a bit of thought though, and I did ask a vet or two. Pretty much we concluded this was border-line the best solution for controlling a colony and seeing them at a distance, every other method as you say is expensive, tattoos are hard to see unless up close, the tag/collar just comes off and hair grows back. Unless you want to go with freeze branding like in horses. The ethics of this would probably be awful though, and then you have cats with lighter skin that would not brand well, and it wouldn’t fix the aesthetics-adoption problem.

This is probably the better solution as far as we’ve come, ear tipping hurts less than the surgery site, and only for a day or two. Adoption-wise it’s a toughy, if the cat was going to go for adoption they shouldn’t be tipping, if they’re taken off the streets than the people should be happy they’ve already been fixed.

I guess the closest thing I’ve come to capture-release is the Australian black cockatoos when they get rehabilitated, many are endangered and get leg rings put on. But you can’t put a leg ring on a cat. 

[gettingintovet]

Adventures with family who don’t listen to my pet advice:

1.  Casually telling me that dog loves eating grapes. (Enjoy the anemia doggo, hope you didn't like have blood cells or kidneys). 

2. Not getting dog vaccinated  

3. Asking me for advice on pet ailments, then arguing all my possible reasons for ailments

4. ***long list of excuses for not going for a consult (they’re free for family)***

5. Continuing to give dog pasta for 3 days when advised not to

6. Takes dog for a hard walk during “strict rest”

7. “But she loves it” 

8. Advises me to release my cat outside when he’s naughty 

9. Takes unspeyed dog to park (nothing has happened) <insert classic excuse for not sterilizing> 

10. Gives antibiotics wrong after I gave instructions 

Rant. Over.