Scarborough vet: 'Medical attention for pets is a problem nationwide'
Alma Veterinary Surgery says it's causing real distress due to demand
A Scarborough vet says it is a difficult for them and pet owners as they struggle to get appointments.
Alma Veterinary Surgery says they are also struggling to take on new clients as they are already working to their limit.
It says some of the reasons include staff shortages, people buying animals during lockdown and the growing popularity of 'high-maintenance' dogs like pugs and bulldogs.
Vet Heather Westron owns the practice and said:
"You're always trying to just squeeze in one more patient and after a while it gets really hard because everytime you feel like you're not giving your best, you're being told that you don't care and that's pretty bad for morale.
"Recruiting is hard in our industry so there are a lot of practices that have shortages and everybody is trying to do that little bit more to cover the gaps, but we can't keep doing that forever.
"We started off just trying to not see people who had access to their own vets easily but then it started to be we were only seeing very urgent cases, but sometimes we have to say no to half of the appointments that people are trying to make.
"It's not right for people to be working long hours without breaks, so we decided we had to close at lunch break to at least give a chance for people to get a break in the day. Quite often we were working through lunch anyway with the doors closed.
"If your animal's unwell it's really helpful to ask us because every often we can help over the phone and if we can't then it's helpful to use to be able to schedule the urgent appointments as quickly as we can and the less urgent ones to fit around."
Heather added:
"This is a complex issue as there are many factors causing veterinary services to be busier than usual. There are many surgeries, all over the country, who have had to make the difficult choice of closing their services to new clients, restricting their opening times and rationing appointments.
"This is a last resort in order to manage workload and prioritise patient safety. Veterinary surgeries have continued to work throughout the pandemic with little support. Our own surgery had to start closing for lunch recently as it got to the point that no-one was getting any breaks at all through the day, with staff finishing late at night having not even had lunch."
Meanwhile the British Veterinary Association is asking people to think long and hard before taking on a new pet. It says practices are managing a triple whammy of Brexit, Covid and pet boom.
It says information from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) – the veterinary regulator – confirms that registrations of vets from overseas has dropped dramatically. Between January and May 2021 the UK welcomed just 155 vets from the EU. This compares to 533 in the same period in 2019.
The BVA says the UK has seen a surge in new pet ownership and according to the PFMA, 3.2 million UK households acquired a pet since the start of the pandemic.