Years ago, in 2011, I set out to study spay neuter veterinarians with the aim of finding out about musculoskeletal pain risk factors and what we might be able to do about them. The resulting study was published here, but as with many research surveys, I collected data as background information that never made it into a publication (other than as a poster abstract in the 2012 Midwest Veterinary Conference proceedings). Although this extra data is not exactly groundbreaking, there are some interesting tidbits about our field, and even though the results are from a 2011 survey, I think many of the findings are still relevant. This is exactly the sort of research that the Journal of Incidental Findings and Freelance Inquiry (JIFFI) was designed to publish. So enjoy!
Characteristics of spay and neuter employment positions and contributors to efficiency
Methods: Online survey of veterinarians who currently or previously spay and neuter at least 4 hours per week. Responses were solicited via the Association of Shelter Veterinarians’ Sheltervet listserv, the HQHVSNvets listserv, and conference attendees at the 2011 SNIP Summit, yielding 228 useable responses.
Results:
Where do spay neuter vets work? Lots of places, though most are in a stationary venue. And a lot of spay neuter vets work in more than one place, too– more than one shelter or clinic, or doing mobile and stationary spay neuter work for the same organization.
Of veterinarians in the four most common clinic types, mobile veterinarians have the longest total workdays (median 12 hours) and perform the most surgeries (median 34 daily) with a large staff (median 4 per veterinarian), but their surgery time is similar to veterinarians in stationary clinics and shelter clinics serving the public (median 6 hours daily). Shelter-only clinics see fewer patients (median 18) in a shorter surgical workday (median 5 hours) with fewer staff (median 2 per veterinarian).
Clinics with 4 or more staff or volunteers per veterinarian performed more surgical units per hour (median 5.4) than clinics with one (3.28), two (4.57), or three (4.69) staff per veterinarian.
Approximately half of the surveyed veterinarians (116/216) work full time in spay/neuter. For part-time spay/neuter veterinarians, in addition to having other job duties that limit time in spay/neuter, factors preventing full time spay/neuter work include finances (14.8%), prevention of burnout (58.2%), physical and musculoskeletal health (45.1%), family (36.0%), and limited availability of spay/neuter jobs (41.6%).
I like lunch, so I asked about it. Most spay neuter vets don’t take a lunch break during their spay neuter work day. It’s not necessarily as daunting as all that, though– many vets finish surgery mid-day, so can eat before and after surgery rather than breaking in the middle of surgery. For my MASH clinics, though, I insist on a sit-down lunch break if the surgery day will last past about 1:30 pm. Less efficient, maybe. Less hangry, definitely.
Discussion:What are the takeaways from this snapshot into the spay neuter workplace of 2011?
For me one of the most obvious, intuitive, but potentially overlooked (by management) findings is that having more support staff equals more surgeries per hour.
Since finding out about staffing levels wasn’t the main objective of the survey, there is still a lot we can’t say about how staffing and surgeries per hour relate to each other. I assume that having more staff doesn’t actually make a surgeon cut and sew faster– it just means that the surgeon gets to spend more time cutting and sewing, and less time restraining, injecting, waiting, or doing any other activity that keeps them away from the surgery itself.
For low volume clinics, this decreased efficiency from lower staffing levels may not be a problem. Sure, things could go more quickly, but the work gets done. But for anyplace looking to increase their efficiency, increasing staffing level is a good place to start.
Is this what our field of HQHVSN looks like now? Probably, mostly yes. Maybe I’ll ask again in a few years…