Equine veterinarians are warning of a looming crisis as a shortage of practitioners persists, particularly in regional areas.
As the number of graduates taking up specialist roles continues to diminish in an industry already struggling to attract fresh blood, equine vets say a “massive” shortage is coming.
Martin Dolinschek, who recently took over the position of president of Equine Veterinarians Australia (EVA), said the specialist sector was facing a crisis.
“It’s the long hours; the work-life balance and just the danger for some people and, possibly on the other side of the spectrum, the selection of students going into the university system,” he said.
“So, we have a massive vet shortage coming.”
Based just outside Perth, Dr Dolinschek has been practising for about 25 years and also teaches at Murdoch University.
The veterinarian specialises in horse dentistry — a modern practice involving procedures similar to human dentistry — including crowns, fillings and endodontics.
Dr Dolinschek said the main two deterrents to new graduates to go into equine medicine were lower starting salaries compared to small animal vets and on-call expectations.
He pointed to anecdotal evidence suggesting graduate equine positions attracted salaries of about $75,000 — about 30 per cent less than those in the small-animal sector.
To combat the fast-approaching crisis, Dr Dolinschek said governments and universities, as well as the industry and horse owners, needed to adapt to a changing workforce.
Government-funded university places
There are about 14,000 registered vets in Australia and about 800 new graduates each year.
There is a lack of data on the career choices of new vets in Australia, but it is thought only 2–3 per cent take up roles in equine medicine.
Dr Dolinschek said while this small number on its own was a cause for concern, the issue was compounded by about half leaving the sector in the first five years of work.
Dr Dolinschek said the large attrition rate was due to a number of factors but included a disconnect between the perception and the reality of the job, which often saw veterinarians working alone in dangerous or hot conditions.
He said one solution for the future was for the government to offer more Commonwealth-supported places for domestic students at universities.
“It actually costs universities money to put an Australian veterinary science student through … so they don’t actively search for Australian veterinary students,” he said.
“They will prioritise, in a lot of cases, overseas and full fee-paying students.”
This tended to make it “ridiculously difficult” for local students to enter veterinary studies, he added, and slanted the cohort intake towards students who were less likely to consider regional or large-animal careers.
“I think it’s a really interesting comment on society that we’ve allowed industries like this to become underfunded,” Dr Dolinschek said.
Work-life balance
The other main deterrent to remaining in equine medicine is the challenge of maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Dr Dolinschek said the industry was working on addressing it.
But he said it could be difficult as horse owners often had the private number of their veterinarian and had traditionally been used to dealing with the same vet.
“Once it gets to six, seven o’clock at night, they [small animal vets] turn their phones off, and they go home, go out to the movies, go to the beach [or] to the gym.,” Dr Dolinschek said
“Whereas equine vets are still out there on the roads driving ridiculous kilometres treating animals.”
Rebecca Dunn has been practising for about 10 years.
She operates a solo practice, visiting clients across South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula with a mobile-ute clinic and crush for containing the horses while they are being treated.
While she loves her work and working for herself, Dr Dunn said it was important for equine and large-animal vets starting out to know they could not do it all, and to set boundaries with clients.
Working between her practice and her husband’s farm a few hours away, Dr Dunn said she was clear with her clients that she could not offer after-hour services, referring clients instead to larger clinics in the Adelaide Hills.
Before setting up on her own, she said she was expected to be on call six nights a week.
“And then you’d still be lining up to go to work the next day,” she said.
“Unfortunately, after five or six years the vets are just dropping out and they’ll go into a small-animal clinic because there’s not as much after-hours [work] and more support as well.
“We’re running out of vets to cover the out of hours.”
A new way of learning and working
Olivier Simon is a senior lecturer in Equine Surgery at Adelaide University’s $37-million teaching and treatment facilities at its Roseworthy campus.
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Between 70 and 80 new veterinarians graduate from the university each year.
All students first complete a Bachelor of Science (Bioscience) and then an additional three years of full-time study in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program.
Dr Simon invited the ABC to watch as he performed keyhole surgery on a horse, instructing students as he went through the delicate procedure.
A former semi-professional showjumper in his native Belgium, Dr Simon said the demand for equine services had increased over the years as people started to take more care of their horses.
But he said the proportion of students interested in equine practice had not kept up.
Dr Simon works within the university’s 24-hour equine surgery, which actively models improved work-life practices, ensuring students and staff rostered on nights and on call are given adequate time away from work responsibilities.
He said the old culturally accepted model of vets working fanatically night and day, not taking leave and “never seeing their families” was something new generations did not want to follow.
“I was working doing an emergency surgery across a full night and had my first appointment or just tagging in for my next surgery at 8:30 in the morning without having slept. That will not exist anymore, and you know it’s unsafe, it’s unhealthy,” he said.
“It’s good for the practitioner that it’s changing.”
Dr Simon said colleagues still working in private equine practice did question why they stayed.
“They say, ‘Am I stupid to keep doing equine work when I could be in my warm, clean, comfortable set-up in my small-animal clinic?'” he said.
Dr Simon said Adelaide University worked with its students to teach them how to become not just good veterinarians but also good business operators.
He said when he first started practising, the gender balance in the profession was about 80 per cent men and 20 per cent women, but those numbers were inverted in the current student cohort.
AVA workplace surveys indicate about 67 per cent of the registered veterinarians in Australia are now women.
Dr Simon said the increase in the number of women since he started his career had been positive for the industry and was driving the need for a better balance between vets’ personal and professional lives.
“Certainly, the animals have strongly benefited from that mutation, but it means as well that the profession itself needs to follow, and there’s a little bit of a lag in between,” he said.
Amie Kapusniak graduated from Adelaide University last year and was offered a place at the Roseworthy hospital despite, as she cheerfully admits, accidentally drilling into Dr Simon’s hand as a student.
She said workplaces that valued mental health and a work-life balance were crucial in the already-stressful industry.
“A clinic that values that is a clinic you want to have a job at,” she said.
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