Tag Archives: On-call

Different

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, , , , ,

I’m not going to miss duty vet. It’s no coincidence that I applied to the poultry practice shortly after receiving the 2026 rota and putting all the dates in my diary. Entries in spring were relatively far apart, but the summer months were going to be intense. The thought of it set my teeth on edge.

And then bird flu hit and all my work days were filled with notifiable disease work. Real vet work: the kind I signed up for all those years ago. I’ve massively enjoyed the last few months at work and for a good while, I didn’t follow up on my application. I was meant to meet one of the partners on 14th January – the day I was sent to West Linton to investigate the latest outbreak. I sent a message to say I couldn’t and received one in return, which I skim read. Then in a whirl of printing forms, rearranging evening engagements and finding care for Triar, I headed off.

In truth, I was so busy and engaged, I probably wouldn’t have checked back in at all, if it hadn’t been for Liz, my sports massage therapist. I started going to Liz last year, to ease shoulder tension, which was one of my better life choices. Before she begins, she catches up with how things are going. She asked about my application and it was only then I actually looked back to review what my contact had written. To my surprise, his message didn’t say we could arrange a different time for an interview. It said he wanted to inform me about the job, and terms and conditions to see if it would help with my final decision. I told Liz I would reply later. She said, in essence, “Why wait? Do it now!” I sent a message there and then.

I met him in a cafe in mid-February. We got on well, but I still wasn’t sure. The job itself might be better, but weighing up the differences between public sector and private practice is difficult. I was working out how to say I was going to turn the position down when the more senior partner in the practice messaged to ask if we could chat. He asked me, in essence, how they could make this job the perfect fit for me. What would I enjoy? What problems could I foresee? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before.

I am probably beginning to sound like I never make decisions by myself, but having discussed the pros and cons with Donna the night before, she had suggested that maybe a few days at Inchcolm would resolve my doubts one way or another. So I suggested to E that I would book some time off and spend a couple of days with them, seeing what they do.

Those two days were honestly great. They genuinely were listening to my concerns. One of them was the age of my car. The more senior partner called yesterday, in the middle of a nightmare day of duty vet, to tell me they’re getting a pool car I can use sometimes. Not sure how it will work, but even before I’ve arrived, he’s finding ways to make my life easier.

But yesterday was a good reminder of why duty vet is so tough. I know what I am doing a lot better now, so juggling the questions and problems that come in isn’t quite so difficult. The biggest challenge is when the cases come in so fast that there isn’t time to deal with them. You resolve one and find two more waiting. Each situation is a unique puzzle, needing research and consideration. By yesterday afternoon, my brain was frazzled. And then I called an estate owner to tell him that we’d had a report of sheep scab on his farm.

The procedures and laws around sheep scab are inflexible. If we receive a credible report, we are obliged to put the animals under a movement ban until the owner shows the sheep have been treated or their vet has certified the animals as clear of parasites. This leaves farmers at risk of malicious reporting. I check records to see the history, such as frequent reports or recorded objections from farmers of over-reporting, but there was nothing on this account to suggest anything of the sort.

I’m usually good at handling people, but this time it didn’t work. I was roundly shouted at when I explained I couldn’t say who had made the report. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t as the report was anonymous. I was abused for the system being bad. The system is awful, but I was only the messenger. It was after three on a long day, with two more cases waiting for me and it was just too much.

I made myself a coffee and pulled myself together and carried on, but it was a stark reminder of how awful duty vet is. I got home from work late and wished I could have a glass of wine, or that there was someone there to hug, but I was on call. I’m on call all weekend, which is fine. I can cope with whatever is thrown at me. I’ve said before that one of my aims is to help farmers through incredibly stressful events. I’m good at it. But being shouted at when there is no need, for something that’s not my fault, leaves me drained and empty. I won’t miss duty vet.

I’m going to leave you with a few pictures of my garden. The camellia has too many buds to count. I’m happy with the pots beside the door, though what comes next is a good question. I’m working on the flower bed that was overrun with ground elder. I’ve dug out masses of roots and planted competing geraniums, compost and seeds, but there’s still lots more to dig out and I’m not sure whether me or the ground elder will win this year. It will probably outmanoeuvre me, as a novice gardener. The good thing is that, even if I mess it up, there’s always next year!

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a good week.

From Nostalgia to Duty

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, , ,

My son John and his girlfriend Yoana visited me last weekend. Though it was raining most of the time (in true, southwest Scotland style) John suggested we could go to New Lanark for a visit, so that’s what we did.

New Lanark holds a special place in my heart. For those who don’t know, it is a former 18th century cotton spinning mill village located on the banks of the Falls of Clyde, where social reform became very important. The lives of those who worked in the mill and their families were improved through schools, education, reasonably priced food and medical support. It’s a living village too – there are still tennants living there, and apparently very long waiting lists to get an apartment.

New Lanark

I think I might have visited with my parents, a very long time ago, but my fondest memories are from when John and Anna were young and we went there every year at Christmas time. There’s a ride you go through, where you sit on moving chairs and are taken on a trip back through the darkness of time. At Christmas, it gets set up like a kind of magical grotto and the filmed clips of a child that grew up in New Lanark, are replaced with an elf-like girl called Holly. At least that’s how it was back then, though that is twenty years ago now.

Millworkers’ apartment block.

The site has been undergoing improvement for a long time and it was lovely to visit again. Some things struck me, now that hadn’t really done so before. One was that the classroom, where the millworkers children were taught was a very large, airy room, with a high ceiling and lots of natural light. The contrast between that and the small, low ceilinged apartments, where large families occupied one or two rooms, must have seemed incredible to the children when they began to attend school.

Robert Owen’s house is on the left.

The other was a comment in the film, where the mill workers’ working day was described. They “only” worked ten hours per day, potentially from ten years old, but there were evening classes so that they could be educated if they wanted. I only work eight hour days and am struggling to motivate myself to write in the evenings. It’s incredible to imagine a world where working ten hour days, six days a week, was considered humane, but there it is.

A beautiful roof-garden has been set up on one of the old mills.

Robert Owen, the social reformer, who brought in the improvements for workers in New Lanark, eventually left to set up a new project in America called New Harmony. This project fell apart within a few years. Reading between the lines, a lot of the people they attracted had lofty ideals, but weren’t necessarily hard working.

View from the rooftops.

It’s easy to see with hindsight, but it’s obviously much easier to improve the lives of those who started out with very little and were used to hard labour than it is to form a new community of truly equal people. If Owen had really wanted a socialist paradise, he could have considered whether it was possible to make all those in New Lanark equal. I think then, he might have realised he couldn’t achieve that without reducing his own circumstances to close to those of his workers, and I imagine that was why he set off on an unrealistic vanity project, rather than really setting out to achieve equality.

Back to work and I am unexpectedly working this weekend as the duty vet for Southern Scotland. This means that if there are any reports of suspected notifiable diseases, such as foot and mouth or bird flu reported, I’m the vet who will be sent out. Equally, if there’s an urgent welfare issue that’s so bad it can’t wait, that will be my job to tackle as well. My car is currently loaded up with boxes full of all the kit that I might need, which is quite eye opening as there’s so much of it. I know that in an outbreak situation, I would have to arrange clean and dirty areas in my car and, as I didn’t have much warning, everything has just been thrown in. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for now. Complicated routines take time to organize and I had less than a day to find everything, without anyone local to help me out. Roll on Monday!

The steam engine that drove the mill when the water in the Clyde was low was housed in the building on the right. The ropes that drove the machinery would have been inside the glass bridge. The mill race goes underneath the building on the right,