I had an interesting two years there, sometimes good, sometimes hell! We were always short staffed, and really did work hard, but we never had any recognition. I once worked a 14 hour day with a vet, with a ½ hour break to eat something before we both passed out! Neither of us got paid overtime, and just one little word would have sent me home in a better frame of mind, but thanks we did not get!

One particular day stuck in my mind: we had been very busy, and were short staffed. The three of us had worked our heads off from 8 that morning until 6 PM with a very brief lunch. We had pulled together and worked as a team, and even though flustered by the fact that the major partner had been doing the ops, we kept our heads and coped. And all went home tired but pleased that we had ended the day. The next day started fairly sedately, until our practice manager came out of her office, “P**** wants to see the three of you in the office in 10 minutes…” We knew we were in trouble for something… Praise was a rarity in this practice, and you only got called in to the office to be told off. So we sat and waited for the boss, hearts pounding. He came in armed with a list of no less than 11 things that he considered to have gone wrong, and said that we should have made more of an effort. We left for our lunch trailing obscenities as we walked along discussing our meeting.

The partners of the practice would take great delight in belittling staff in front of clients or other employees, to make themselves look better, which led to clients being rude to staff because they understood from the vets that we were incompetent.

Even practical jokes were used to make staff feel “small”. I’ve had barium flicked in my face, and over my uniform by a vet who thought it was hilarious… I then had to explain to clients why my uniform was splattered with white spots.

Eventually things came to a head when the vet in question became two faced, by talking about nurses and other assistant vets behind their backs respectively, also telling one vet that “all the nurses hate you, so I don’t care if you leave”. The vet in question was mortified!

This came along with a wage dispute where a 2nd year VN was being paid substantially more than a qualified VN and two other long standing 2nd year VN “s causing a major upheaval within the practice culminating in two assistant vets leaving, and four nurses leaving all within three months of each other. I quote from the mouth of my ex-boss “ oh, Well they are all replaceable…..”

But are we?

There is a happy ending; there are decent practices out there who do treat their nurses with respect, and value their input, and I think I have finally found a good practice…

So don”t give up.. nursing is worth the effort; I mean if we were in it for the money we would all be working elsewhere… and probably bored with it!