John Tulloch

Being a horse vet is very dangerous.

Please don't ask your vet to 'have a go' in order to avoid sedating your horse.

If your vet recommends sedation it's for the safety of the vet, the owner and the horse.

Our recent study on how vets define workplace injuries has been picked up by Horse & Hound

>20% said something was only an injury if couldn’t carry out work as normal. 19% said they wouldn’t report any injury

article: www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/equine-...

Paper: doi.org/10.1093/occm...

Zoonotic infections in UK and Irish veterinary students: a cross-sectional survey - BMC Public Health Background Zoonotic infections are a recognised risk for the veterinary community. Veterinary students are at risk, due to the range of activities they participate with on training coupled with their ...

Start the week off by reading our new paper about zoonotic infections and vet students!

Almost a third reported experiencing one during their training!

How did they acquire them?
What did they do once they had it?
Read more to find out!
🐄🐑🐖🐶🐈

doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Thanks again to the amazing author team and to
@LUVS_INSPIRE
Here is the paper again:
doi.org/10.1186/s128...
If you have any thoughts and questions, would love to hear them!

Conclusions:
Vet students are at increased risk of contracting zoonotic diseases, esp on farm
There are cultural issues re: how the vet profession view workplace infections!
Attitude & behaviour change is needed to reduce the risk to students & normalise illness reporting

Results:
Students: accepted the risk of a zoonosis
Reluctant to take time off to recover
Did not report their infections
Unaware of appropriate PPE usage and infection control practices
Sense of bravado was normalised and necessary!
Evidence of 'maladaptive coping strategies'

Gates Open Moo GIF ALT: Gates Open Moo GIF

Results:
Almost 500 students responded
32% had reported having had a zoonosis whilst on their degree
Crypto was the most commonly reported
91% of infections were acquired on farm placements

Genius Smart GIF ALT: Genius Smart GIF

Methods: We sent out an in depth survey to vet students in and . This was analysed with a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches

Kid Doctor GIF ALT: Kid Doctor GIF

Aims: Vet students are exposed to so many different animals during their training and so there is the potential for zoonotic infection (ie a disease acquired from an animal). We wanted to know how common this was in UK and Irish vet students

Zoonotic infections in UK and Irish veterinary students: a cross-sectional survey - BMC Public Health Background Zoonotic infections are a recognised risk for the veterinary community. Veterinary students are at risk, due to the range of activities they participate with on training coupled with their ...

🚨New paper🚨
Zoonotic infections in UK & Irish Vet Students

Funded by Academy of Medical Sciences via INSPIRE

doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Veterinary students’ proximity to and interpretation of a simulated “aggressive” dog before and after training - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Veterinary students’ proximity to and interpretation of a simulated “aggressive” dog before and after training

Great paper by James Oxley and team exploring how vet students stayed further away from a virtual reality aggressive dog if they had received canine behaviour training.

Highlights that VR may be a critical part of dog safety education.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Epidemiology and decision-making in animal health

Epidemiology is a scientific discipline aiming at understanding the factors that influence the distribution of diseases in populations to provide scientific evidence to policy-makers.

🎬 Check out in video what doing research in #veterinary epidemiology in our team means!

t.co/y3PBRQrjbe

A big cultural change needs to occur across our profession.

We are decades behind the practices and cultures of many other professions.

We should be striving to look after both our physical and mental health.

Fin

This is the first output from our CVS funded project exploring veterinary work-place injuries.

I implore you to read some of the quotes in the paper, as they are shocking.

Future output is even more concerning than what is captured here. doi.org/10.1101/2023...

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Impact:

Injury reporting systems are likely to significantly under-represent the true incidence of injuries

It highlights a cultural issue about what is deemed an injury, what practices are deemed 'everyday risks', and the importance of recording and reflecting on injuries.

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Most will only report injuries if blame can be attributed to something/someone else (ie dog bite), but will not report injuries that were caused by themselves.

A concerning number of people thought that needlesticks were minor injuries and do not need reporting

4/n

In essence, each sector of the profession defines injuries differently. Most notably that equine and farm vets define something as an injury if they either need significant medical treatment or will take time off work

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As not peer-reviewed yet, I will not delve into too much depth, so please read and let me know your thoughts.

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🚨New pre-print 🚨
Pain, inconvenience, & blame: Defining work-related injuries in veterinary workplace
doi.org/10.1101/2023...

Funder: CVS UK Ltd
Written with amazing co-authors!

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