Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 23, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports BVA congress
Assessing the need for future veterinary surgeons While some in the profession are concerned about a possible ‘overproduction’ of vets, others argue that more might be needed to help meet current and future challenges. A debate at this year’s BVA Congress tackled the question of how many vets are required, while considering how their unique skills might be more widely applied. Manuela Herrera reports
HOW many vets do we need? And how might their specific skills be required in order to take on future problems? These were the questions that Christopher Ogden, senior vice-president of the Association of Veterinary Students, and Professor Lord Trees tried to answer during a contentious issues debate held on November 22 during the BVA Congress at the London Vet Show. Mr Ogden, who graduated from the University of Nottingham this summer, argued that there was a real danger of ‘overproducing’ vets and, that to avoid this, the ‘veterinary profession has to come together with a viewpoint and a strategy in order to move forward’. He described three critical areas which he believed would be negatively affected in the event of more veterinary schools being opened: standards of education, availability of employment, and the overall welfare of vets. The quality of veterinary education, Mr Ogden argued, would suffer from the opening of more vet schools. In particular, he believed that the pace of innovation would be reduced, as funding, resources and suitably experienced university staff would be dispersed and diluted among the increasing number of programmes. He also raised concerns surrounding the availability of EMS placements for veterinary students. In many areas these were already oversubscribed, and further veterinary schools were likely to put more pressure on this network. Mr Ogden suggested that opening new veterinary schools might also lead to a lower standard of student. He wondered whether there were sufficient students of the required calibre to fill so many extra places. If not, he concluded, this could affect the overall identity and image of the profession. In terms of the job market, Mr Ogden said that it was important to look at the situation within a global context as ‘veterinary medicine was no longer on the shortage occupation list in the UK’ and that, with the opening of new vet schools, ‘there could be too many vets here, as in the USA’. He believed that declining employment opportunities were already an issue
Professor Lord Trees (left) and Christopher Ogden, senior vice-president of the Association of Veterinary Students, debate ‘overproduction’ of veterinary graduates
and cited a recent survey of 1460 recent graduates, conducted by the RCVS in May 2013. This had revealed that it was taking new graduates slightly longer to find their first job, and that there was an increased trend towards taking unpaid or volunteer positions. ‘It became more difficult to find employment,’ said Mr Ogden, and recent graduates stayed less time in their first position. The survey found that many recent graduates left their first job after only three months; many of these jobs had been temporary posts, but poor management and inadequate support were also frequently cited as reasons for leaving. He argued that the oversupply in the workforce meant that employers felt they could offer less pay and support. This, he believed, was particularly worrying for young vets as employers ‘could have driven down salaries during the same time period that student debt increased’. Mr Ogden also sought to counter some of the common arguments in favour of increasing the number of vets. First, while he acknowledged that quite a few vets did still come from outside the UK, this, he said, ‘does not indicate a shortfall in UK vets . . . as EU vets fill jobs that are less popular’. Secondly, he considered the idea that vets should consider diversifying and broadening the parameters of their careers, by branching out into areas such as food production and not strictly focusing on clinical work.
596 | Veterinary Record | December 21/28, 2013
This, he argued ‘was not why [most vets] completed five years of university’ and it was unfair to expect graduates to change their career aspirations when they realised there were limited job prospects only after having qualified.
Expansion and change
‘Vet schools are a bit like buses – you wait 60 years for a new one to come along and then three come along at once,’ was how Lord Trees began his presentation. Noting that the University of Surrey was due to open its veterinary school in 2014 and that there were plans for new schools in Ulster and Aberystwyth, he commented: ‘Any university can decide to open a vet school if it so wished. We need to be sanguine and realistic about that’ and ‘there is very little we can do to control this process . . . it is important to consider the lack of control we have’. He went on to say that vets lived in a ‘global village’ and suggested that it was myopic to have focused so exclusively on a couple of potential new schools in the UK when ‘we are talking about 110 vet schools, at least, in Europe. They [EU vets] are all entitled to come and work here and the RCVS and the BVA can do nothing to stop that’. Regarding veterinary education, Lord Trees made the point that a recent analysis by the RCVS had found that there was actually adequate capacity for EMS, but that
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 23, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports placements had to be better organised to maximise availability. Furthermore, he believed that the potential issues that could arise around the staffing of veterinary schools were predominantly a ‘chicken and egg’ problem. In other words, if more vets qualified, eventually, more would also go into academia. Likewise, he challenged the notion that an increase in the output of vets would decrease vet schools’ standards; on the contrary, he stated ‘it would drive up standards . . . competition would do that’. Lord Trees also disagreed that the prospects for new graduates were as bleak as some imagined. Referring back to the RCVS questionnaire, he pointed out that fewer than 5 per cent of graduates had not found a job within six months, adding that ‘this is not indicative of a crisis’. He went on to suggest that aspirations
in the veterinary profession had become limited and that, as a result, it had retreated from other areas of employment; these were instead being taken over by other professions. He believed that qualified vets actually possessed a fantastic comparative science degree that could be applied in a variety of sectors: ‘What is involved in diagnosis when faced with a clinical problem? We gather historical and current information, run tests and research, gather it all together and come to a conclusion, discuss it with the client and agree on a way forward. Those processes are the generic processes you take into business, into commerce, into politics. We have those skills; let’s use them.’ In the discussion that followed the presentations, Chris Proudman, head of the new veterinary school at the University of Surrey, commented that, despite the national
scepticism, locally, there was huge support and enthusiasm for the establishment of the new veterinary school. Mr Ogden agreed that a new veterinary school did bring benefits to a university and its surrounding area, but he believed it was important to look at the bigger picture – graduates usually moved away from an area after their education, he noted. With regard to broadening graduates’ career aspirations, Pete Seymour, a practitioner and father of a current veterinary student, pointed out that the current system for entry into veterinary schools selected heavily for practice-based experience, and therefore this was what graduates expected to do after qualifying. If the profession wanted to broaden its career base, this aspect needed to be changed. doi: 10.1136/vr.f7523
December 21/28, 2013 | Veterinary Record | 597
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 23, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Assessing the need for future veterinary surgeons Veterinary Record 2013 173: 596-597
doi: 10.1136/vr.f7523 Updated information and services can be found at: http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/173/24/596
These include:
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To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
News & Reports BVA congress
Assessing the need for future veterinary surgeons While some in the profession are concerned about a possible ‘overproduction’ of vets, others argue that more might be needed to help meet current and future challenges. A debate at this year’s BVA Congress tackled the question of how many vets are required, while considering how their unique skills might be more widely applied. Manuela Herrera reports
HOW many vets do we need? And how might their specific skills be required in order to take on future problems? These were the questions that Christopher Ogden, senior vice-president of the Association of Veterinary Students, and Professor Lord Trees tried to answer during a contentious issues debate held on November 22 during the BVA Congress at the London Vet Show. Mr Ogden, who graduated from the University of Nottingham this summer, argued that there was a real danger of ‘overproducing’ vets and, that to avoid this, the ‘veterinary profession has to come together with a viewpoint and a strategy in order to move forward’. He described three critical areas which he believed would be negatively affected in the event of more veterinary schools being opened: standards of education, availability of employment, and the overall welfare of vets. The quality of veterinary education, Mr Ogden argued, would suffer from the opening of more vet schools. In particular, he believed that the pace of innovation would be reduced, as funding, resources and suitably experienced university staff would be dispersed and diluted among the increasing number of programmes. He also raised concerns surrounding the availability of EMS placements for veterinary students. In many areas these were already oversubscribed, and further veterinary schools were likely to put more pressure on this network. Mr Ogden suggested that opening new veterinary schools might also lead to a lower standard of student. He wondered whether there were sufficient students of the required calibre to fill so many extra places. If not, he concluded, this could affect the overall identity and image of the profession. In terms of the job market, Mr Ogden said that it was important to look at the situation within a global context as ‘veterinary medicine was no longer on the shortage occupation list in the UK’ and that, with the opening of new vet schools, ‘there could be too many vets here, as in the USA’. He believed that declining employment opportunities were already an issue
Professor Lord Trees (left) and Christopher Ogden, senior vice-president of the Association of Veterinary Students, debate ‘overproduction’ of veterinary graduates
and cited a recent survey of 1460 recent graduates, conducted by the RCVS in May 2013. This had revealed that it was taking new graduates slightly longer to find their first job, and that there was an increased trend towards taking unpaid or volunteer positions. ‘It became more difficult to find employment,’ said Mr Ogden, and recent graduates stayed less time in their first position. The survey found that many recent graduates left their first job after only three months; many of these jobs had been temporary posts, but poor management and inadequate support were also frequently cited as reasons for leaving. He argued that the oversupply in the workforce meant that employers felt they could offer less pay and support. This, he believed, was particularly worrying for young vets as employers ‘could have driven down salaries during the same time period that student debt increased’. Mr Ogden also sought to counter some of the common arguments in favour of increasing the number of vets. First, while he acknowledged that quite a few vets did still come from outside the UK, this, he said, ‘does not indicate a shortfall in UK vets . . . as EU vets fill jobs that are less popular’. Secondly, he considered the idea that vets should consider diversifying and broadening the parameters of their careers, by branching out into areas such as food production and not strictly focusing on clinical work.
596 | Veterinary Record | December 21/28, 2013
This, he argued ‘was not why [most vets] completed five years of university’ and it was unfair to expect graduates to change their career aspirations when they realised there were limited job prospects only after having qualified.
Expansion and change
‘Vet schools are a bit like buses – you wait 60 years for a new one to come along and then three come along at once,’ was how Lord Trees began his presentation. Noting that the University of Surrey was due to open its veterinary school in 2014 and that there were plans for new schools in Ulster and Aberystwyth, he commented: ‘Any university can decide to open a vet school if it so wished. We need to be sanguine and realistic about that’ and ‘there is very little we can do to control this process . . . it is important to consider the lack of control we have’. He went on to say that vets lived in a ‘global village’ and suggested that it was myopic to have focused so exclusively on a couple of potential new schools in the UK when ‘we are talking about 110 vet schools, at least, in Europe. They [EU vets] are all entitled to come and work here and the RCVS and the BVA can do nothing to stop that’. Regarding veterinary education, Lord Trees made the point that a recent analysis by the RCVS had found that there was actually adequate capacity for EMS, but that
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 23, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports placements had to be better organised to maximise availability. Furthermore, he believed that the potential issues that could arise around the staffing of veterinary schools were predominantly a ‘chicken and egg’ problem. In other words, if more vets qualified, eventually, more would also go into academia. Likewise, he challenged the notion that an increase in the output of vets would decrease vet schools’ standards; on the contrary, he stated ‘it would drive up standards . . . competition would do that’. Lord Trees also disagreed that the prospects for new graduates were as bleak as some imagined. Referring back to the RCVS questionnaire, he pointed out that fewer than 5 per cent of graduates had not found a job within six months, adding that ‘this is not indicative of a crisis’. He went on to suggest that aspirations
in the veterinary profession had become limited and that, as a result, it had retreated from other areas of employment; these were instead being taken over by other professions. He believed that qualified vets actually possessed a fantastic comparative science degree that could be applied in a variety of sectors: ‘What is involved in diagnosis when faced with a clinical problem? We gather historical and current information, run tests and research, gather it all together and come to a conclusion, discuss it with the client and agree on a way forward. Those processes are the generic processes you take into business, into commerce, into politics. We have those skills; let’s use them.’ In the discussion that followed the presentations, Chris Proudman, head of the new veterinary school at the University of Surrey, commented that, despite the national
scepticism, locally, there was huge support and enthusiasm for the establishment of the new veterinary school. Mr Ogden agreed that a new veterinary school did bring benefits to a university and its surrounding area, but he believed it was important to look at the bigger picture – graduates usually moved away from an area after their education, he noted. With regard to broadening graduates’ career aspirations, Pete Seymour, a practitioner and father of a current veterinary student, pointed out that the current system for entry into veterinary schools selected heavily for practice-based experience, and therefore this was what graduates expected to do after qualifying. If the profession wanted to broaden its career base, this aspect needed to be changed. doi: 10.1136/vr.f7523
December 21/28, 2013 | Veterinary Record | 597
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 23, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Assessing the need for future veterinary surgeons Veterinary Record 2013 173: 596-597
doi: 10.1136/vr.f7523 Updated information and services can be found at: http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/173/24/596
These include:
Email alerting service
Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up in the box at the top right corner of the online article.
Notes
To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
