I attended a joint BVA / RCVS meeting on Monday afternoon to do some brain- storming for the Vetfutures initiative. As a profession, where are we going to be in 2025?
The Project Manager, Sally Williams and colleague, Hannah Jordan provided a literature review, which highlighted six forces that are likely to shape the future for the veterinary profession:
1. Demographic Changes
a. Feminisation and the impact on part-time working – in the 2014 RCVS survey the number of vets working part-tine was 19% an increase from 11% in 2000. Most striking is the proportion of men undertaking part-time work, which has more than doubled since 2010.
b. Women tend to gravitate to SA, equine and mixed practice, whereas men lean towards to farm and equine
c. Socio-economic background of veterinary students: 24% of vets responding to the 2014 RCVS survey had been privately educated.
2. Economic Forces
a. Supply & Demand – where the US leads the UK often follows. An American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) survey indicates a surplus capacity of vets of between 11% and 14% between 2011 and 2025. Pet ownership in the UK remains strong (46% of households have pets) but this is not necessarily an indicator of the number of vet visits with owners utilising the Internet for advice!
3. An increasingly Competitive Market
a. Increasing number of corporates versus private sector practices
b. Internet sales of drugs
c. Human pharmacies moving into the pet marketplace.
4. Client Behaviour
a. Convenience culture – clients are “increasingly digitally sophisticated” and “time constrained”.
b. Farmers increasingly want proactive vets who are “part of the team”.
c. An RCVS client survey indicates that veterinary services need to change from a model of what vets are prepared to offer, to one that is driven by the needs and wants of existing and potential clients. The UK healthcare sector uses the end user as it’s starting point – it’s about “empowering patients”.
5. Food Supply and Global Imperatives
a. Issues such as climate change, bioterrorism, antimicrobial resistance, food supply & security and trans-boundary disease.
6. Mental Wellbeing
a. Research suggests that vets are no longer at greater risk of suicide compared with other professions.
b. An RCVS survey found that nearly 90% of vets found the job stressful but 80% reported job satisfaction.
c. 1 in 7 vets reaches burnout within the first 10 years post-graduation; 1 in 5 female vets meets the criteria for burnout with the first 5 years post-graduation.
Two days later I was back in London speaking at the AGM of the Royal College of Chiropractors where I spoke to it’s recently formed Animal Faculty on the very topical subject of the Vet / Therapist interface. Obviously this was from an equine perspective and was an opportunity to share with them some of the outcomes of the recent survey we undertook for the RMPR project. The return journey to Euston on a Boris bike coincided with a torrential downpour; it was going to happen one day!
On Thursday I attended a joint meeting of the Veterinary Policy Group (VPG) and Ethics and Welfare Group (EWG) of the BVA at Mansfield Street on the contentious issue of the “badger cull”. I attended at the specific request of the BVA President, John Blackwell but I’m not sure that it’s right that we (BEVA) should have an official view; that’s surely the job of the specialist divisions. If you’d like to voice your concerns about the cull, I’d encourage you to contact the BVA directly.
Following this I caught a late flight to Stockholm to attend the second Nordic Equine Veterinary Conference, arriving at 0100hrs. Between Stockholm Arlanda Airport and the hotel, I managed to lose my mobile…..
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