What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

RE: What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

Laura Nelson — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 19:22:05 GMT

I’m not surprised at this news. if you want to qualify via the diploma route it is now very easy to get onto a course. The College of Animal Welfare (Vetskill) have lowered their entry requirements meaning you no longer need to have work experience within a veterinary practice before applying. They take on many more students now due to the fact that the course can be delivered online and have restructured the course for non-employed students where they do one year in practice in year 2, much like the degree route. It’s a quantity over quality situation.
I think practices have a duty of care to ensure that they are training veterinary nurses properly as what is ‘competent’ to one clinical coach may not be to another. Some practices are still seeing student nurses as free labour and that’s not fair to the student, the other staff members or the profession. We need to make sure that if we are training more nurses than ever before that they are being provided the best training possible and that they are suited to the job. Our practice has had several disasters in this area as I’m sure most other practices have. I think doing away with the work experience component of the entry requirements is a terrible idea as nursing is much different and also more challenging than what the general public think it is and that if someone is going to commit to several years of education they need to make sure that it is something that suits them.

RE: What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

Clare Marsh — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:10:55 GMT

As a student nurse, this is rather worrying. I had - perhaps naively - thought that I was joining a profession that had plenty of room for me and where I could be reasonably hopeful of job opportunities. Given that I’ll be 40 by the time I qualify, I had assumed that this would be my “final” career (one that I wish I’d found 20 years ago), but it sounds as though that may be a rather more precarious wish than I’d realised.

My own practice seems to be experiencing a bit of a dry patch; costs seem to be an issue for nearly every owner that comes through the door and I can certainly believe that pet ownership - or at least ownership that includes regular veterinary care - will become a luxury. It’s hard to see how that won’t affect the labour market.

RE: What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

Arlo Guthrie — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 10:26:57 GMT

One of the factors I can't help feeling is missing here is supply and demand, and the increasing costs of veterinary care.

In other words, the more expensive it becomes to own a dog, the less people will buy one.

That effect is masked by insurance (ie the lag between care costs going up and premiums increasing), and by the generational nature of dog ownership (ownership was much cheaper for the last generation than this one, and I guess there will be some a substantial number who bought one ages ago, but wouldn't now replace the animal because of cost).

If the profession prices itself out of the market, the workforce predictions are going to be thrown completely.

rgreeny - this is another two dimensional aspect of the survey. As I understand it, they projected increases in pet ownership based on PAW report stats, stripping out the pandemic puppies. But that takes no account of, as I say, the cost of pet care, or fashion for that matter.

Now I think of it, someone else raise the point at the press briefing that the model presumes a continued increase in dog ownership as has been seen in previous years. But that may not happen, as society becomes more urbanised.

RE: What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

rgreeny — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:48:12 GMT

Whilst it would be great news to hear that more vet nurses are joining the profession and more are staying within it, I am very sceptical of this prediction. These sorts of models are often very two dimensional, which is highlighted by the projected increase in 40 year old plus nurses. Most the nurses I’ve spoken to who are approaching their 30s are looking at leaving the profession to allow them to; pay a mortgage, have a good maternity package, work flexible hours due to childcare, obtain a good pension, and many other reasons. And for those of us who aren’t looking at raising a family there is the question of will our bodies be able to do this job as we get older? Similarly I am still seeing nurses burnt out from working through the pandemic, and I am slowly seeing these nurses move away from clinical practice. This highlights the varying factors which cause nurses to leave the profession or move away from a traditional practice based role. And these are the sorts of issues companies need to address if they want to attract and keep staff.

Luckily there are more diverse roles for RVNs now, so perhaps some of those staying on will remain on the register but not be working in clinical practice. Unfortunately I do not see some of these predictions being that accurate.

RE: What do you think about the predicted oversupply of veterinary nurses?

Selena Carnell — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:15:50 GMT

Not sure, considering the drop out rate for both nurses and vets within a few years is quite high. Wages are not increasing for nurses but the rent and everything is.

There seems to be fewer training practices and still a high amount of applicants for places.