March 2022

2022 has turned out to be yet another volatile year, with ongoing effects from the pandemic, industry-wide staff shortages, and the current flood crisis impacting vets in Queensland and NSW. These issues have the potential to negatively impact veterinarians’ mental health and wellbeing. This year, the AVA is continuing to prioritise 'wellness' as one of AVA’s key strategic directions.  

AVA President Dr. Warwick Vale says, "The challenges to our profession so far in 2022 only reinforce the importance of mental health and wellness in our profession. 

The AVA has been working with our partners Super Friend to turn what we learnt last year into action this year. More will come soon. 

I encourage all members to think about the mental wellbeing of their teams, their colleagues and themselves. If you need help, please reach out to the AVA."

We have made a commitment to the profession to continue building our wellness initiatives, which will complement existing programs such as our MHFA training, the AVA Graduate Mentoring program, and our 24-hour counselling service.

2020 saw us launch Employer of Choice, a program designed to address the significant recruitment and retention issues impacting practices across the country. The scheme provides practices with support and guidance to assist with improving HR processes. This ensures veterinary professionals have peace of mind that their workplace is aligned to quality standards, and assists practices to maximise the full potential of their workforce by demonstrating effective employee recruitment, engagement and retention. 

Our 2021 forum on veterinary workforce challenges was the largest online discussion forum held in AVA history. The forum, which was open to all members of the profession, facilitated robust discussion and brought the veterinary community together in a united aim: to innovate our thinking around the critical impact of veterinary workforce shortages.  

Key takeaways from this impactful forum, as well as the veterinary wellness research project undertaken by AVA and SuperFriend, provided the necessary tools to develop a holistic, and comprehensive veterinary wellness strategy that will support the veterinary industry. 

The AVA has recently applied for federal funding for suicide prevention training across the entire veterinary community through a 'National suicide prevention leadership and support grant'. If successful, we will have funding available to us over the next three years.  We have also applied for a National Careers grant and provided a submission on mental health within the profession to Queensland Parliament.  

Obtaining external financial resources to sustain our future plans in this space has not been our only focus since the report was made public. We have also been very vocal in advocating for the profession in the following ways:

• Lobbying government to recognise veterinary services as essential;
• Launching a zero-tolerance campaign pertaining to abusive client behaviour; and
• Speaking on various media channels promoting the importance of pet insurance.

Extensive work has also been started on a client education campaign designed to help customers understand the complexities of veterinary practice and recognise the importance of veterinarians in our  communities.  

AVA is now a proud signatory of the Veterinary Mind Matters initiative, helping to support mental health and wellbeing across the global veterinary community. We are  committed to working together with other like-minded organisations who are prepared to make a real difference to veterinary mental health through:  

• Advocacy  – promoting the benefits of positive mental health  
• Research  – sharing resources and results  
• Sharing of best practice  – we are all facing similar issues that can be better resolved as a united voice.  

Following the AVA Board review of recommendations from the SuperFriend report, the AVA has identified 'wellness' as a primary focus for the future. We are in the process of finalising our wellness strategy, one that will focus on an integrated approach to health and wellbeing: preventing harm, promoting the positive and protecting those in a crisis.

We look forward to launching our veterinary wellness program in the coming months, with an aim to share this with you all at our upcoming AVA Annual Conference in May.