Veterinary Voices

This is part 2 of a 2 part series with Dr Ashley O'Driscoll, DVM, BSc.

Dr O’Driscoll has worked in several New Zealand veterinary clinics – on both Islands - as a pet and farm animal veterinarian since moving here in 2010. 

As you’ll pick up, Dr O’Driscoll has a strong interest in animal welfare – she started the Waikato’s first home euthanasia referral service for dogs in the Waikato – as well as working for MPI and the SPCA in animal welfare. 

As well as being a large animal vet (she loooooves cows!), she’s also a Certified Body Condition Score Assessor.   The Body Score Assessor Certification Programme was designed to help rural professionals help standardise condition scoring across New Zealand.  It was developed  as part of the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain Primary Growth Partnership programme, led by commercial partners, including DairyNZ and Fonterra, and partnered by MPI. 

In addition, Dr O’Driscoll also picks up a couple of shifts a week at the Animal Emergency Centre, where she’s worked in the ER for the last ten years or so.    Anyone who’s worked in an ER hospital will tell you it’s a high-stress work environment that has strict expectations around patient care and client communication.   But, they’ll also tell you that every day (or night) that you go to work you absolutely know you’ve made a difference.   

In her spare time and as a way to decompress, Dr O’Driscoll enjoys being a mum to her toddler daughter, her farm and her retired Heading dog, Nell.

Dr O’Driscoll first came to my attention through a Hamilton suburban FB group we’re both members of where she mentioned her Paw Print referral service which currently provides home euthanasia for pets in the Northern Waikato and Hamilton regions.   

As a referral service, Dr O’Driscoll works closely with a pet’s regular veterinarian to ensure the ever-important bond between the client, pet, and veterinarian is maintained.

 As you’ll pick up from listening to what Dr O’Driscoll says, she’s very staunch on dignity and respect… and it’s a dignified farewell for faithful companions she offers.  

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Dr O’Driscoll has worked in several New Zealand veterinary clinics – on both Islands - as a pet and farm animal veterinarian since moving here in 2010. 

As you’ll pick up, Dr O’Driscoll has a strong interest in animal welfare – she started the Waikato’s first home euthanasia referral service for dogs in the Waikato – as well as working for MPI and the SPCA in animal welfare. 

As well as being a large animal vet (she loooooves cows!), she’s also a Certified Body Condition Score Assessor.   The Body Score Assessor Certification Programme was designed to help rural professionals help standardise condition scoring across New Zealand.  It was developed  as part of the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain Primary Growth Partnership programme, led by commercial partners, including DairyNZ and Fonterra, and partnered by MPI. 

In addition, Dr O’Driscoll also picks up a couple of shifts a week at the Animal Emergency Centre, where she’s worked in the ER for the last ten years or so.    Anyone who’s worked in an ER hospital will tell you it’s a high-stress work environment that has strict expectations around patient care and client communication.   But, they’ll also tell you that every day (or night) that you go to work you absolutely know you’ve made a difference.   

In her spare time and as a way to decompress, Dr O’Driscoll enjoys being a mum to her toddler daughter, her farm and her retired Heading dog, Nell.

Dr O’Driscoll first came to my attention through a Hamilton suburban FB group we’re both members of where she mentioned her Paw Print referral service which currently provides home euthanasia for pets in the Northern Waikato and Hamilton regions.   

As a referral service, Dr O’Driscoll works closely with a pet’s regular veterinarian to ensure the ever-important bond between the client, pet, and veterinarian is maintained.

 As you’ll pick up from listening to what Dr O’Driscoll says, she’s very staunch on dignity and respect… and it’s a dignified farewell for faithful companions she offers.  

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

This VetStaff survey was run over four weeks - promoted via FB, Insta, LI and this podcast.

Respondents were guaranteed anonymity.   However, if they wanted their clinic to go in the draw to win lunch they needed to complete contact info so we could organise the delivery if their name was pulled out of the hat.

Fifteen respondents chose to remain totally anonymous.  

Random lucky dip draw from all respondents.  

Vet Farm Pet Clinic - Warkworth
Animal Referral Centre – Snapper Rock, Auckland
Carevets Beach Rd – Pahurehure, Papakura
The Strand Veterinarian - Parnell
First Vets – Whanganui

There were 124 respondents.:
43% veterinarians
43% veterinary nurses
6% veterinary technicians
6% non-clinical support staff
4% Practice Managers

by clinic type:
49%  GP Companion Animal clinics
32%  Mixed Animal clinics
5%  Equine only
5% Dairy only
balance  exotics, referral and after hours emergency clinics.

Qualifications:
85% NZ tertiary qualification
15% overseas tertiary qualification

Financial / Remuneration
Equal 33% split of:
not earning enough to live on - no contribution to rainy-day savings
earning just enough but not enough to contribute to rainy-day savings
earning enough and contributing to rainy-day savings
 
Some solutions to current veterinary shortage include:

·       To extra time to be allocated for admin and case notes – so vets don’t have to take this paperwork home with them or stay late, because not enough time has been scheduled in-clinic for this to happen.   This was offered up a few times so perhaps if you’re listening now and you have input into schedules, you could look at making this happen at your clinic.   If you’ve no idea how you’re going to do it – either you’ve got HO breathing down your neck or screaming down the phone – then brainstorm among your team – there’ll be great answers already on your team if you just ask the right questions.

·       For vets to utlise their nurses’ skills more.   This one came through loud and clear from most – maybe all the nurses – I need to dive a bit deeper with the data.   However, there were enough comments for me to think that in many – obviously not all – clinics, that vets in some cases, are adding to their own stress by not giving credit and responsibility where it’s due to the nurses.   So maybe have a team meeting and see what you can do to appreciate the training, skills and education that nurses have at your clinic.   Doing this means the vets will have more time to do what only vets can do.    Some nurses replied that they feel like they’re glorified cleaners.   

·       Hire dedicated receptionists so nurses can be nurses – another comment that came through loud and clear – and it ties in with vets utilising nurses as nurses – is for management to recognise nurses are nurses and not receptionist.   If clinics hired dedicated non-nursing staff – but trained in elementary triage – it would free up nurses to be nurses – and to then also be charged-out and generate income for the clinic.

I’ve invited Iain McLaughlin onto the podcast to answer these questions – he’s agreed – we’re now trying to match our diaries … I’ve told him I’ll rearrange mine to fit his so we can get the recording done.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

VetStaff does more than flick job seekers' CV onto vet clinics like their competitors - who then leave the job seeker to negotiate everything for themselves.
 
VetStaff helps clinics with reputation misinformation - for example the false rumour of CCTVs in restrooms!

Case Study #1

• 6-month new grad looking for her second job
• VetStaff were given five days to organise a job interview
  • in four days they had three interviews 
  • job offer was signed within a week
  • $21kpa increase on what she was earning
  • Clinic didn't realise job offers could be made up the way this one was

Case Study #2

• Locum vet who wanted a permanent position
• Was being pressured to sign an offer the vet had arranged themselves
• VetStaff organised two job offers over a long weekend - both at $30kpa more than the original offer

Case Study #3

• Vet wanted to negotiate a pay increase at her annual review
  • didn't know what she was worth or where to start
  • Julie sent her away with 'homework' which she did
  • role played through different negotiation scenarios
  • Vet walked out with $20kpa increase

Case Study #4

• Vet Nurse wanted to negotiate pay increase at her annual review
  • didn't know what she was worth or where to start
  • Julie sent her away with 'homework' - which she did
  • role played through different negotiation scenarios
  • VN walked out with a $5ph pay increase.

In this episode Julie talks about:

• information you need to know to successfully negotiate a pay increase
• why you need to start planning months in advance
• why it's important you know your 'numbers' before you start negotiating

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

If you’re a recent or new vet science graduate of Massey University then regardless of where you’re working in New Zealand, you’ve probably heard of, or met, Krispin as he’s been quite involved with Massey’s MMI for vet students over the years.  

MMI is part of the Massey BVSc pre-selection programme – they’re the 8 Multi Mini Interviews potential vet science students go through.   

Krispin’s been on the panel where students get to go a round of 8 short, structured interviews lasting 8 minutes each.

Krispin started working for the Veterinary Enterprises Group Limited – VetEnt – straight out of Massey in December 2010 in Te Awamutu as a Large Animal Veterinarian.  

In February 2019 he was appointed the Production Animal Business Manager – a position he held until mid-2021.

Krispin took some time out by doing a bit of locum work until March 2022 before returning to VetEnt to be part of its Integrated Solutions Business Development team.   

Krispin says Integrated Business Solutions is a fancy name for a focussed role dedicated to understand and utilise technology solutions within veterinary practice that enhance the performance & wellbeing of their client businesses and animals. 

He’s excited to begin this journey with a focus on cow wearables – which are collars and tags, the data they produce and how VetEnt’s veterinary teams can integrate and deliver value to their customers using this information.

Today, Krispin and I talk about his MBA – which he studied for at The University of Waikato between 2017 and 2019, locuming on his OE, how he ended up as a large animal vet when he was also considering small animal surgery and life in general.

Krispin’s one of New Zealand’s Instagram influencers.   vet.krispy – is his Instagram handle so go check him out and follow him there.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Dr Karli Houston is a marathon running, fundraising, companion animal veterinarian.  

Karli was born in the US to two kiwi parents. 

Karli has a raft of qualifications behind her … she studied biology and theatre arts at the Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, then Human Nutrition at the University of Maryland before moving to Palmerston North and to complete her Bachelor of Veterinary Science at Massey. 

Since graduating from Massey in 2012, Karli’s worked at Franklin Vets in Auckland, New Zealand.  Her favourite areas of practice are rehabilitation and working dogs. 

Karli has since gone on to complete her CCRP certification - (Certified Canine Rehabilitation Practitioner) through the University of Tennessee. 

Karli Houston is a vet, a mum of two, a wife, a daughter and a marathon runner.

Today, Karli shares what she loves and doesn’t love so much, about being a small animal veterinarian.

Why she chose the Queenstown Marathon.

What made her realise why she’s a far better vet than a race director.

Why she chose Not One More Vet?

And how she got through what felt like Groundhog Day of Lockdown in Auckland last year.

At about the 35-minute mark the topic of suicide is discussed for a few minutes, so if you think you might be triggered, please fast forward at that point through to about the 38 minute mark.    

If that could be you, I’ve tagged the point with a few seconds of the Paws Claws Wet Noses theme music – so listen out for that … that’s your cue to fast forward to about the 38 minute mark.

If you have colleagues who’ve done something inspirational like Karli has, I’d loooove to chat with them on Paws Claws Wet Noses so that others can be inspired just like you.   

Come back next week because I’m chatting with another inspirational vet – Dr Krispin Kannan – a large animal vet who’s also a husband, dad and all-out really neat guy.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Being interviewed for your first job straight out of vet school and university isn’t the same as being interviewed for your second or third job.   

Here’re 11 questions for new grads to ask at your first job interview and for clinics to think about when they’re interviewing new grads.   These 11 questions apply pretty equally to vets, nurses and techs.

Get yourself an agent to represent you

Someone who knows:

• employment law
• the veterinary sector in your area
• the good and not-so-good vet clinics
• how to negotiate
• about clinic culture
• salary expectations for new grads

If a clinic pushes back and tells you they'd rather invest a recruitment agency's fee into your career ask them what that would look like.   I (Julie South) haven't ever seen a new grad earning a salary that's reflective of a recruiter's fee being added to it!

1.  support - what does this look like and mean?
2. reasonable time - what's their definition of this?
3. sole charge - when?  what does that look like?
4. roster
5. surgery and surgical experience / support
6. other employees' opinions
7. why the vacancy?
8. new grad goals?
9. performance evaluations?
10. clinic growth plans?
11. team diversification?

Enter our two surveys and go in the draw to win great prizes:

For New Zealand veterinary sector professionals - Veterinary Sector State of the Nation 2022 Survey

For overseas veterinary professionals looking to work in New Zealand - Vets on Vacation or Relocation to New Zealand Survey

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

At job interviewers, hiring managers / interviewers usually ask "do you have any questions you'd like to ask?".

Many people mumble something like "you've answered all my questions" [which may be true] or "no - no questions".

Here are 15 questions across three top level subjects to help job-seekers level out the balance of interviewing "power" that can be assumed at a job interview.

The main question topics relate to the:

• vet clinic role
• vet clinic's vision; and
• vet clinic culture

It’s important to remember that attending a job interview is a two way exchange of information.   It’s easy to think the employer has all the power.   However, in today’s market that’s questionable.  

I (Julie South) believe both parties have equal power when everything is balanced out.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

When someone asks you to “tell me about a time when …..” this is where the STAR methodology kicks in.   

Situation
Task
Action
Result

Everyone dreads the "tell me about a time when you................." type interview questions because they usually don't know how to answer and/or aren't sure what the interviewer is looking for.

This episode answers both of those questions and includes relevant examples taken from vet clinics.

Other episodes referred to in this episode:

Episode 39 - Emotional Intelligence – why it’s critical to professional and personal success
Episode 40 - six ways emotionally intelligent people lead

Words to listen out for:

• and
• um
• like
• er
• absolutely
• so
• well

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

9 behaviour focussed job interview questions that job seekers roll their eyes at, and interviewers feel they must ask.  

One vet told me a couple of years’ back that she declined a job because she didn’t like the soft and fluffy questions “someone from HR” asked her. 

In the vet’s opinion the questions she was asked did nothing to prove or disprove she was a good vet.  Which is a fair comment.

However, what behaviour focussed job interview questions help uncover or determine is fit – will the fit between the job applicant and the hiring clinic be a match made in heaven or an absolute disaster.

Questions for the vet clinic to ask the vet med professional

These 9 behaviour based questions are for the clinic to ask the job applicant.  

If you’re an HR or Practice Manager, here are nine main questions + follow-up questions you can ask interviewees.  

If you’re a vet or nurse considering your next move, and you’ve got an interview or two coming up, then this is for you too because they give you an idea of the type of questions you might be asked and how you might answer them. 

Listen to the podcast to hear what the follow up questions are under these top level behaviours.

#1 - Problem solving skills interview questions

#2 - Personal Responsibility interview questions

#3 - Adaptability skills interview questions

#4 - Confrontation skills interview questions

#5 - Compatibility skills interview questions

#6 - Attention to Detail skills job interview questions

#7 - Leadership skills job interview questions

#8 - Delegation skills job interview questionsQuestion 1 of 4 delegation skills questions

#9 - Performance under pressure job interview questions

VetStaff competitions - through April 2022

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics