Advocacy at work: Veterinary skills shortage recognised in the Australian Universities Accord final report

^{(Image: CSU Veterinary Students Association)}

The Australian Universities Accord's final report was released this week and the challenges the veterinary profession is facing was called out.

The AVA worked hard to highlight these challenges, including those in veterinary education. We did this through talking about the issue in the media, making submissions to the Australian Universities Accord and participating in a regional industry and skills roundtable. Thank you to the committee members who were involved in these activities, particularly those from the EVA who also contributed to the round table.

The AVA was pleased to see acknowledgment in the Australian Universities Accord final report that it is essential to increase the skilled rural workforce in the veterinary profession to ensure that all Australian communities enjoy the benefits of good animal health and welfare. We know this begins at university with ensuring that students have excellent exposure to the rural and regional placements.

If provided with opportunities to see practice rurally there is evidence that students will return to work in rural and regional locations. This often hindered by the costs of students having to fund these placements and foregoing paid work to undertake them, leading to “placement poverty”.  The Accord final report spoke to this. In the case of the veterinary degree Australian accreditation standards require veterinary students to undertake 950 hours of placement outside teaching periods, which exceeds the requirements of many other degrees. Government subsidies such as those provided by the Northern Australia Biosecurity Strategy help, but more is needed.

The Accord final report recommends that students should receive funding to undertake placement, whilst the AVA is supportive of this recommendation it is essential that this funding comes from the government, rather than the profession as it cannot bear this cost. A media statement on the AVA’s response to Accord final report talked to this issue, and linked in the AVA’s prebudget submission recommendations around educational fee forgiveness and increased funding for veterinary students, as outlined in the Veterinary Education Review by the Veterinary Schools of Australia and New Zealand.