Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

nikki.mits — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:20:40 GMT

Sal I really appreciate your honest voice in these situations. Salary for me is the main reason I am looking to get out of nursing. The second reason is (unless you work referral or in a very busy clinic) is that the job does get quite monotonous. The people who employ you in the beginning really big up the job and make it out to be a hugely heroic profession, but the reality is reception, cleaning and one or two anesthetics a day is not enough to keep me interested. I love my job when i get to do it properly, unfortunately working in general practice, that is not too often. It saddens me that the nursing profession is heading this way, but i must agree, I dont see how protecting the nurse title is going to change what the real issue is- salaries, boredom, and if not boredom, overworked and undervalued.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Sal the 1st — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 12:14:31 GMT

Thank you Laura! I also cannot understand how protecting a title is going to make one iota of difference.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Laura Graham — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 12:03:14 GMT

Under-paid, under-staffed, over-worked, under-valued - I don't see how another training pathway is going to help this, as the identified issue is not getting the RVNs to start with, it's keeping them! I am sad to think that now I am earning possibly as much as I will every earn, especially if I look to start a family in the next few years!

Perhaps I'm just in a negative frame of mind right now (aren't we all?) but I also struggle to see how protecting the title is going to help this situation. We need support, an increase of pay and appreciation.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Katie Widdowson — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 17:50:09 GMT

I can say that there are plenty of VCA's me being one of them out there who have been trying to get a trainee position for a while and haven't been successful, trying to find a trainee position advertised is very difficult. I think its difficult for trainee's to live on minimum wage aswell as pay the fees to train,who can afford that? so I feel sad that the VN job may eventually die out. Although I do feel the fact that RVN's being recognised now is a good thing as this may bring training back into the spotlight+more practices will be willing to spend the time training up their VCA's. I can't say why RVN are leaving the profession, maybe the fact that practices are finding it hard to recruit nurses means more pressure is being put on those already doing the job??

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Sal the 1st — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 22:03:56 GMT

yes there is a huge variation in skill levels in newly qualified nurses - scarily so in some cases, so much for standardization! - and as I recall that was one of the reasons bandied around for scrapping the green book system that it couldn't be standardized - or was it really that somebody saw £ signs because adopting the NVQ brought with it government funding?

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Rachel Woodcock — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 20:52:54 GMT

What I worry about if they change the path to qualification and reduce the academic side would this result in substandard nurses? In my experience there is a huge variation in the level of skills in newly qualified nurses dependent on where they did their training and when ultimately we are dealing with lives I think the training standards needs to be kept high.

Salary is clearly an issue and always has been resulting in so many of us leaving the profession to do much less stressful jobs often for better pay. The issue with increasing salaries of vns may encourage practices to employ more non-qualified staff which many already do and allow them to do duties that legally they aren't allowed to do.

I absolutely love being an RVN and pride myself that I continue to increase my knowledge and gain further qualifications regardless of the fact that I don't see an increase in my salary in accordance with this. I do the courses for me and not for the money. Before entering the profession I knew what the average salary was so I knew that I'd never be particularly well off but I can't imagine doing anything other than this job. Each monthly bills are paid and I have a roof over my head and my pets are fed so what else do I need - who needs flash cars and expensive holidays! As they say,once you're dead you can't take it with you!

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Sal the 1st — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 08:22:35 GMT

last reply didnt post?

so will try again. I was also saddened by the high turnover comment - for the 30+ years I have been in this job it has always been the same. This is not something that has ever changed - with the exception that now it is worse than ever with more of your qualified nurses (some of them only just qualified) joining the rapidly accelerating gravy train that has become vet nurse training rather than actual nursing at the front line. Further training pathways are going to do nothing to solve this problem, but will do plenty to compound it.

Lets take a look at some of the 'pathways' we have now.

The apprenticeship - the age at which a student nurse could start their training was conveniently dropped to 16 to make full use of the apprenticeship scheme. So now we have even younger 'student nurses', many of them lacking maturity and with no clear idea of what they want as a career except that they would like to work with animals (and this is common to a high proportion of school leavers in their first jobs, whatever their first jobs happen to be). Its perfectly legal to pay them an hourly wage as low as £2.73 (will go up to £3.30 1st October). They may set out with best of intentions and may be really keen to be a veterinary nurse but after a while of living with parents (if they are lucky) doing a full time job, earning what is essentially pocket money and using the time that they are not working to study ...... doesn't take a genius to work out that there will be an incredibly high drop out rate.

The degree - living on a student loan, placements may be paid if you are lucky but there is a good chance they wont be. The ones that get that far qualify (eventually) and take their degree into something more profitable, or get a taste for studying and decide they would like another degree in something else. There are very few that stay in actual nursing very long

On the job training - earning at least the minimum wage, but the training has now become so onerous and costly to some practices that they no longer bother so training places are scarcer than rocking horse dung. Once trained and qualified many of the newly qualified will drift off in search of the bright lights of the referral practice and its higher wages leaving the practice that did the work of training them to start all over again.

There is no actual requirement for a practice to employ qualified nurses. Many of them don't. I don't see that changing, it can't until the nurse training becomes more acceptable/accessible to practices so more of them take part and for that to happen the qualification has to be more in line with what the practice requires rather than what somebody on high has decided they should have, and it certainly won't if it has already been decided that it is acceptable for vet nursing to be a high turnover occupation.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

sarah barnett — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 22:07:40 GMT

I thoroughly agree with what everyone is saying here about salary. It is very unrewarding to put in the level of commitment both physically and mentally that we do, yet barely being able to support yourself financially. There are times in this job where I feel I have chosen my career over my a comfortable lifestyle, and it is during these times where I would question a career change. I am at that 'just over 30' age described the article and have only just been able to afford my own home. I am now living on a strict penny counting budget, meaning that my life currently consists of working as much as I can to get by and then being exhausted from working so much. I love being a nurse, it is what I always wanted to do and I find it difficult to think of any job I would be better at, however the grass often looks greener on the other side.

I think the comment “perhaps we may, reluctantly, have to accept that, for the time-being, veterinary nursing is a young profession with a high turnover" is sad one. There are plently of RVNs who would love to stay in this job, but are coaxed away by better financial stability, usually for fewer, more sociable hours and much less responsibility.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

tricetra — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 07:53:17 GMT

I agree with what everyone is saying here. Salary is the main issue, like someone else pointed out we are clinical staff with several years of training required and yet we could GET PAID MORE as a supermarket cashier!!. If you want to keep RVN's then you need to reflect the pay with the skill set and length of study.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

SalB — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 21:31:25 GMT

I agree with everyone else. Salary.

As a kid growing up being an RVN is all I have ever wanted to do. I love my job but as you get older you have more financial commitments ie house, kids etc

It's so annoying knowing if you worked in a supermarket you would get paid more but we are a profession and a job we should be proud of. Yes shop staff work hard but really, the veryerinary world is at times very challenging and hard work!

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Sal the 1st — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 21:22:05 GMT

oh boy where shall I start?

Stop mucking around with the training.

Establish a good basic training that will benefit everybody that can then be built on and leave the more specialist/ academic stuff for an add on qualification for those who need or want it. This will shorten training, bring down costs and may even encourage more practices to train.

Get back to basics - stop trying to over complicate things. Create yet another VN training pathway? - how many do you want for goodness sake? we don't need another pathway we just need to sort out the shambles we already have, its over priced, over complicated, and overly time consuming.

Try asking the practices that train nurses(or those that would train nurses if the training wasn't so costly and onerous) what they would like rather than taking on the opinions of those those that don't train but poach everybody elses qualified nurses.

Reward practices that train and bring in a yearly charge for those that don't - which can then be used to subsidise the cost of nurse training, ie cutting the cost of registration for trainees, cutting the cost of exams - but don't use this as an excuse to generate more income for the RCVS.

Encourage more practical skills and take the academic side down several notches, lets get the job done rather than pontificating on how it should be done.

Stop bigging the job up into something it isn't and this may result in less dissatisfaction and better retention of qualified nurses, people are often being given unreasonable expectations from the very start.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Catherine11 — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 21:08:32 GMT

Experienced nurses will continue to leave the profession unless there is a dramatic change in salaries. Many practices do not value experience and/or are not willing to pay for it, while they can pay newly qualified nurses a pitence.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Paris M — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:41:38 GMT

Pay is a massive issue and needs to be looked at thoroughly as qualified nurses, no matter how passionate, will continue to leave if they cannot support their own lives with such low salaries. I am uncertain whether I will take a permanent role again after being locum for the past 12 months, the money is too good and I feel much more valued for my time and experience. I have been offered permanent roles but have declined purely on salary. I would hope that if the veterinary nurse title was to be officially recognised as a profession then the salary would reflect the qualification, in the manner vets are rewarded.

RE: Vet Futures asks how can we get more nurses?

Stacey1 — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 18:34:07 GMT

This is a very interesting subject... I myself am currently a student very near to qualifying. And honestly I really can't see myself staying in the profession when qualified, as much as I love where I work and the people I work with, I do find/feel that I am undervalued and like you have mentioned the poor pay for the work and the amount of effort we put in just seems to go unrecognised. This unfortunately does seem to be a trait across the profession.