Executive summary
Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on the veterinary workforce shortage in New South Wales. Australia is currently experiencing a critical veterinarian shortage. This shortage has existed for years and has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. The current vet shortage is a complex problem and will require multiple solutions. High attrition rates and negative mental health are significant issues in the veterinary profession. Financial stress and occupational stress are identified as underlying reasons for the high attrition rates and negative mental health of veterinarians, and these contributing factors must be addressed in order to resolve the shortage.
The Australian veterinary profession is associated with low remuneration, high educational debt, high-stress working conditions (abuse from clients, limited resources), frequent ethical dilemmas (euthanasia of healthy or treatable animals), long working hours, high workloads, after hours on-call night work combined with day work, insufficient time off work and poor work-life balance. Due to vet shortages, remaining veterinarians have the added burden of being unable to take leave.
Evidence-based solutions are urgently needed to ensure a sustainable veterinary workforce in the long-term. A robust veterinary workforce is not only critical to maintain animal health and welfare but also has major implications for human health and welfare. Veterinarians are a fundamental part of ‘One Health, One Welfare’ which seeks to optimize the health and welfare of people, animals and their environment and recognises the interconnection between these elements. Veterinarians play critical roles in areas such as global health security through the prevention of zoonotic disease outbreaks; safe agricultural systems; wildlife medicine and conservation, biosecurity and maintaining the pet companionship bond which provides significant physical, mental and economic benefits to humans.
A critical issue is the euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals by veterinarians. Euthanasia of healthy or treatable animals including pets, stray animals and wildlife (also called financial or convenience euthanasia) represents a frequent ethical dilemma for veterinarians, and is a significant occupational stressor for veterinarians in private clinical practice and other contexts such as animal shelters or council pounds. Euthanasing healthy or treatable animals is well-documented as causing moral distress in veterinarians. Moral distress leads to negative mental health impacts (depression, trauma, increased suicide risk), burnout and subsequent attrition. Research also shows that employee turnover rates are positively related to euthanasia rate and that making euthanasia decisions on the basis of factors other than behaviour and health reasons is related to increased personnel turnover.
The current cost-of-living crisis and concurrent rental crisis have likely increased financial euthanasia of both pets and stray animals (mainly semi-owned stray cats and kittens), exacerbating this significant occupational stressor.
Preventing euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals is a key solution to reduce occupational stress, severe negative mental health impacts, burnout and attrition of veterinarians.
The NSW Rehoming Review report (2022) recommended Community Cat Programs as an evidence-based solution to significantly reduce euthanasia of healthy and treatable stray cats and kittens (which represent a large proportion of the convenience euthanasia). Other solutions include higher remuneration, HECs debt waivers, financial incentives for vets to work in in rural, remote and regional areas, and strategies to improve overall working conditions and reduce work-related stress. In addition, veterinary graduate numbers and selection criteria should be reviewed to ensure suitability of veterinary student candidates for clinical work which meets the demand, including ensuring sufficient workforce for mixed and large animal practice in rural, remote and regional areas.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1: Evidence-based strategies should focus on retaining veterinarians in clinical practice and recruiting veterinarians to rural, remote and regional areas. Strategies should address issues including higher remuneration, HECs debt waivers, financial incentives for vets to work in rural, remote and regional areas, improved working conditions, reduced work-related stress, veterinary graduate numbers and suitability selection criteria.
Recommendation 2: Implement evidence-based strategies which prevent euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals by veterinarians to prevent associated severe negative mental health impacts and subsequent attrition.
Recommendation 3: Private clinical practices should not provide discounts to local governments for euthanasia services for healthy or treatable animals (including for stray animals) and instead charge local governments full price euthanasia fees if the animal is healthy or readily treatable. Instead, private clinical practice staff would be better served by providing financial incentives for low-income people for desexing, particularly for cats, rather than providing discounted euthanasia to councils for healthy and treatable animals.
Recommendation 4: Strategies which increase recruitment to rural, remote and regional areas including suitability selection criteria for veterinary student admission, HECS debt waivers and financial incentives for veterinarians to work in rural, remote and regional areas.
Recommendation 5: Domestic cats (owned, semi-owned and unowned) should be excluded from the legal definition of feral cats in legislation and regulation.
Recommendation 6: Legislation and regulation should be amended to enable Return-To-Field (RTF) for healthy or treatable cats (desexed and microchipped).
Recommendation 7: Legislation and regulation should be amended to allow cats to be registered and identified via microchip to an “organisation” rather than only to an individual person.
Recommendation 8: Legislation and regulation should be amended to remove prohibitive registration fees for cats.
Recommendation 9: Legislation and regulation should continue to prohibit mandatory cat containment (night curfews and 24/7 mandatory containment).
Recommendation 10: Legislation and regulation should be amended to prohibit deeming domestic cats that are in traps or entering shelters, pounds, private veterinary practices. rescue groups or similar facilities as being ‘feral’.
Recommendation 11: Legislation and regulation should be amended to prohibit deeming domestic cats that are in traps or entering shelters, pounds, private veterinary practices, rescue groups or similar facilities as being ‘less socialised’ or ‘unsuitable for adoption’ based on fear behaviours exhibited prior to habituation, and prior to providing the cat with reasonable habituation time (based on science) in a non-stressful environment.
Recommendation 12: Alternative rehoming avenues should be used for less socialised healthy or treatable cats where these cats are not adopted such as ‘Working cat’ rehoming and Return-to-Field (RTF) to reduce euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals and associated severe negative mental health impacts on veterinarians.
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