This is a PodTalk independent production created in conjunction with the Meta and Walkley Foundation Public Interest Journalism Fund. Before we get started, this podcast includes conversations about suicide, mental health, euthanasia and descriptions of surgical procedures. Please take care when listening.
There's a photo of Sophie Putland that I can't get out of my mind. It's the one I mentioned in episode one that I found online. It's graduation day, and she's there with 30 or so of her classmates. They're the first lot of vet students to graduate from Adelaide University in 2013.
She's wearing a bright orange dress under a black robe and she's throwing her mortar board in the air, and she looks so happy. She just scraped in with her marks, which was amazing.
She loved it. She made a lot of friends. Sophie was a good student who, for the most part enjoyed her time at uni.
There were also stressful times when she got help from a counsellor, though her parents Kate and Garry say most of the support came from her friends. By the time she'd graduated, she was raring to go and start her career. But what lay ahead was not as advertised.
It's not till get out there that all of a sudden you experience the pressures, the understaffing and things like that, that we now know, is actually happening in the industry. So I think for many graduates, they go out there wide eyed and bushy tailed, but then they get out there and the reality is quite different for them. I think it is starting to change. We've had a number of conversations since sofas passing with people from universities where they realise they have to do that, to better prepare their graduates for the reality of the industry. And we do know that their retention rate is relatively low. So I think that's probably evidence that there needs to be more done around that because when they get out into industry, they go well, this is not what I thought it was going to be.
Now there's usually a mismatch between university and the real world regardless of the job. But for vet students, the leap from the classroom to the clinic, is in some cases ruining careers right from the get go. There are plenty keen to become animal doctors. The Australian Veterinary Association estimates up to 750 graduate each year from the seven Australian universities that offer the degree. Many are international students who head back to their home countries to practice, but the rest will eventually find jobs in your city or your town. So what's the experience like for students while they're learning? Is there a proper transition in place to support them when they leave and go to their first clinic? And what needs to change to set them up better for the outside? To answer these questions, we need to go back to school.
I'm Caroline Winter, a journalist and dog lover, and you're listening to Sick As A Dog, Episode Six. Back to the Beginning. This podcast is shining a light on a crisis that's making the people who care for our animals very sick. It's burning them out, forcing many to leave their jobs. And in some cases, it's killing them. This series is about finding answers to some very complex questions that affect us all and can't be ignored any longer.
I'm standing on the front steps of the main building at Adelaide University's Roseworthy campus. It's where that photo of Sophie and her fellow vet grads was taken all those years ago. I've driven about 50 kilometres north of Adelaide to get a sense of this place and the people in it.
It's lunchtime, and the refectory is buzzing. Students are gathered in groups they're eating, chatting and sharing notes. It feels like a lifetime ago I was a journalism student in a similar kind of place.
I'm about to sit down with four vet students all at different stages of their degrees. They've agreed to share their thoughts and experiences of their time so far in vet school. Now I'm mindful that this is a snapshot of one university and of just a few students. But I know it's going to give me some insights into those early years of studying before they get into the workforce.
My name is Angelique Cahill. I'm in the fourth year of the veterinary medicine degree
We're inside an echoey room with tall ceilings in the main building at Roseworthy.
I started studying that because I saw so much injustice for animals in the world. And so I envisaged to kind of change that if I can.
It's an old stone building that was the original Agricultural College built in 1883.
Hi, my name is Tegan Van Gaans. I'm a second year vet student so I'm the baby of the group here.
Roseworthy is now part of the University of Adelaide.
I decided to become a vet just because I'm really inspired by the people around me like growing up in the hills having animals around me all the time and having family friends that are vets inspired me to become one.
It's veterinary medicine degree started in 2008. And the school has turned out hundreds of vets since
I'm Rory Speirs and I'm in my final year of my Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Adelaide.
The campus spans 1500 hectares, and it even has a working farm. I chose to become a vet because I've always been interested in science.
I come from a farming background, so have worked with animals from as soon as I could. And yeah, that always when they turned up were held in high esteem and guess I wanted a piece of that.
There's also a vet teaching hospital where students can get their hands dirty.
My name is Claire Bensted. I am in DVM one, so the fourth of six years into the veterinary science programme at the University of Adelaide.
And Roseworthy is also a major centre for animal and veterinary science research.
I studied to become a vet. Because I liked problem solving. I like doing research. I liked the complexities, and I'd always plan to work with animals.
The reason these vet students all wanted to go to vet school was simple. They love animals. They're also driven, passionate and smart. And they're all sharing a similar, albeit sometimes unusual journey.
I don't think many people in the world have this comfortable talking about dissecting a dog, generally over the dinner table.I get a lot of hope, as well, when I see people getting through to the final years, because I've worked with a few of them now. And like, yeah, they're all sleep deprived, but they all kind of seem a little bit happy, or happier than it is in the midst of like five exams in four days, or whatever they decide to throw at you.
Because it takes such a long time to get to that point, like it feels like you're just swimming and swimming, and you're never going to reach that end point. And then you see these new graduates and you're like, Oh, it does happen.
Building relationships with people in all the years honestly, has been one of the biggest things that's gotten me through because you can see the light at the end of the tunnel coming for them and, and if you just keep playing along, you know that that's going to come for you as well.
Finishing, of course, is the goal. But that's after five or six years of intense study. That's where Rory Speirs is at. He's about to graduate and start his first job at a clinic in regional South Australia. And he says he's ready for the next chapter.
This degree has been the most difficult, most rewarding best the hardest thing I've ever done. And I suppose I've sort of had a very different experience in that I got the golden times pre COVID. And then then then yeah, now I'm coming through into that post COVID time. So yeah, I will have had a very different experience to it all compared to you guys. I also live on campus and that, like Roseworthy is one big happy family anyway, but the on campus community, it's just steps it up another couple of gears. Everyone's always really willing to help. Everyone's generally very positive to be around and happy to help you out things like that. And yeah, I've bloody loved it.
But Rory is also aware that the career path he's chosen has a dark side. And the high suicide rate isn't far from his mind.
You can't help but see the lecture theatre and go, someone who might do that, like we might lose people in the next five to 10 years that it all makes it very scary.
It's not just vets and vet nurses who've taken their own lives. I've heard stories of vet students who have to, and many, many more are battling mental illness crippled under the pressure and expectation of their degrees while striving for perfection.
Perfectionism is such a horrible, horrible trait that is so prevalent amongst all of us. Because I mean, everyone's worked incredibly hard and wanted to be get perfect scores to get here. The great thing is we don't need perfect scores to stay here. And you've got to be a special kind of person that will be able to wind it back, but that is definitely an inciting cause of a lot of stress. And a lot of that students is not being able to release that pressure and go, I don't need to know everything to get through the degree, I only need to know half of it. That's another major major cause of duress amongst vet students and vets in the profession.
As we go around the table, the room fills with shared experiences of anxiety, the mental strain, and at times, the overwhelming load of being a vet student.
Last year was also a really difficult year for me with my mental health as well became off the back of a really difficult placement and not because
you've got intense personalities working in high pressure scenarios, all the time, things are gonna go pear shaped,
in second year, like it's not openly talked about, because it's very like hush hush, you know, we don't want lectures to find out and then have that like stigma associated with us for the next four years. I didn't know if I wanted to be a vet, because
I couldn't see the future of how my values fit into the veterinary world.
You're dealing with confronting things as you study, you're dealing with confronting things on placement, you're working out who you are as a person,
because also there's a lot of talk about, like, if you do have a mental health issue, like, can you become a vet, we used to practice all of that sort of stuff.
So I think Rory's right about the high pressure, and everyone has such a high expectations of themselves, like sure you're close for friends might know that you're struggling, but you still want to have it together for the rest of your peers, because you don't want to be the one letting the team down.
For Claire Bensted, the stress of vet school is where those struggles have been most acute.
I didn't realise that I was going to struggle with mental health during the degree. I thought that that was a problem for later cloud, and that when I graduated, we would deal with it then. But it's not because you don't really get to pick a timeline on these things. And sometimes, like I feel guilty for not putting the pressure on myself or I feel guilty for being mentally unwell when everyone else seems to have it together. But again, I think that comes back to the high pressure environment. Yeah.
I first crossed paths with Claire when she organised an online event for Roseworthy alumni in mid 2022. I have someone really special to introduce now who is going to be on Zoom due to COVID.
And it feels a bit funny to be introducing them because realistically, I should be introducing their daughter Sophie, the topic was mental health and illness in the veterinary community. And among the guest speakers was Sophie's dad. So her dad carry is carrying on her legacy and working out what factors influence young veterinarians with their mental health, and what causes them to take their lives and how we can stop that happening. So I'd like to hand to Garry now to take it away.
Thank you Claire. And thank you for the opportunity to talk with you tonight. So firstly, this is the first time we've spoken about Sophie. And as Claire said she passed away on September the fourth last year. So you might just have to bear with us if we do get a bit emotional. This is still actually quite raw for us. We
Claire worked with Sophie at the Roseworthy vet clinic. And she says her suicide affected everyone on campus
For a couple of weeks after me and my friend that both knew and had this experience that we'd drive to campus and you'd be driving into campus. And you'd be like, well, Sophie did that as a student, and now she's dead. Or, you know, you'd go to whatever class you were doing, and Sophie took that class and the industry still just decimated her. Speaking to other people, she had some horrible experiences in the industry. And it went from feeling like poor mental health and this industry won't happen to me or you know that statistic exists. But it's not really an issue to becoming an actual issue that I was faced with day to day.
Claire has battled anxiety, depression and eating disorder, and she's attempted suicide. And so improving the mental health of vet students became her passion.
In terms of the support at Roseworthy. I think it's definitely getting better. It's something I've spent a lot of time pushing for because I don't want people to not feel supported. So whether that is expanding understandings and tokens, right, some lectures are definitely better than others, or trying to get us you know, a psychologist on campus so you don't have to miss a million hours of lectures. But I think we've got a long way to go still. And I'm hoping I'm hoping it'll have a flow on effect to the industry of people practice help seeking before they get out. But I'm not sure.
Along with a friend, she started the group of Australian veterinary students for mental health, which is focused on helping vet students at all universities who were struggling with their mental health, and also improving access to support. My idea was, you know, maybe I'll just talk about my experiences a little bit.
So we put together a survey in the Facebook group, and sent it out to anyone that we knew at different vet schools across Australia. And we got like 100 responses. And the question was like, tell us your story, and tell us what you think needs to be better. It wasn't anything more driven than that. And we found that every vet school had its own issues.
Those issues varied from long class hours, to sexual assaults to depression, eating disorders, and suicide. And so Claire, and a friend set up a meeting with the Dean of the Roseworthy campus Professor Wayne Hein. And they put their proposal to him.
So we went in to a meeting with the dean with a couple of statistics. And this was actually the day after Sophie died, so everything was a bit raw. But we'd been waiting for this meeting for like three months. And we said, we really need a psychologist on campus. And we really need more mental health training and a decrease and we need lecturers with Mental Health First Aid training.
That meeting went well. There is now a clinical psychologist on campus every Monday, students have access to a coordinator who can assess and refer them on for mental health support, and staff are being trained to identify any students in trouble.
So we have a number of different strands to what we are going to implement and have been in the past, but we're increasing the level of support and help that is available to students in particular.
Professor Wayne Hein was head of the school of animal and veterinary science and Dean of Roseworthy at Adelaide University until 2022. Around a decade ago, he says it became clear that vet students needed to learn much more than just how to diagnose and treat animals, but also how to run a vet clinic time management, financial know how, and also how to look after themselves.
And we teach a lot of behaviour things and human behaviour and a little bit of salt kind of psychology and well being, how to keep yourself resilient, how to keep yourself fit mentally, and how to deal with challenging situations. And that kind of programme or the training is insinuated throughout the programme that six years of the programme. And bit by bit it builds, we hope that it's building the resilience and kind of mental fortitude of the students and giving them some tools to work with when when they are having a problem and to know where to go to get help when when they need help.
The number of students and staff to needing to take time out for mental well being reasons, has grown over time. And Wayne Hein says the university is doing what it can to keep pace,
More and more students were seeking assistance from a social psychologist or from a counsellor. And that then became a regular kind of feature of going into a veterinary programme that that was expected to be there. So that's, that's been an incremental thing. There have been some acute incidents as well that have so suicides, unfortunately, have occurred.
So that's among the student population
Among the student population. And that was as a consequence of what would have been acute mental conditions that that were a predisposing or predisposition to that. So those, thankfully have been rare. But when they happen, they're quite challenging and confronting for staff for students who were here. And it just reinforces the importance of identifying kind of early signs that students need attention and some staff as well.
Do you feel that at your university, you've got the right level of support for the students who go through the programme that are fit and ready to take up their first job in the profession, knowing the challenges that exist in the profession currently?
Yeah, look, it's getting better, Caroline, we're getting better. We are making very determined efforts to do better, it can always be improved further, and you know exactly what is right. And what is correct in terms of the calibration of how it's done, is, I guess it's a work in progress. We are improving on what we used to do, and giving much more attention to the mental resilience of students and giving them tools that they can use and know where they can go and get help. So I think all of that together is a very good development, whether it's right, whether it's pitched at the level that it needs to be, I think it's probably too early to say we are improving and we will monitor what we're doing and make adjustments as needed.
What Claire's managed to achieve in such a short timeframe is nothing short of phenomenal. I've always been of the opinion that if students rock the boat enough things will change. The students can change universities and change the world if they want to. All you've got to do is grab it by the scruff of the neck and shake the shit out of it.
It's truly amazing. And when you were talking about how you don't know if that's for you, even if it isn't, for you, in the long term, like you have done such amazing thing so far already, and you'll be helping so many vets.
For Claire vet school, and the clinical work she's done over the years, has taken its toll on her personally, her drive to improve mental health for students has paid off. But now she's calling time.
I very recently as in like last month have come to terms with the fact that I don't actually think I want to be a vet anymore. I do love working with animals. But I've worked in the industry for four years, and hitting walls with managers has been really hard on my mental health. I just need something where I don't have to be perfect just to keep my head above water. If I want to protect my mental health, and I think one of the scariest things to me is when I first saw psychiatrists, they wrote on their report that I was either going to recover, struggle for life and fail out of everything, or probably just overdose with veterinary drugs that's confronting to read, but it's probably not wrong, realistically, for me and for where I'm at now.
Claire quit her studies recently. And she's now working as a wildlife educator in Victoria. She may return to vet school one day, but there's a lot to work through first.
I just want the industry to be safe. And that's a big world goal and kind of tackling my small world goals of getting in a psychologist here. And you know, maybe in two years, I'll come back to the industry and I'm going to start really annoying policy. But I don't think I can work as a vet because it doesn't feel very safe for my mental health. And I don't know how many other vets are out there in the world. Not feeling safe as veterinarians, whether that be through management through their own mental health through public perception, through economic instability, or just how fast everything can change. I just really think we need to focus on increasing the safety that vets experience.
The mental health support for vet students at Adelaide University is on its way to improving and other unis have also made it a priority. The vet school at Charles Sturt University runs a peer wellness programme aimed at keeping students connected and supported as they go through their degrees. And the University of Queensland has a peer support network that's dedicated to its vet students. So the more bespoke programmes and resources like these, the better. But what about the transition from study to the workforce, that students are turning out grads in the hundreds in fact, the numbers jumped a couple of hundred in the past five or so years to 750 across Australia. And I've been told by several people while making this podcast that we don't need more. The problem they say lies with keeping them in the profession once they're out. But as we've heard for some burnout starts during their degree. And by the time they start work, and you add in the many other stressors like long hours and low pay and staff shortages, and they're well on their way to collapsing. Yeah, that's a really, really important transition. And Professor Hein knows it's a big part of the problem that needs fixing, historically.
And I'm going back a generation or more probably it's been a little bit in the lap of the gods as to how that works. And it's been very much case by case. And the experiences that veterinarians had when they first entered practice their first day at work, their first week at work was highly variable, and some were very good. And some were less than good.
And what kind of damage can that do if it's less than good?
Well, I guess you know, some people would take it and go and keep keep marching. For others that probably has a pretty serious negative impact immediately. And I think that that's very undesirable. So the Australian Veterinary Association and the deans of the universities are in discussion together with the registration bodies as well in each state to come up with a much more coordinated and more regularised transition from studying the student life into the working life of a veterinarian. It's too early to predict where that's exactly going to land. But there's lots of ideas being discussed around a kind of graded programme of introduction to the workforce and more effective mentoring and support as graduates begin to work as veterinarians.
It's these kinds of discussions vets and practice managers I spoke to a hoping for they want some kind of structure to support new grads through the first years of their working lives. Some suggested internships for final year students, perhaps funded by the government, while others say much more collaboration between clinics and the universities is needed. Something they say isn't happening at the moment.
There is no doubt specific and dedicated support needs to start at university. It needs to continue though when students transition into the workplace, and it has to be backed up on a day to day basis in the clinic. The more targeted help from the start that flows right through those first years in the job. Well, the less chance young vet students like Claire Bensted will burn out and leave before they graduate. The less chance vets like cam and Emily Rogowski Dunn will be pushed to the brink just five years out of vet school. And the less chance parents colleagues, family and friends will lose loved ones like Dr. Sophy Putland.
Now when I look at that photo of Sophie, and I think about the 1000s of others who've made it to the end of their vet degrees each year, I wonder how much more needs to be done to keep them safe. The support for vet students while they study is definitely better than it's ever been, though there's still more work to do. But there's still a gaping hole that needs filling to help them clear the even higher hurdles to come as I step into the real world.
Next time on Sick As A Dog - Outside Looking In.
On Pete Hargreaves, Flynn's dad, and we're tagging along behind a lot of his high school and veterinary friends who, in memory of Flynn decided to start Flynn's walk.
The growing grassroots movement started by the families and friends of lost loved ones who were saying enough is enough.
He was just like a vibrant person who was a vet, but it was more than that he was my mate. In four and a half years we've gone from a memorial event to a legacy event. Yeah, I reckon give me damn proud and I reckon he'd be a part of it. And he is a part of Flynn's walk so Yeah, he'd be proud.
Sick As A Dog is written, produced, edited and presented by me Caroline Winter from PodTalk on the lands of the Kuarna people and additional support from Drew Radford. You can support this podcast by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts, share it with others or post about it on social media. And you can find out more online at sickasa dogpodcast.com.au
