Vet shortage forces Kamloops animal hospital to stop after-hour care

KAMLOOPS — It’s not a new issue, but the problem is only being exacerbated in Kamloops. A lack of veterinarians is forcing one local animal hospital to reduce its after-hour staffing, leaving some clients to drive to Kelowna for emergencies.

“This is an opportunity to at least stay working, stay focused, help as many as we can,” said Dr. Matt Nicol.

This week, clients at Riverside Small Animal Hospital were informed the animal hospital was forced to pull out of the Kamloops on-call vet group as it has been unable to hire new staff.

“This change will result in an increased availability of services to our existing patients during regular working hours so that routine and urgent care appointments can be booked in a more timely manner,” reads the email sent to clients.

Dr. Nicol says it was one of the hardest decisions of his life. But, with recruitment stalled and fear of burnout rising, he believes it was the correct choice.

“We were eight veterinarians at the start of the pandemic. We are now down to five and been recruiting hard for the past year-and-a-half, and next week we are going to be done to two,” said Nicol.

Despite an 18-month long recruitment push, the hospital hasn’t been able to hire any new vets. With other clinics across Canada and the U.S. in the same boat, the challenge is set to continue.

“There are at least four other hospitals in Kamloops (hiring for vets) in that magazine right now. One of the other hospitals in Kamloops that was formally a three or four veterinarian hospital is down to one,” said Nicol.

“It has certainly become a huge problem in British Columbia. They predict we will need 500 more veterinarians in the next four or five years in B.C.  A lot of vets are retiring,” added Ian Paton, South Delta MLA, Opposition Critic for Agriculture.

With the on-call requirement dropped, Nicol hopes the staff at Riverside will be able to get some rest and avoid burning out.

“I’ve got all the statistics in the world right now about veterinarians all over North America that are burnt out, there are suicide rates that are astonishing,” stated Paton.

“We have to protect what we’ve got because we are in danger of burning out the people that we have. Then we would be in a position that we can’t offer any service at all, that’s the position we don’t want to get into,” said Nicol. “We reached the point where we had someone off for three months last year on mental health leave. I crashed just before Christmas and had to have a month off, just completely burnt. We just have to protect what we’ve got and try to offer some service, because if we don’t do that, then there will be none and that’s not okay.”

The Province of B.C. recently announced it will double the number of subsidized vet seats at a Saskatchewan college, but with those graduates still four years away, the staffing challenges won’t soon be alleviated.