Sarah Hanlon is the only vet at the West Wyalong veterinary clinic in western New South Wales. She spends her weekends and evenings responding to emergency calls after working all day in the clinic.
Smaller animals can come to her, but for larger animals, like horses, she has to make on-farm visits, travelling hundreds of kilometres per week.
“It can be challenging… there are certainly some clinics that don’t offer after hour services, and they don’t offer services to large animals,” Hanlon says.
“That then puts the load onto the other clinics that do provide those services. So it’s okay covering your own clients and regions, but when you’re also then having to start picking up the load of other clinics, it does start to wear you down a little bit.”
It’s a similar picture at veterinary clinics across regional Australia. There is a shortage of vets, particularly equine and large animal vets, but demand for veterinary services keeps growing.
According to the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), there are about 1 million horses in Australia. But only 8% of Australia’s 15,000 registered vets are specialist equine vets. Add to that the demand for after-hours and on-farm services, and Australia’s equine vets are burning out.
“It places a massive load on the health and wellbeing of equine veterinarians to continue to deliver that after hours service, day after day, year after year,” says Dr Cristy Seacombe, the head of veterinary and public affairs at the AVA.
“What we’re finding is that.. one of the ways people are managing is to decrease some of their after hours availability. It then increases the load on other people.”
‘It’s not sustainable’
More than 40% of vet vacancies in NSW were advertised for more than 12 months before the position was filled, the AVA says.
“In the rural context, with the added burden of after hours work, the cumulative toll of this leads to practices closing,” Seacombe says.
The only vet clinic in Parkes closed its doors in May 2022. The sole vet clinic at Wee Waa, the Western Namoi Veterinary Services, closed in April 2023. Both cited the inability to attract new vets as the reason for the closure.
The Local Land Services (LSS) western district, which covers 40% of the state’s landmass, also does not currently have any vets on staff.
“We have one that is on maternity leave, and all of our other district lead roles are vacant at the moment,” says LLS western district general manager Erlina St Vincent.
“I think it’s extra difficult to attract vets here, or any sort of specialised technical people to our region because we’ve got the extra remoteness factor.”
Jo Swarbrick, the practice manager of Hawkesbury Equine Veterinary Centre, spent more than 12 months trying to fill a vacant veterinary position, after losing staff who could not handle the hours.
“It was the vets having to do more after hours and more weekends,” she says. “We’ve had a vet leave and go to greyhound racing to be a vet, just because she had a young boy and didn’t want to do the after hours anymore.”
The NSW parliament last month launched a public inquiry into vet shortages. Inquiry chair Mark Banasiak said it will investigate issues of burnout and barriers to training and practicing. The AVA has separately launched a campaign to increase funding for veterinary education, off the back of a review commissioned by the Veterinary Schools of Australia and New Zealand (VSANZ).
“The funding for veterinary education is not sufficient, and it needs to be increased,” Secombe says.
“And part of the reasons for that is because some of the costs of training get pushed on to the student. And that then impacts their ability to go and see certain types of practices.”
Currently, veterinary students who want to work out of a regional clinic for the practical component of their training have to cover their own accomodation and travel costs. That’s a financial barrier to some students getting that large animal experience.
The AVA wants the cost of that training to be covered, as it is for regional placements for doctors.
“There is funding within the human health education system that pays for student doctors, pays their accommodation, pays their travel, they get supported to do all of those things out rural and regional,” Seacombe says. “That’s what we would like as a profession as well.”
Seacombe says there haven’t been any formal studies of rates of burn-out among Australian vets, but a 2019 survey found about 50% of equine vets, particularly in the younger cohort, said they weren’t sure they wanted to continue in the profession.
“The thing is equine vets love being equine vets,” she says. “They love the job, they love seeing the horses and working with the horses and the clients… but it’s not sustainable.”
Emily Middleton is a journalist based in Gilgandra, NSW
