Drawing people into the profession

The barrage of BBC news alerts that have popped up on my phone over the past few years have surpassed any soap opera. It has meant ample topics to choose from when chatting to clients as I have a hand inside a cow, trying to find a pylorus. Over the past few weeks though, the chat has drifted back towards the weather, and this does correlate with fewer news alerts. The current news may not be so sensational, but this blip of political stability is allowing issues that affect the day-to-day running of the country and people's lives to be addressed.

The strike action of public workers is a polarising topic, but the reasoning behind people's discontent is being discussed and many of the issues concerning nurses and teachers are the same as we face within the veterinary industry (us vets are not as unique as we thought we were!). Pay, working conditions and staff retention are some of the hot topics within the farm animal veterinary profession and that is why the non-clinical forum article (p134) on recruitment of potential farm vets should be of interest to all our readers this month.