VIC Division President’s Report March 2024

^{Image: Dr Cathy Deague with students at Melbourne O Week} 

With 2024 well underway, students are returning to universities including the DVM1 students at the University of Melbourne. I had the opportunity to welcome these students to the profession and introduce them to the AVA and the role it can play during their student years, and ongoing throughout their careers. We wish them well as they begin this journey and hope it leads to an exciting and fulfilling career.

Much of our time over the last month has been filled with working on the AVA’s submission on the draft Animal Care and Protection Bill and the associated regulations. The date of the consultation period on this bill has been extended from 8 March to 25 March and the AVA submission is being finalised across the special interest groups. Personal submissions can still be made via Engage Victoria.

You will have received details of an important survey regarding the amount of unpaid work veterinarians do. This could be the discounted services you provide, the treatment of wildlife, the talks you give at local schools, the time you spend volunteering on AVA committees or boards, the overtime you don’t get paid for, or many other instances where your skill and expertise and facilities are not appropriately remunerated. This survey is a collaboration between AVA and the University of Melbourne and forms part of a PhD being carried out by Dr Kristen Steele, AVA Senior Advocacy Officer. 

This invaluable data hopes to demonstrate the amount of public good that vets do that isn’t compensated. For those in the vicinity of the recent fires in the Ballarat and Beaufort areas, you may very well have found yourselves treating and caring for wildlife at your practice’s expense – this is the type of information this survey is trying to identify. The survey is broken up into 2 parts – one for individual vets (in any aspect of the profession, not only clinical practice) and one for workplaces such as practices, charities etc. with vital practice data to put the finances around it.

Please take the time to complete the survey, and to forward it on to colleagues who may not be members of the AVA. As an individual vet it will take you 15-20 minutes to complete. The crucial workplace component will take longer to plug in the data or realistic estimates, so make a cup of tea and enjoy making a difference.

All responses are anonymous, and if you need you can keep returning to the survey on the same computer rather than completing it all in one sitting. It will be enlightening to see the results of this survey and to be able to use the data collected in our ongoing advocacy for the profession and lobbying of government for funding towards aspects of this unpaid work.

Nominations for the Victorian Division Executive Committee closed last month, and we are pleased to welcome two new members to our committee whilst farewelling Professor Jo Devlin and Dr Theo Lynch and thanking them for the time and energy they have contributed over many years. The current committee make-up is:

• Dr Cathy Deague
• Dr Hugh Millar
• Dr Christopher Heislers
• Dr Belinda Haebich
• Dr Laura Thorbecke
• Dr Suffien Suharju
• Dr Laura Dooley
• Dr Lorna Undy

We do still have the capacity for an additional member on our committee, so please reach out if you are interested in joining us and contributing to the profession at the state level, or if you have any issues or concerns relevant to our profession you wish to discuss: drcdeaguevet@gmail.com

Dr Cathy Deague
VIC Division President