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.
The veterinary industry in Australia has been plagued by attrition for years now the shortage of vets is critical, and it's most acute in rural and regional areas. So I'm heading to Far North Queensland to spend some time with a vet practice owner to understand better how it got so bad.
Welcome to Cairns where the local time is approaching 10 minutes to two in the afternoon.
Landing in Cairns, it's a delightful 26 degrees. I'm more than happy to have traded Adelaide's chilly winter for the tropics for just a few days.
On behalf of our crew, it's been our pleasure having you on board today.
This isn't my final destination though. I'm about to drive an hour and a half inland to the southwest to the rural town of Atherton in the Tablelands region, which is famous for its national parks and waterfalls and hikes. But I won't be doing any of that this trip. Instead, I'm here to find some answers as to why a growing number of vet clinics across the country are shutting their doors after decades of serving their communities. Claire Valley veterinary services in Jamestown in South Australia is one of the latest. It was the only vet clinic in the states mid north and it closed primarily because of staff shortages and online bullying. Now the nearest bet for locals is an hour's drive away. Losing these clinics leave a massive hole in an already cavernous market. And it adds immense pressure to other practices that are already struggling. And it's not just pets at stake out here. Livestock and wildlife make up a large chunk of the workload. So what will it take to recruit and retain rural and regional vets?
I'm Caroline winter, a journalist and dog lover and you're listening to Sick As A Dog Episode four Critical Shortage. 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.
As I drive away from the blue green water off the coast of Cairns, and wind my way through lush green national parks towards Atherton. I'm reminded of the enormity of Queensland and it's 1.8 million square kilometres. It's the country's main producer and exporter of beef. And it has healthy sheep fishing dairy, pig and poultry industries too. It also has some of the most incredible wildlife in Australia. It's pretty and warm and well tropical, hence the name. I eventually pull up outside a charming old weatherboard house. And I wonder to myself who wouldn't want to work in this part of the world? This is the Atherton vet clinic. It's the ninth in the tropical vets group. The receptionist is finishing up a call with the client when I arrive.
Thanks Michelle we'll talk soon. All right. Bye. Graham won't be too long.
Thank you.
How you going?
That's Dr. Graham Lauridsen. He's been a vet for more than 25 years and he's the director of the aptly named Tropical Vet Services. He runs this busy clinic which also offers a 24 hour emergency service.
So we're on the Atherton Tablelands which is behind the cans so it's tropical yet it's elevated. So it's a little bit cooler, beautiful climate, very fertile soils, lots of flowing creeks and rivers and beautiful place to be.
Dr. Lauridsen is also a leading expert on the endangered cassowary which is a close relation of the emu. It's tall it doesn't fly and it has a striking blue, purple and orange face and neck.
So I work within it anything and everything whatever comes. So we the clinic here is I guess predominantly dogs and cats but we do do cattle we do horses we do and I do do a fair chunk of wildlife including some cassowary and crocodile works with the Department of Environment in Queensland.
He also travels north to Cape York to treat animals in the Aboriginal Shire councils. Graham is a busy guy. He has two other vets and seven nurses and receptionists who also work with him here at Atherton and he's big on work life balance. So everyone works a four day week. But like everywhere else, they're short on vets.
There's a few 1000 vets not working in Australia who have left their profession who if they were with us, well, things would be a whole lot nicer, but they've left because they were broken and they had to leave and you can't get them back. So yeah, the crisis is there. And it's, yeah, there's a mental health crisis, there's a shortage of vets crisis, which can spread into animal welfare issues. Definitely. There's days where we have to say, look, sorry, we cannot see we've already dealing with three or four or five other critical cases, and we don't have the staff for the space or the availability to get you in. We work well with the vet clinics around us. And that goes both ways we clinics in other surrounding towns have will tell us, hey, look, we're down a few people this week. So we work our best. But there's definitely times where I would have to say there's a potential for animal welfare to become an issue where we just can't get to all the cases we need to in a timely manner.
They have 100 staff across the nine clinics, including 29 vets, but Graham says another six across the board would make a huge difference.
If we had another vet, for one thing, we'd actually be able to do more work, because there's work currently that we either having to do later in the day, or putting off to the weekend, or literally saying to clients, we cannot fit you in, and they're either having to reschedule or go elsewhere. But the main lifestyle benefit is if we had more vets on, we could work less weekends, which is, I guess, part of the reason why some people will leave the profession because their lifestyle is impacted by their work.
Are there long hours in the job? Yeah,
Certainly, especially if you're on call, you can get a call in the middle of the night, but you still come back to work the next day. And I've got some friends who are in the ambos. And you know, they get sort of fatigue leave and hours off if they have to work extra hours. And obviously as as in a private profession that we're in, we don't get that luxury. If you're on call at night, generally, you're still working the next day. We do give our guys days off, they will they will work a four day week, they will get a day off a week. But at time, they still may have been at well into the night and still working. So look, I average somewhere between 50 and 60 hours a week. I guess that's because I'm part of my work is around management. And so I have to do some paperwork and stuff which gets done out of hours because we haven't got enough events to allow me to do it during time.
That shortage How long have you been waiting to try and fill that complement so that you would be at at full capacity?
I'd have to say for the last 10 years, I don't think I can say there's a time where we've been fully staffed, obviously, jobs are filled, but then people leave and we grow. So it's not that we are losing staff necessarily, but actually we're just needing more because our business is growing. And so just when you think you've got enough staff, you realise that we're getting busy and we need more. At the moment, we're probably two or three vets short of being comfortable. Our sort of ethos within our clinics is though, is it actually trying to overstaffed ourselves? We just never get that luxury?
Why is there such trouble in filling vacancies?
There's 1000 reasons and I can name a few. Obviously, we're regional. And so we're only ever going to have a small pool of people to pick from to begin with. Because only a certain amount of people like to live in in the regional areas, a lot more people obviously live in the cities. Vets know that if they get a job in a regional area, they will be doing after hours. We can't employ any vets who aren't able to work after hours where it's because that is part of our job. We like to think we pay them well. But when I say well, I guess that's in comparison to other vets. It's still not well in comparison to other professionals who are doing similar sort of work and similar sort of hours. So there's issues there around money. And yeah, I guess our issue is we have a specific lack in finding experienced vets, vets who have been out of university for maybe five or 10 years. Those guys are particularly hard to find. We can generally find new grads and we enjoy new grads and we work with them a lot. But the experience vets generally mostly because wherever they've gone to, in most cases, they found a job they like they've found a partner they may have had bought a house had a family that sort of stuff. So they're very settled where they are. It's pretty hard to get them to move.
There are hundreds of ads for vets across the country filling them is the hard part. In fact, the most recent figures come from the Australian veterinary Association's workforce survey in 2021 and that found that 52% of all jobs advertised took more than six months to fill, with about a third of them taking more than a year to fill.
It can't keep going the way it's going. You'll find towns without vets. There'll be there'll be people that that will leave the profession. There'll be older vets who can't find young people to replace them who will sell their business or close their business and leave. And that'll mean exactly what we've been talking about more stress on the people remaining less people around to do the biosecurity work. It's not getting better yet. It's getting worse.
Today that shortage has been felt at the methadone clinics, one of grand Lauritsen vets is sick with COVID. Another is on leave. So it's on him. The nurses and two university vet students to carry the load. Jett the six year old boxer has arrived for his vaccination.
So we're getting Lepto today. Yes, he said he's not done before is that already has he's had it. Graham has a bit of a chat with Jett's owner and he gives his patient a pat. Cool. Hello, mate. Hello. Then in no time the job's done.
Just one jab stand still Tuesdays. Yep, there we go. Perfect.
And they're on their way. Next on the list today is a desexing. I follow Graham and the two vet students Alina and Tiaan and Giselle, the vet nurse into the surgical room. Lying there is Rocky, a five month old black Maltese poodle, and he's sedated and covered by a blue surgical drape.
So we're doing a dog castration. And that's almost I would say a daily procedure. Obviously, a big part of good pet ownership is having a desex pet.
That beeping you can hear. That's the heart rate monitor. Rocky has an oxygen mask over his snout, and he's having the best sleep of his life. Today Graham is playing teacher and student vet Alina is about to desex her first dog.
I just leave that clip there. Now. Once you get your ligature ready and get it round, I would tie in the bottom in the bottom crush. Yep, absolutely. If you can, if you can tie it up without needle drivers, you're almost already better than me. I love students, sunbeds don't, I hope students enjoy me. It's a good opportunity to teach people tricks that they don't necessarily see at uni and and you get to meet a great variety of people like these guys have got interesting lives, where they've come from and what they're doing here and how they've got to uni and all that sort of stuff. And we tend to talk about all that as we go along. I guess we're mentoring these guys.
Alina focuses on Rocky. And while Graham watches on we keep chatting.
The sexing is notoriously a cheap fee that we provide. If we were doing a similar operation, if we were say we were having to stitch up a wound where we had to nice the ties a dog like this, we would charge significantly more. So yeah, it's it's a service that we provide to the community because it's good pet ownership, and notoriously most vets in Australia will do it at a much discounted price.
So does that tell them that kind of discounting for see just kind of go into that bigger mix of issues when it comes to pricing and etc, that we've talked about?
Yeah. 100%. So obviously, part of the vet industries issue is is vets paid less than then similar professionals. And that is because we don't have there's no government funding, there's no Medicare, there's none of that. So if I'm employing vets, their wage has to come out of what we make. And so if we're not charging enough, obviously, then we can't pass that on. There's certainly a lot of talk around that. How do we fix that. And yet, we want to be able to pay our vets more we want to be able to have a better lifestyle, we want to be able to do all those sort of things we want the stress of our job to be compensated for. But at the same token, our clients need to be able to afford the services that we're providing. So there needs to be a happy medium.
But finding that happy medium where pet owners can afford to pay and Graham can pay his staff and the bills short comes at a cost.
So if this was a half hour procedure, and if it was we're having to tie some sutures and give an anaesthetic and have a vet nurse here preparing all that for us, having the cage downstairs where the animals been and all the work That's gone in before and then the cleanup and then obviously the I guess I'm giving you the whole list but we were we sterilising the the instruments and wrapping everything up again, say I was removing a lamp that was taking me similar time, it would be close to $1,000 operation. How much do we charge for a customer about 300? So we're looking at at least a 50% discount, probably more,
Multiply that across various procedures. And that's a lot of money not coming through the door.
Do you think that generally, clients or generally people don't understand the cost of pet care?
I certainly they don't, I would, I would love the government to Medicare, I'm all for it. And free health care is a great thing that Australians have access to. I'd love us just to get the bill at the end of the day when we walk into the hospital to actually know what our procedure costs. You know, if you get pulled, you have a car accident, and the ambulance takes you to hospital. And even if you've got a few bangs and bruises and you go home the next day, I'd love to know how much that actually costs the government. Because that would give people a realistic view of what our costs are. Because all our costs we have to pay for ourselves with there's no, all our drugs are not covered by the medical benefit scheme. So we have to pay everything. So the I'd love people to know that it costs them $300,000 To fix the broken leg, because that's the reality.
I guess the counter argument would be from some people well, this is you know, private practice, and it's a private industry and people choose to have pets, what would you say
100%. That's true, it is correct. You're your animal is your responsibility. The fact that you don't want to spend $500 to desex, your female dog. That's not my fault. You're the owner of that animal you chose to get it. It's like anything, if you buy a car you need, you need to know that need to put fuel in it and you need to get it serviced. And that comes at a cost.
That medicine has come a long way in the past 20 years, which Graham says has increased the quality of their work. They use safer and better anaesthetics and other drugs. They have nurses who have a much bigger role in treating and monitoring patients. There's a lot of disposable sterile equipment that they use to do their jobs better as well. And they have access to more sophisticated diagnostic tools. But he says the way people view pets and animals has also changed what happens in the clinic.
So people have a higher expectation, which is great. It means that we're able to provide a level of service that we're very happy to provide because we, as vets, we like to provide the best possible outcomes for the for the patient that we can. At times, though, that expectation of the client is not realistic. Just because you've seen it done on TV doesn't mean it's something that's easily done, or done at a cheap price. So there's costs involved. And for some vets, yeah, there's, there's a stress that is probably a little bit unrealistic. We can't provide that service to every client in every town with all the gear that we would love to have. So in the veterinary world, there's great being great increases in what we're able to do and what we're able to provide, but it needs to come with a little bit of common sense in reality, as well.
So how's Alina going?
Well, the dogs still breathing.
And I haven't fainted yet.
And there's, there's there's not been a lot of blood. No, she's doing fine.
Giselle, how's rocky doing up there?
Not feeling the thing.
Rocky's testicles are out. And Graham is talking Aleena through the final stage the stitch up.
So what we're attempting to do here is what we call an intradermal suture. So an intradermal suture is it means when the dog goes home, there's no stitches on the outside. So the client actually doesn't have to get any stitches taken out.
And Alina is giving it a crack on her first one.
She's doing a very good job. So we're almost there. With this little one. Looks good to me. We can we can put a little bit of tissue glue over the top. Cool. So we now turn him off and waking up.
It's clearly obvious how valuable it is for vet students or new grads to work somewhere like this with that supervised hands on experience. Dr. Graham Lauridsen mentors and teaches them on the job but he's also created a good place to work. His staff are paid fairly. They have a four day workweek. And from just spending some time amongst them. It seems like a really happy place. Yeah,
Look there. You got to love them and you got to look after him. You got to treat them exactly how you would want to get treated. And in the same way I also expect them to work up and they know that so they'll work hard and then yesterday We're getting lunch I shout them lunch. And that's cool. And they don't expect it and it's not not asked. And that's just a benefit that they get for working here. So, ya know, you have to show them that you appreciate them. And at the same time, you have to expect from them that they're gonna do a good job and work work the best they can. And that goes both ways, because I expect to be working just as hard as everybody else. And I hope it goes both ways.
This was the kind of daily care, attention and support that was missing from Cam and Emily Rogowski Dunn's experience in rural Western Australia. They said themselves hadn't been there, they wouldn't have burned out or considered leaving the industry. Graham Lauridsen is doing what he can to recruit and keep staff. But it is a challenge the federal government is being asked to help to there's a push for the student debt vet graduates who take jobs in rural and remote areas to be wiped completely. It's called debt forgiveness or hex forgiveness. And it's similar to the bonding scheme they have over New Zealand. New vets who go bush and work with livestock would get $70,000 over five years to pay off their hex or for those without a debt. Well, they'd get the payment directly, it would put young vets 1000s of dollars ahead, and it would bring them into line with doctors and nurse practitioners who've also been offered the same.
I think the government needs to look at some sort of incentive. And yeah, so if that means reducing their HECS by half or paying for a portion of it or paying for it while they are working in a rural area, even if they doesn't get paid off for the time while they're in working in the rural area, then I think they're all incentives that can be beneficial to getting more vets to come and work in the other beautiful parts of Australia.
I'm Tiaan. I'm a fifth year vet student at James Cook University.
Hi, I'm Alina. I'm a fourth year vet student at James Cook University. Tiana and Alina have been with tropical vets in Atherton for the past week as part of their practicals through uni. And they are the future of animal medicine out here.
I grew up on a farm. So large animals is an interest of mine. And that tends to lend itself to more regional practice. I'm happy anywhere, but I would prefer to be doing some large animal.
There's no need to convince these two to go rural or regional though they're already on board.
Definitely rule over city, I want to do large animals and there's just not that option in the city.
One silver lining of the vet shortage is that they have plenty of choice when it comes to jobs. Tiaan is about to graduate and is going to a practice in Townsville, about 350 kilometres south of here, though the long hours potential for burnout and mental health pressures factored into his decision.
Yeah, it's definitely like something that I think about very seriously. And I took that into account in taking this job, I made sure that it's an multi vet practice, I'd have plenty of support and wouldn't be doing too many after hours. And I'm working four days a week rather than five. So that's very important to me. I know it is a problem in the industry. And I personally just make sure that I'm happy and aren't working too much. But yeah, it is something that you have to consider.
So that's at least two guaranteed new vets in the regions. But their job is far more than just desexing dogs and vaccinating cats.
Australia's meat export trade could be shut down for years and rural communities will suffer if a lethal livestock disease enters Australia from Indonesia, foot and mouth disease are highly contagious
In mid 2022 Australia faced a huge biosecurity threat to its livestock.
So Foot and Mouth Disease while it's a nasty disease. While it does cause some some fatalities while it does cause a lot of animal welfare issues. It is also a significant economic issue in that if Australia were to get Foot and Mouth Disease, there are a lot of countries that would overnight stop taking any of our meat products whether that be from cattle, whether that be from sheep, whether that be from pigs, whether it be from anything,
And if there was to be an outbreak of Foot and Mouth or lumpy skin disease or African swine fever, all big concerns for farmers and meat producers and governments. Private vets like Dr. Graham Lauridsen would be called on.
Part of the government's plan in the past has been to be able to call on private vets to help in cases of foot and mouth disease outbreak so if there's an outbreak I can use our community here as an example, all the vets are busy, we're not sitting around waiting for that outbreak to happen. And if that outbreak is to happen, there are not enough government vets, certainly in Queensland to provide the level of work that would be required. So the government will have to be calling on private pets, private vets that are already working. So mean someone's going to miss out either our clients will have to wait longer, or vets might say, don't want to do that work, which most vets will be very keen to help Australia get eradicated from an exotic disease. So it's an issue. And there's not sort of a reserve of vets just hanging in the background that can suddenly jump up and do the work. So it wouldn't be where a crisis that has already current would just become magnified.
Vets are on the front line here. They're the ones living and working in our rural communities and a part of the surveillance and early detection of disease. They're also part of the plan to treat animals if they get sick. But if there's not enough of them getting out on farms to help identify if a disease has slipped in, or trained up to manage one if it does, then how does that play out? The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the gross value of livestock and livestock products in the 2021-2022, financial year at $34 billion. And animal exports are worth $1.6 billion to our economy. That's a part of the system that protects the agriculture industry is bottom line. And biosecurity. But also our own food security,
Things like lumpy skin disease, certainly African swine fever, those sort of things. They are diseases that will dramatically affect production, both meat, milk, all that sort of stuff, such as food security, you know, Australia, while is currently a sort of net exporter of animal products, certain exotic diseases coming in can certainly change that pretty quickly overnight.
The dire shortage in the bush surely needs to be a priority. And there's much more at stake here than fluffy not getting a checkup. This is bigger than you and I and it's bigger than the vet profession.
We need vets in rural areas. And it's more about that biosecurity stuff, then I made sure I want more vets to work for me. But I just want more vets to work in rural areas, and so does the government. The government wants that to happen. And so I think if there's can be some policy changes around things like that, that's encouraging people to come and work in rural areas. We know that if we can get someone to come and work for us, they enjoy it. And they'll stay, but you got to get them here in the first place.
Debt forgiveness is just one way to incentivize graduate vets to head to the region's but there could be other options like funded accommodation and travel subsidies, as well as rural loadings and after hours inducements like medical grads get. And what about longer term assistance if they stick around for three or five or more years. It's also got to be about attracting those mid career vets that Dr. Graham Lauridsen talked about, and making sure that all regional vets have the biosecurity skills that they'll need. If the worst does happen.
People who have an animal at home need us people who have cattle in the paddock or horse in the paddock they need us. Yes, we're private. And we're happily private. And I wouldn't want to work specifically for the government. I like to be my own boss and do work for myself. But we are a necessity in the country. Australia can not continue in its current sort of economic climate around disease and all that stuff. And neither can we all enjoy having a puppy dog at home that kills up beside us if vets aren't around. We're not asking for handouts. We're not asking for the government to give us a lots more cash or put pets on Medicare or anything like that. We're just asking to be heard. And we need some help. And often it's more around just public perception if the public knew what we were going through. We don't even need more support. We just need to know that we cared about.
Next time on Sick As A Dog
That's his heart. And so they have a three chambered heart so they're a bit different to us. So you kind of have to learn all the different anatomy of
Who's responsible for our sick and injured wildlife.
A lot of vets want to work with wildlife and they take that oath to look after all animals and wildlife is included in that but wildlife, they don't come with a credit card. They don't come with someone to pay for them.
And is one answer to the vet crisis arise in the cost of care.
I think couple of things that needs to change is that the clients need to be charged more there's no doubt in my mind about that in insight into Other practices that that needs to change
And what will that mean for you and me?
Sick As A Dog is written, produced, edited and presented by me Caroline Winter for PodTalk on the lands of the Kaurna 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 sickasadogpodcast.com.au
