A staff shortage has left a single veterinary clinic with the job of helping animals in need of emergency care after hours across Dungog shire.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Dungog Veterinary Clinic is now the only after hours service for small and large animals in the area after Williams River Veterinary Clinic, based in Clarence Town, was forced to abandon its after hours service and reduce its usual opening hours during the week.
Dungog Veterinary Clinic runs an after hours service every day of the year and will respond to calls within the entire shire.
It has become the only clinic in the area that will help animals who are not existing clients.
Raymond Terrace Veterinary Clinic will help new clients during their usual operating hours but will only assist the small animals on their books after hours.
Morpeth Veterinary Clinic, which used to partner with Williams River Veterinary Clinic to provide an after hours service, is now running its own after hours service for small and large animals, but, it's only for their clients.
Complex emergencies are often referred to the Animal Referral and Emergency Centre in Broadmeadow due to the vet's workload and after hours resources.
Williams River Veterinary Clinic owner Jasmin Klocker said a vet shortage forced her to cut the after hours service, reduce the operating hours and change the type of services the clinic provides.
Over the past year Ms Klocker has gone from five full-time vets to just one.
She needs three full-time vets to be able to resume the clinic's normal operating hours.
"We're no longer able to open every Saturday morning, which was a service we used to have," she said.
"We've had to stop doing after hours, which was something that I really struggled with because for years I've been arguing that every clinic should be responsible for sharing the after hours load."
"Now I've turned into a clinic that isn't, so that for me was quite a dilemma but I really had no other option. I couldn't work every night, six days a week."
Ms Klocker, who made a submission to the NSW Government's inquiry into the veterinary workforce shortage in July last year, said young vets expected a work-life balance.
"Veterinary work is not a 9-5 job. Caesareans happen, animals are bitten by snakes and animals are hit by cars. These emergencies need to slot into a standard day, making predictable work hours difficult (more so in regional areas where emergency clinics do not exist)," she wrote.
Ms Klocker said when she graduated years ago there was an expectation that you participated in after hours work and that's really changed.
"It's obviously nice to be able to sleep all night but in the past everyone's shared that job. I'm more than happy for people to do three day weeks rather than full-time weeks but then we need twice as many people graduating to do that long-term," she said.
"There's a lot of women in the profession. Women do tend to have periods of time where they're not a full-time equivalent worker if they're off with children or on maternity leave."
Ms Klocker said the lack of access to emergency centres was also an issue for regional vets. "There's emergency centres that work quite well in cities but I think it's a lot more challenging in regional and rural areas because there often isn't one," she said.