Veterinary Voices

What's it like working in New Zealand as an overseas-qualified veterinarian?

This episode is the first in the library collection about what it’s like for an overseas-qualified veterinarian to work in New Zealand as a veterinarian.  Because, as I’m sure you know, not all overseas qualified veterinarians can actually work here as a veterinarian without re-qualifying first.

Dr Rose Unsworth and I talked about all sorts of things:  

• the differences in pet insurance uptake and how that manifests in-clinic,  
• different induction processes for locums at different clinics,
• and the varying health & safety rules and regs in different parts of the world.

If you’re listening to this show and you’d like to work as a veterinarian in New Zealand please get in touch with me - I’ll put all of my contact details on the show notes page for this episode – but if you have pen and paper handy right now, you can email me at [email protected].

Likewise, if you’re an overseas qualified veterinarian working Downunder and would like to share your experiences as a guest, please get in touch, because I’d love to have you on the show.   

Topics covered:

• 35, 40, 45 & longer working weeks
• working with pet insurance and working without pet insurance
• going on call outs by yourself
• health & safety - limits to how much you can lift
• paperwork - who does what
• is there a vet nurse shortage in New Zealand
• how providing excellent mentorship requires more experienced veterinarians
• job satisfaction - what it is and what it isn't

To get in touch with Julie South:

Email:  [email protected]
WhatsApp:  +6427 282 4155  

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

Today’s show is especially helpful for existing locums of any kind:  veterinarians, nurses and vet techs as well as the clinics that hire them.  

If you’re a locum, you’ll seriously want to listen to today’s show because it could save you a whole bunch of financial grief and headaches.

If you’re listening from Australia – or when the borders open up you’ll be heading off and working in Australia – then this is for you as well.

This app takes away all the financial compliance headaches.   You know the sort I’m talking about - – making sure you’ve put enough money aside to cover your tax, ACC, expenses, invoicing, getting paid, raising invoices, paying yourself.

In this episode Julie South and James Fuller chat about: 

• do you need to have a limited liability company?
• are you paying (or setting aside) too much money for your tax?
• how do you know how much tax to pay?
• what if you're "known" to the IRD or ATO?
• do you need to protect yourself with a trust?

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

In today's episode:

My thoughts on whether I think we have a veterinary shortage (or not).

The shift I've noticed in the last nine months or so - since we've come out of AL4 Lockdown in 2021.

Examples of a few job offers I've been involved in this year where each job-seeker has been over-the-moon with the offer of employment.

One of the benefits of using a recruitment agency if you're a job seeker

What needs to happen when you want to work only three or four days/week.

Employee engagement (or disengagement) - what happens - the good and the bad.

What to do if you get bad reviews from Indeed and/or Glassdoor job board websites.

Glassdoor's policy of not removing negative reviews - even if they're untrue.

The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019 - some findings and how they might impact your recruitment results.

• Millennials - 13,416 participated in the survey across 42 countries (including NZ) - 49% said they'd quit their job within 2 years if they had a choice.
• Generation Z - 3,009 participants across 10 countries (including NZ)

Why websites are essential today (why not to rely solely on Facebook or Insta).

Pages your veterinary clinic website must have and how these make a difference to getting better responses to your job advertisements:

• Meet the team - why and who
• Current vacancies - what to do if you don't have any
• Social Responsibility - what to do when you do and are
• Staff testimonials - the three different types and how to get them
• Your gear, kit & tech - why it's important to showcase and the best way to do that

Special launch offer - VetStaff's HEART prog - Healthy Employee Attraction & Retention Training prog - get the Employee Engagement Temperature at your clinic tested:  [email protected] | Julie South | 0800 483 869 (NZ)

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 week I want to start a conversation, a discussion – with YOU.   I want to know what YOUR thoughts, opinions and ideas are on a letter I received over the weekend.

It’s an Open Letter written by a practicing veterinarian in a small town who tragically lost her veterinarian husband to suicide three years ago.   

The full text of Dr Jasmin's letter is on episode 18's Paws Claws Wet Noses show notes page for this episode so you can read it yourself.

It’s written to the Veterinary Practitioners Boards of Australia, the Australian Veterinary Association and anyone else who cares to read on… and is sent by Dr Jasmin Klocker – a mixed practice veterinarian in NSW.

The Australian CVE – the Centre for Veterinary Education - will invite comments from the AVA and the Veterinary Boards which will be published in Issue 303 in June 2021. So if you want to contribute  / participate in that conversation you can virtually head over the Ditch and do that there.

In this letter Dr Jasmin shares how it is for her working in Australia.  It’s because her experiences didn’t sound that much different to what life on this side of the Tasman is like for veterinarians here in Godzone Aotearoa New Zealand, that I wanted to share this with you.

Also, because I was sent a copy of this letter – by a practicing kiwi companion animal veterinarian, and Dr Jasmin also gave me her permission, I believe it’s definitely worth bringing to the attention of veterinarians on this side of the Tasman.  

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 the beginning of this year, I had the opportunity of catching up with a VetStaff locum for lunch.  

We solved all the problems currently facing the veterinary sector and the world.

Over lunch, Dr Sam shared a book she’d read called Compassionomics – a book designed to answer a few questions – one of which was “does taking time for compassion make doctors better at their job?”

I’m a Kindle woman, so I bought the Kindle version.  It’s also available in paperback and Audible versions.    I’ll include all links to where you can buy the book, if you’re interested, on the show notes page for episode 17 at PawsClawsWetNoses.fm.

The full, official, title is “Compassionomics:  the revolutionary scientific evidence that caring makes a difference.”

I like meaty books and at 375 pages, this sure gave me something to get my teeth into.  The book was published in 2018 by Fire Starter Publishing.  

Apart from the fact Dr Sam said it was a good book, I bought it because I wondered whether there might be any crossover from human health care to animal health care.  

While I was reading, there was always a little part of my brain wondering just how much could be transferred to the animal health care sector.  I’m sure that plenty could – just in a different way.

Some musings I had, for example, were:

• Could veterinarians, for example, positively impact the health outcome of sentient animals through compassion?  
• What difference would the expression of compassion to the patient’s owner make to the health outcome of the patient?   
• If the client felt more compassion towards them, would they be less aggressive towards the veterinarian?   
• Would animal doctors hear fewer emotional blackmail and accusations about not caring otherwise they’d work for free?

Purchase it from Amazon:

ISBN-13: 978-1622181063

ISBN-10: 1622181069

Kindle
Audio book
Paperback

[NB:  I have no affiliation whatsoever to Amazon]

The Roseto Effect

• Could the learnings here - the Roseto Effect - be applied in veterinary clinics to make a difference?
• Can community and caring make a difference in veterinary clinics?

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 new veterinary graduate - veterinarian, veterinary nurse or veterinary technician thinking about, or already living in, rural New Zealand then this podcast is for you because you could be eligible to apply for the $1,500 Virbac Rural Women New Zealand Animal Health Graduate Grant.

Links and people mentioned in today's show
Virbac New Zealand
The team - Katie Turner - Digital Product Manager
Virbac's values

Rural Women New Zealand
Rural Women New Zealand current Board
Rural Women New Zealand - values
Rural Women New Zealand - different funds and grants
Virbac Rural Women New Zealand Animal Health Graduate Grant - apply online

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

Given that Covid-19 has been brought front-and-centre back into our lives and our businesses this week, I thought it might be a good idea to have a chat about the latest business subsidy available to clinics – and thus their teams – this week, what to do if one of your team members tests positive – the subsidy available to you, and then what you need to do if you or someone in your clinic needs to cross different alert level borders.

The government has recently made changes the suite of financial support available on account of the pandemic’s impact on Godzone’s businesses.

In today’s episode we’re going to cover:

• The Covid 19 Short-Term Absence Payment subsidy – this affects employees and self-employed contractors
• The Covid-19 Leave Support Subsidy, and
• How to get the paperwork so that you or your team can cross borders

This episode is helpful for employees, self-employed locum contractors, HR & Practice Managers and clinic owners.

On the financial side of things, this episode is especially helpful if you’re wondering how you’re going to afford to cover an employee’s wage if they’re awaiting Covid-19 test results and are at home isolating, or if you’re the employee worrying about whether you can financially afford to be at home awaiting test results.

And if you’re part of a clinic – or you’re a locum – who needs to travel across Covid-19 imposed alert level borders to work, then this is also for you.

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

Now that there’s talk the Covid-19 vaccine being rolled out in Godzone Aotearoa New Zealand – and with a bit more of a concrete timeline than we’ve had before, can your employer give you an ultimatum – the jab or your job?

Employers cannot force medication or any kind of medical choice onto staff.  If they do, they’re breaching the NZ Bill of Rights Act.

Many employers offer flu jabs free of charge – these are solely at the discretion of each individual employee whether to accept or not.   

However, the Covid-19 vaccine is going to be free anyway – because the object of the game is to strive for herd immunity in NZ.  So that leverage doesn’t exist with this vaccine.

As an employee, you have the personal right to refuse (or decline) on a number of fronts.  They are:

• personal choice, 
• health, 
• beliefs or religion, 

and all of these mean you're protected by law against being disadvantaged or discriminated against if you choose not to have the vaccine. 

Of course, an uninformed – or heavy handed – employer may threaten to terminate or disadvantage employees who won’t get vaccinated.  If they do that, they’re skating on very thin ice because, legally, they cannot do that – it contravenes the NZ Bill of Rights Act.

If, as an employee, you find yourself in that position of having to choose your job (or another perk on offer) OR your job, you then have the right to take a personal grievance out against your employer.  

Justification and process

When it comes to “justification” – they’re looking at is the:

• Employer reasonably justified in taking the action they have?
• Employee reasonably justified in the action they took?

To defend their justification, they’ll have to look at the potential risks faced in the circumstances. 

Having COVID-19 and potentially another lockdown is not what anyone wants.  The justification could the the cost of human life.  

Because anything to do with Health and Safety usually outweighs everything else in Employment Law when lives are at stake, this would indicate there is potentially reasonable justification for an Employer to require staff to get vaccinated in certain circumstances and industries.

Whether it would deem veterinary clinics one of those industries, who knows?  It would probably justify, however, say a rest home or human hospital.  

Case study precedents

A recent parallel in Australia - the Fair Work commissioner, upheld an Employer's decision to terminate a childcare centre's worker for refusing a flu jab. The justification was they had the right and justification to protect the children in their care.

Arvida Group, a large NZ aged care provider, has recently said all new employees would need to consent to vaccination against Covid-19, as well as the flu.  This of course is easier to mandate for all new hires and to make it a condition of employment – it would be more difficult for existing staff. 

But what about “process”:   With this a court will look at:

• Has there been a fair process followed?
• Have the parties had full access to all information?
• Have the parties acted in good faith?
• Have all the options and alternatives been explored thoroughly?

Employers will find this much easier to roll out as a policy – or not – after consultation with staff.  So if you’re thinking of creating a vaccine policy now is a good time to start that process.

If you decide to ignore this then announcing a no jab no job policy will more than likely have you looking facing multiple personal grievances.   

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

Reference (and background) checking - why you absolutely must see it as an investment rather than a cost

•  why you should do it – even when you think you can’t spare the time, 
• what questions to ask, 
• what answers might raise some red flags, 
• what to do with those red flags, and
• what you can and cannot do in relation to reference checking and NZ law

In Godzone Aotearoa New Zealand there are some things you absolutely cannot do in relation to reference checking potential new recruits and things you absolutely must do.   

Reference checking is protected and/or governed by three different Acts of Parliament:

• the Employment Relations Act 2000,
• the Human Rights Act 1993, and
• the Privacy Act 2020 

 We’ll take an in depth look at the 9 reference check questions I always ask every referee so you can understand what types of answers or responses raise red flags and then how to handle those.  

You'll understand why I ask the questions I do and how to accuracy-check some of the answers you might be given from referees.   

You'll also understand why a ‘no’ to the question “would you hire this person again” might not be the deal breaker you expect it would be.

We’ll also quickly look at some reference checking that’s fallen foul of the law and ended up in court.

Choosing Referees:

1. Immediate / Direct-report manager
2. Choose wisely
3. Let your referees know what you're doing / what you're up to 
4. Ask them first
5. Mutual trust

Case Studies:

1. an inaccurate reference
2. supposed breach of privacy
3. lying on job application

Summary:

1. background & reference checking is essential
2. choose referees wisely
3. respect & protect people's privacy
4. ask for only what you need & nothing else
5. ask the right questions 
6. reference check every new hire - regardless of the job / position / duration
7. reputations at stake
8. outsource if necessary

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

As you’ll hear from Vanessa’s accent – she’s not a kiwi - she left her family and friends in Canada to come to New Zealand 8 years ago to fulfil her dreams of studying in NZ to become a veterinarian … she’s lived here ever since!

Vanessa is a recent Massey University graduate with 3 years experience who works in a busy South Auckland practice as their fulltime companion animal veterinarian. 

When she’s not working, she keeps active at the gym, and enjoys learning Japanese and water-colour painting. 

Dr. Vanessa’s partner is a nurse who’s about to undertake the daunting challenge of med school this month.  

Vanessa believes having a great support network and forming good mental health habits is instrumental to success.

Today we’re going to learn of some of the good mental habits Vanessa has formed and the benefits she’s noticed from having them as part of her life.  

She shares what she does when she notices thoughts of Imposter Syndrome, negativity and the importance of keeping a Gratitude Journal as a part of her every day life.

Vanessa Johnson is very candid, vulnerable and honest about life for her as a veterinarian through 2020 and into January 2021.    

Here are my six takeaways from this chat with Vanessa – I’m really interested to hear what was most significant for you and what particularly struck a chord in your life which you might adopt.

1.       Exercise – design your own version of a Stomp Around the Block as your way of decompressing at the end of each day.  

2.       Find someone to share the ups and the downs of your day – every day.   

Clear the cache of your mind each day so you don’t bet bogged down in the ikky stuff.

3.       Look for the good every day – attitude of gratitude journal.   

Like Vanessa said:  some people have to watch what they eat, others have to watch what they think.  I have to watch both!

4.       Stay tuned to the thoughts going through your head – reset your brain when you start to hear Imposter-Syndrome type self-chatter going on.  

5.       Get away from the clinic at lunchtime – get some fresh air so you can mini-recharge during the day.   

Plug in your earbuds, tune into a podcast and go get some fresh air.  It really will energise you for the rest of the day.

6.       Distance yourself from customer complaints by sharing them around your team. 

Think about having a practice that people in your team don’t try to “defend” their own customer complaints.  

Like Vanessa said, it allows people to distance themselves away from the heat of the moment.  

Do you have any of these strategies in your life and/or clinic?  Do you have variations on these?  If you do, I’m sure other listeners will be interested to hear what they are, so please feel free to comment or send me an email – [email protected].

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