Author: Kele Harris
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Vets in crisis: the perfect storm
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Working in veterinary at the minute is hard… We thought it was tough last year, but there always seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel (staff coming back from furlough, the vaccine rollout, etc). We hoped by now that 2020 would just seem like a bad dream. But no. If anything,…
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Unpacking the fear
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As a vet, everyone expects you to have an interest in and love for all animals. However, some vets are allergic, scared or unfamiliar with particular species. For me, it’s alpacas. I’m not fond of them. In fact, I would even describe it as a borderline phobia, which stems from being spat at by the…
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Eat, sleep, vet, repeat
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Many aspects of lockdown are similar to being on-call: travel is restricted to staying in your local area, and, apart from shopping for food or exercising (especially with the weather still feeling rather wintery), most people are largely house-bound. That’s not to mention the fatigue and constant low-level anxiety – so trying to find things…
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Silver linings in a blue January
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With altered plans and festivities limited to just one day in England, it feels like Christmas came and went even more swiftly than usual this year – so perhaps the post-Christmas blues may not be so noticeable. However, it is these – together with the poor weather, failure to stick to New Year’s resolutions and…
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We’ll look after them
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Since the beginning of the pandemic, many small animal vets adopted a “no clients in the building” policy. To begin with, we didn’t like it. Everything took longer, we ran back and forth between practice and car park, history taking was stilted, the practice phone lines were jammed and we often ended up running around…
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A dog is for life, not just for Christmas… or lockdown
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In the first lockdown in March, we saw a surge in puppy purchases. With vets up and down the country struggling with staffing issues, and trying desperately to heed RCVS and BVA advice to see emergencies only, new owners requesting puppy vaccines just added to that pressure. We waited with trepidation, expecting the craze to…
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Lockdown 2.0 as a vet
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During the last lockdown, I wrote about the struggles of working in a veterinary practice through COVID. And while that has changed slightly, it has still been an extremely tough year for all members of staff throughout the profession. In March, practices up and down the country resorted to emergencies only, and postponed all routine…
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Mixed new grads
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As a student, I remember sitting in the passenger seat of a farm vet’s car on the way to a cow caesarean, desperately trying to remember anything he might ask me about calvings. Instead, he quizzed me on the top 10 small animal emergencies. I think he was trying to reassure me that not many…
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Accessibility to veterinary medicine, part 3: postgraduates
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There are many reasons that someone may decide to embark on a veterinary course as a postgraduate. Whether that be because his or her A-level or equivalent grades weren’t reached at the time to enter at undergraduate level, or a change in career direction later in life (who genuinely knows what they want to do…
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Accessibility to veterinary medicine, part 2: attracting students
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So why is the veterinary profession struggling to attract students from underprivileged backgrounds? Whether it has anything to do with economical geography or not, many vets will tell the same story – they were told repeatedly during their childhood and teenage years that they would never make it as a vet and to pick another…