Champions of Change: Leading the Future of Veterinary Practice in New Zealand with Kevin Bryant

Kevin Bryant, CEO of the New Zealand Veterinary Association (NZVA), joins Julie South of VetStaff, us to share his passion and commitment to supporting veterinarians throughout their careers. 

From students to retirees, Kevin highlights the NZVA's pivotal role in championing the entire veterinary team.  

Often confused, listen as Kevin talks about the vital distinctions between the NZVA and the Vet Council (VCNZ), clarifying their unique roles and contributions to the veterinary sector in New Zealand.

Discover the extensive advocacy work spearheaded by the NZVA to improve animal welfare and veterinary practices. 

Kevin sheds light on efforts to empower trained veterinary nurses with specific dental procedures, campaigns against behaviour-modifying collars, and restrictions on public fireworks sales. 

Kevin and Julie also chat about the pressing issues of responsible antimicrobial use, veterinarians' roles in emergency responses through the One Health approach, and the crucial focus on workforce sustainability and leadership amidst economic challenges and workforce shortages. 

This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about the future of veterinary practice in New Zealand or who are considering moving to New Zealand to work as a veterinary professional.

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Chapters

• 0:04 Veterinary Voices Episode With Kevin Bryant
• 17:32 Advocacy and Priorities in Veterinary Profession

Transcript

Julie South:  Host [00:00:04]:
You're listening to veterinary voices, where we celebrate all that's great in the veterinary sector in New Zealand. This is episode 201 and I'm your show host, Julie South. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by vet staff, New Zealand's only recruitment agency specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs that they're absolutely excited about going to on Monday mornings in Kiwi vet clinics. That's at Vetstaff. Dot co dot NZ. Today on episode 201 of Veterinary Voices, I catch up with Mister Kevin Bryant, who's the CEO of the New Zealand Veterinary Association. Kevin's background is very definitely grounded in the primary sector here in New Zealand and in leading membership organisations. Before the NZVA, Kevin worked for the New Zealand Dairy Board and was also the founding CEO of the primary industry training Organisation, which happens to be New Zealand's largest ITO - Industry Training Organisation.

Julie South:  Host [00:01:15]:
When it comes to leadership, Kevin is committed to values based leadership. He, like all of us here on the vet staff team, believe that when you look after the people in your clinic, the people look after your business. When Kevin's not at work, family is a top priority for him. He has three adult children, two daughters and a son.

Julie South:  Host [00:02:17]:
He's also into mountain biking and gardening. If there is an All Blacks or a Hurricanes game on for overseas listeners, they are both rugby games, rugby teams, then Kevin will be right behind each of these teams. As you'll hear in Kevin's and my chat, being a member of the NZVA has benefits that extend beyond New Zealand borders. There are international benefits as well. I'll put all the links that Kevin and I talk about in the show notes of this episode, which you'll be able to access wherever you're listening to this show right now, or by visiting veterinaryvoices dot NZ. Just before we start, I do want to apologize in advance. Depending on how you're listening to the show right now, you may hear a bit of an echo when I ask Kevin questions. I was testing out a different recording platform which I promise I won't use again.

Julie South:  Host [00:03:22]:
Unfortunately, it affected my audio. It didn't affect Kevin's fortunately, it's Kevin who does most of the talking. So here we go. I kick off by asking Kevin to share why he is so passionate about the New Zealand Veterinary association.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:03:40]:
Okay, so we are the largest membership association representing vets in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We support vets at every stage of their career from their student days all the way through to retirement. We represent vets and the vet teams that they're part of throughout the country. We are a really strong, supportive community that spans the entire profession and we've got veterinarians that are working all over the industry. We've got our government vets that are looking after our biosecurity and food safety areas in the country, which is critical. We've got our academics that are teaching our vets and our researchers. We've got our vets that are working in industry organisations that are part of the supply chain. And of course we've got our vets who are in clinical practice.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:04:32]:
So we represent all of them.

Julie South:  Host [00:04:34]:
And you're 101 years old?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:04:37]:
We're in our 101st. I suppose it is year, aren't we? Yeah, it's pretty awesome. And given that we're a voluntary organisation you choose to join, you don't have to join. I think that's a pretty amazing accomplishment, actually.

Julie South:  Host [00:04:55]:
Kevin, have you noticed changes? Well, I guess you've instigated changes as well from when you first joined the association to where it is now. And also historically, what's changed?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:05:08]:
Yeah, I think what's changing is the, you know, we are the New Zealand Veterinary association, so we're here to support our veterinarian members. But of course veterinarians are part of a much bigger team and they can't function effectively without the support of their team. So we feel we're duty bound and honour bound to do our best to support the whole team. So we've been doing a lot of things that historically we, I don't think we did do. Historically we were able to be very focused on just veterinarians. But I think as the world has changed and as life has become more complicated and business has become more challenging, we can't do that on its own anymore. And so we are working really well and strongly and in ever increasingly more detail with the vet nurse association. We've got strong relationships with a community of large animal vetted techs.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:06:12]:
So there's a lot of sharing going on to try and build the capability and support the team whilst making sure that we are focused on our members. Because I think that's the critical thing I think that's another thing that certainly I've been very focused on in the short time I've been here at NZVA is to be very clear about our purpose. And we are a membership organisation. We are here for our members, we're here to represent our members and their views, no matter how many different views there may be. But that is our job, and it's not our job to sit in judgment on things like animal welfare issues and that sort of thing. Other people can do that, of course we'll have opinions, but our job is to make sure we represent the views of our members.

Julie South:  Host [00:07:03]:
Do people confuse the council with the vet association all the time?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:07:11]:
And it starts right when they're students at Massey? I think that there is varying degrees of awareness, but I think, on average, most people think we're one and the same thing. And some will call the vet council nzva, and some will call nzVA the vet council. Some people think we're the same entity, but just for some strange reason have two different names. And I think it's something that we have been trying to help clarify for people, because we do have some distinct roles. The Vet Council is the statutory body responsible for upholding veterinary standards. They set the standards, they manage registration of veterinarians and the annual practising certificates of veterinarians. They investigate complaints from members of the public, and vets must be registered to the Veterinary Council to practice in New Zealand. NZVA is a membership association, so we are here first and foremost for our members.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:08:10]:
So we're an advocacy body as opposed to a statutory body. As I said before, membership is optional, and about 70% of registered vets in New Zealand are actually members of the association. And that compares really favourably to associations in other parts of the world, like the UK and Australia, the US and Canada, where the numbers are closer to 50 50. We also support the wider profession, so we have memberships available for students, for retired vets, for vets living overseas, and also for some allied veterinary professionals, so that we've got a place for the large animal vet techs to have a home. There is some fundamental differences and, yes, we do sit together in lots of areas and talk about the same topics, albeit through a slightly different lens.

Julie South:  Host [00:09:00]:
You just mentioned the international associations, your, what would you call them? Your sisters, your brothers, your cousins in other countries. Is there a good community with the associations?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:09:14]:
Yes, we've got a really tight knit group, the six of us. It's called IVoc, and it is the veterinary associations from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We get together face to face, where possible, annually around the World Veterinary Congress, the World Veterinary association conference, and have our own conference. And we have regular catch ups going on at a president and CEO level through the year. So there's a huge amount of sharing of information, resources, experiences which we can actually call on and bring in to support our members. And some of these associations are a lot larger than us. For example, the Americans have 100,000 members and they're well resourced and they're very happy to share their resources with us. So we all have the same challenges, and it's great that we've got access to that level of support.

Julie South:  Host [00:10:14]:
You mentioned before when comparing the council with the association, the advocacy services that the association offers to its members. So that's one of the reasons that people should join. Veterinarians should join. What other do you have?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:10:34]:
So I'll try and not make this a sales pitch. I think one of the big things is collegiality and networking opportunities. I mean, we are a small industry, we're a small profession. There's only about 3400 registered veterinarians in the country. The opportunity for veterinarians to get together and share experiences and build their networks is really important. And we do that through the likes of our conference and the regional networks that we've got humming along. And that's really important. We feel particularly for some of our vets, who are somewhat isolated in their roles, it's a really important thing to enable them to be able to actually mingle with their peers.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:11:24]:
A huge part of what we do is around continuing professional development. So we provide access to a vast array of CPD through partners. We do deliver a little bit ourselves, but that tends to be only in a gap filling capacity. So if nobody else is offering something and it's needed, then we'll pull together. Program that was a decision that was made several years ago, that we would not be a provider of CPD and use it as a way to make money. We felt it was a better service to members to facilitate access to good quality CPD from people who know what they're talking about. And that's worked really well. And we now have a vast array of programs and webinars and tutorials and resources available on, on our vetlearn platform.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:12:17]:
That's really important, and members get big discounts to participate and access that information. Another area that we do a lot of work on is providing resources and things like supporting clinical activity in terms of how to maybe look at efficiencies in the business through the likes of our business symposiums, business support through the veterinary business branch, through the benchmarking work that they're doing. We've got a climate change ambassador, Jane O, who is pulling together a little army of climate change champions around the country. We provide a lot of resource in terms of certainly on the back of Cyclone Gabriel, around disaster and emergency management, and through some of the projects that we're working on, there's a lot of resources that people can access there. Another big area that we have invested heavily in is in wellbeing support. We made a call during COVID that we wouldn't charge anybody anything for any wellbeing support that they accessed. We felt this was pretty critical to support our members and we've not changed that. So when it comes to wellbeing, a large amount of really high quality material is on our website.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:13:37]:
I think that it's probably not that well known how much is actually available there. And it's not limited in terms of its scope. It covers a wide range of what we call power skills. We worked with the likes of Michael Meehan, who's a bit of a guru in the communications space, veterinary communications. So he's developed some programs for us around targeted types of communications to make our lives easier. And that goes all the way through to trauma management support in terms of how to actually help yourself and get help for your colleagues if you're in a grief and trauma stage. So it covers a vast array of activities there. We also provide a lot of pastoral care support through our team here.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:14:25]:
So we would be getting a call a day coming in to our vet team seeking support on some aspect of clinical activity, practice. We also get a lot of calls in around things like finances and membership and HR and those sorts of things. So we do a lot of pastoral support one on one with our members. And the advocacy part that we've sort of touched on is a very big part of what we do. So that's working with government and with industry partners on behalf of our members. And there's a vast array of things that we. That we do in that space, much of it behind the scenes. So day in, day out, a lot of our members wouldn't even know some of the work we're doing.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:12]:
But it's really important to have that seat at the table and to be trusted by both government and industry to be able to make a contribution on behalf of the profession.

Julie South:  Host [00:15:24]:
I'll ask you about advocacy in a minute. You mentioned Doctor Jane O with climate change. I just want to make a mention here to listeners that Doctor Jane has actually been on this podcast a number of times. So what I will do is put links to her episodes on climate change in the show. Notes for this advocacy. What's on your table right now?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:48]:
It's a long list.

Julie South:  Host [00:15:50]:
Okay. Right.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:52]:
And I guess advocacy comes in different forms. If I could go back in time when Covid arrived. Not many people know this, but veterinarians were not going to be an essential service when Covid arrived. And we were given 48 hours by the minister to convince him that we should be.

Julie South:  Host [00:16:13]:
And that was on a Friday night from memory, wasn't it? Because you guys worked all weekend.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:16:18]:
Yeah, and I mean, that's one of the other things. The powers have been a member because with our special interest branches, so we've got a bunch of special interest branches representing all of our members. With our special interest branches, we were able to pull together a really solid argument that we were able to go back to the minister and say, here's why you need to make veterinarians an essential service. And we were the only veterinary industry in the world for quite some time whose members were granted that status. So we were the envy of our sister associations for a long time until they managed to catch up. That was, if we hadn't been successful in that life, would have been a hell of a lot tougher for our members during COVID you know, similarly, we were able to negotiate with the government so that when Auckland was locked down that veterinarians could cross the borders. Same deal. And we worked really well with both MPI and Immigration New Zealand to enable vets to be brought in from overseas.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:17:21]:
During COVID it was a lot of heartache and it was difficult and caused a lot of sleepness nights for a lot of our members. But we did get a lot of people in. So it's at that sort of macro level, we do a lot of work down to advocating for specific topics. And I'll just throw a few out at some of the things that we have worked on or are working on advocating for the development of regulations allowing trained evps, that's vet nurses, to perform sub gingival dental procedures and companion animals. So that was a significant piece of work that was undertaken. We're advocating around rules around dog tethering. We're advocating to ban behaviour modifying collars in dogs. We have been advocating for years to ban the public sale of fireworks.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:18:13]:
We advocating against the use of dogs with extreme confirmations in advertising. So that's pug dogs and those sorts of animals that seem to be very popular with advertisers. We also have got an ongoing advocacy piece around responsible product stewardship through our antimicrobial resistance committee and our strategy that is attached to that. So our focus is on encouraging reduced use of antibiotics for animal health and wellbeing. We also work with our special interest branches to collate feedback on. There is a vast range of animal welfare code reviews going on, and so we coordinate all of the perspectives from our members through our branches and feed that into that process. And I guess this is the power of having an association, is that we can act as a single voice to government and to industry. And it would be virtually impossible for an individual business to spend the time to advocate in all these different areas.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:19:22]:
Having an association that is able to actually fairly represent your views is, I think, really a real plus in our collective pocket there. And we also develop position statements for the members on topical issues that our members are grappling with, so that we, as an association, we don't all agree, but we've got a perspective on things like rodeos and greyhound racing and live exports. That's an area that we do a lot of work, once again, with our special interest branches, because they are the folks who have got the technical know how in these topics. So it's a really powerful tool that we can offer. And as I say, much of this work is totally unknown and unnoticed by our members. But if it was not there, they'd really notice it.

Julie South:  Host [00:20:13]:
Talk to me, please, about one health. How does that work in.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:20:18]:
Yeah, so that's really important. So that's one of our three strategic priorities as dictated by our members. And really it's also a big part of our advocacy work. So what we're actually advocating primarily to government is that you've got a situation with a veterinarian wherever, perfectly placed at the nexus between animals, environment and people. We intersect all three of them, whether it's the value that a companion animal brings to human wellbeing, or whether it's the benefit provided to our country through our export industries, the veterinarian plays a critical role in that process. And I think that we've got one example where it's acknowledged, and that's in the foot and mouth disease response plan. So veterinarians are front and center in that, as part of that response, and it is part of a team. It was not the case in Cyclone Gabriel and the floods in Auckland, where the role of the veterinarian to ensure the need of the animal and the needs of the owners of those animals were catered to was not well supported.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:21:33]:
Our focus from a civil defence perspective and emergency management perspective was on humans. And whilst we totally accept that humans are going to come first, there's definitely a place. And so we are advocating very strongly that whether it's a natural disaster or a disease incursion, the veterinarians have got a critical role to play. And if we look at Cyclone Gabriel, it was the veterinary community was helping the general practice medical community understand the impacts of leptospirosis on humans because that reared its ugly head after the floods happened there and we had a lot of lepto going around being transferred from animals to humans. So we were the ones who helped our medical fraternity, a human medical fraternity, who didn't actually understand that connection, understand it. And it's just a very blunt example of how effective we are in a one health environment. So one health has to be a critical part of who we are as a profession and as an association. So I'm really pleased that our members have said to us, that's got to be one of your top three priorities.

Julie South:  Host [00:22:45]:
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Julie South:  Host [00:23:38]:
Now let's get back to today's show and the other two.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:23:42]:
So the other two are workforce and business sustainability. And right now that is mission critical for most of our profession. And the second one is leadership, advocacy and communication, which I've talked quite a bit about. You know, the members are saying we, we definitely need our association doing that stuff for us that hasn't changed in the last couple of years. So we go through a process of checking in with the members, through our branches, through our member advisory group to make sure that we're on track strategically. And the feedback that's come back is you've got to keep doing what you're doing because it's job's not done. And we've got a real challenge right now in terms of our sustainability of our profession with this perfect storm that's blowing at the moment of high inflation, high cost of living, low export prices, it's really challenging. So it's important to acknowledge that.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:24:37]:
And that's where a lot of effort is going in, in terms of trying to support our members in terms of dealing with that. And sort of in the mix is this workforce shortage, which right now is not such a critical problem because of all the economic impacts which are slowing things down. But as the inflationary pressure eases and cost of living improves and business and private consumer confidence increases, we're going to see that demand for service increasing again. We're going to have all of the pet owners that popped up in Covid needing their cats and dogs vaccinated and having check ups. So we're going to have our farmers wanting more support for their animals and we'll be back into a workforce shortage problem.

Julie South:  Host [00:25:22]:
For veterinarians who aren't currently members of the association, what would you like them to know?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:25:33]:
I think I'd like them to know who we are and why we're here and what we're doing. And we're constantly seeking out ways in which we can reach those who are not members. What we hear from a lot of people is that an employer will say to their team, well, you've got a CPD allowance, and if you want to spend some or all of your CPD allowance on a membership of NZVA, well, that's your choice, but you won't be able to go and do other things. For me, it's the disappointment about what they're missing out on in terms of services and support they can access. I mean, just one of the things we do in our wellbeing is that not everybody in their workplace has an employee assistant program. So what we have through NZVA is the ability for people to access counselling support free of charge. And we're just in the process of reintroducing our fund to the membership because it's actually called the Elizabeth Benevolent fund, but nobody really knows much about it, so we're going to be reintroducing that to the membership. It's an important thing that we can offer as part of that wellbeing package that we offer.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:26:46]:
And the website address, Kevin, is nzva.org dot nz.

Julie South:  Host [00:26:52]:
My final question, is there anything that you would like to say that I haven't asked?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:26:59]:
I think the only thing really is that we have a vast array of projects which I haven't talked about, but it'd be great to come back and talk about those. Maybe get our vet team in talking about some of our projects that we're working on. And they're big ticket items that are going to make our members lives a lot better as a result of things like improving the options in terms of how we manage after hours.

Julie South:  Host [00:27:25]:
Right, let's definitely come back on that one.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:27:28]:
That's one of them. We've got a massive project in terms of supporting our dairy vets and creating a career pathway for themselves. We've got the CaV refresher scheme project for people that are reentering the workforce. So there's some really. And we've got a student placements project that we're working with Massey on. So there's some really significant things that we're working on which are directly targeting and addressing needs identified by the members and we can maybe talk about them at another time.

Julie South:  Host [00:27:58]:
Absolutely. Thank you for listening. If you are not a member of the NZVA and you want to know more, then you can find the links that Kevin mentioned by going to veterinaryvoices dot NZ. They will be there next week. I catch up with Laura Harvey. Laura is the head of environmental and animal sciences at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. She is also the president of the NZVNA, the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing association. She and I chat about the latest research project that she's been involved with, together with Boringer Engelheim.

Julie South:  Host [00:28:41]:
It's an industry survey, industry wide survey, that showed that veterinary nurses face workforce challenges different to those of their veterinarian colleagues. This is Julie south signing off until next week, inviting you to go out there and have the most fantabulous week you can. And to be the most fantabulous version of you you can be. Take care.Julie South:  Host [00:00:04]:
You're listening to veterinary voices, where we celebrate all that's great in the veterinary sector in New Zealand. This is episode 201 and I'm your show host, Julie South. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by vet staff, New Zealand's only recruitment agency specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs that they're absolutely excited about going to on Monday mornings in Kiwi vet clinics. That's at Vetstaff. Dot co dot NZ. Today on episode 201 of Veterinary Voices, I catch up with Mister Kevin Bryant, who's the CEO of the New Zealand Veterinary Association. Kevin's background is very definitely grounded in the primary sector here in New Zealand and in leading membership organisations. Before the NZVA, Kevin worked for the New Zealand Dairy Board and was also the founding CEO of the primary industry training Organisation, which happens to be New Zealand's largest ITO - industry training organisation.

Julie South:  Host [00:01:15]:
I'm not sure that many Kiwis know that Kevin worked with Julie Hood. Julie was the NZVA's previous CEO. Together they established a new qualification system for people in New Zealand without veterinarian or veterinary nursing qualifications to enable them to be able to work in kiwi veterinary clinics with a recognised veterinary qualification, known here as the New Zealand Certificate in animal technology rural animal technician. It's now available at different polytechs around New Zealand. When it comes to leadership, Kevin is committed to values based leadership. He, like all of us here on the vet staff team, believe that when you look after the people in your clinic, the people look after your business. When Kevin's not at work, family is a top priority for him. He has three adult children, two daughters and a son.

Julie South:  Host [00:02:17]:
He's also into mountain biking and gardening. If there is an All Blacks or a Hurricanes game on for overseas listeners, they are both rugby games, rugby teams, then Kevin will be right behind each of these teams. As you'll hear in Kevin's and my chat, being a member of the NZVA has benefits that extend beyond New Zealand borders. There are international benefits as well. I'll put all the links that Kevin and I talk about in the show notes of this episode, which you'll be able to access wherever you're listening to this show right now, or by visiting veterinaryvoices.NZ. Just before we start, I do want to apologize in advance. Depending on how you're listening to the show right now, you may hear a bit of an echo when I ask Kevin questions. I was testing out a different recording platform which I promise I won't use again.

Julie South:  Host [00:03:22]:
Unfortunately, it affected my audio. It didn't affect Kevin's fortunately, it's Kevin who does most of the talking. So here we go. I kick off by asking Kevin to share why he is so passionate about the New Zealand Veterinary association.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:03:40]:
Okay, so we are the largest membership association representing vets in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We support vets at every stage of their career from their student days all the way through to retirement. We represent vets and the vet teams that they're part of throughout the country. We are a really strong, supportive community that spans the entire profession and we've got veterinarians that are working all over the industry. We've got our government vets that are looking after our biosecurity and food safety areas in the country, which is critical. We've got our academics that are teaching our vets and our researchers. We've got our vets that are working in industry organisations that are part of the supply chain. And of course we've got our vets who are in clinical practice.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:04:32]:
So we represent all of them.

Julie South:  Host [00:04:34]:
And you're 101 years old?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:04:37]:
We're in our 101st. I suppose it is year, aren't we? Yeah, it's pretty awesome. And given that we're a voluntary organisation you choose to join, you don't have to join. I think that's a pretty amazing accomplishment, actually.

Julie South:  Host [00:04:55]:
Kevin, have you noticed changes? Well, I guess you've instigated changes as well from when you first joined the association to where it is now. And also historically, what's changed?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:05:08]:
Yeah, I think what's changing is the, you know, we are the New Zealand Veterinary association, so we're here to support our veterinarian members. But of course veterinarians are part of a much bigger team and they can't function effectively without the support of their team. So we feel we're duty bound and honour bound to do our best to support the whole team. So we've been doing a lot of things that historically we, I don't think we did do. Historically we were able to be very focused on just veterinarians. But I think as the world has changed and as life has become more complicated and business has become more challenging, we can't do that on its own anymore. And so we are working really well and strongly and in ever increasingly more detail with the vet nurse association. We've got strong relationships with a community of large animal vetted techs.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:06:12]:
So there's a lot of sharing going on to try and build the capability and support the team whilst making sure that we are focused on our members. Because I think that's the critical thing I think that's another thing that certainly I've been very focused on in the short time I've been here at NZVA is to be very clear about our purpose. And we are a membership organisation. We are here for our members, we're here to represent our members and their views, no matter how many different views there may be. But that is our job, and it's not our job to sit in judgment on things like animal welfare issues and that sort of thing. Other people can do that, of course we'll have opinions, but our job is to make sure we represent the views of our members.

Julie South:  Host [00:07:03]:
Do people confuse the council with the vet association all the time?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:07:11]:
And it starts right when they're students at Massey? I think that there is varying degrees of awareness, but I think, on average, most people think we're one and the same thing. And some will call the vet council nzva, and some will call nzVA the vet council. Some people think we're the same entity, but just for some strange reason have two different names. And I think it's something that we have been trying to help clarify for people, because we do have some distinct roles. The Vet Council is the statutory body responsible for upholding veterinary standards. They set the standards, they manage registration of veterinarians and the annual practising certificates of veterinarians. They investigate complaints from members of the public, and vets must be registered to the Veterinary Council to practice in New Zealand. NZVA is a membership association, so we are here first and foremost for our members.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:08:10]:
So we're an advocacy body as opposed to a statutory body. As I said before, membership is optional, and about 70% of registered vets in New Zealand are actually members of the association. And that compares really favourably to associations in other parts of the world, like the UK and Australia, the US and Canada, where the numbers are closer to 50 50. We also support the wider profession, so we have memberships available for students, for retired vets, for vets living overseas, and also for some allied veterinary professionals, so that we've got a place for the large animal vet techs to have a home. There is some fundamental differences and, yes, we do sit together in lots of areas and talk about the same topics, albeit through a slightly different lens.

Julie South:  Host [00:09:00]:
You just mentioned the international associations, your, what would you call them? Your sisters, your brothers, your cousins in other countries. Is there a good community with the associations?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:09:14]:
Yes, we've got a really tight knit group, the six of us. It's called IVoc, and it is the veterinary associations from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We get together face to face, where possible, annually around the World Veterinary Congress, the World Veterinary association conference, and have our own conference. And we have regular catch ups going on at a president and CEO level through the year. So there's a huge amount of sharing of information, resources, experiences which we can actually call on and bring in to support our members. And some of these associations are a lot larger than us. For example, the Americans have 100,000 members and they're well resourced and they're very happy to share their resources with us. So we all have the same challenges, and it's great that we've got access to that level of support.

Julie South:  Host [00:10:14]:
You mentioned before when comparing the council with the association, the advocacy services that the association offers to its members. So that's one of the reasons that people should join. Veterinarians should join. What other do you have?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:10:34]:
So I'll try and not make this a sales pitch. I think one of the big things is collegiality and networking opportunities. I mean, we are a small industry, we're a small profession. There's only about 3400 registered veterinarians in the country. The opportunity for veterinarians to get together and share experiences and build their networks is really important. And we do that through the likes of our conference and the regional networks that we've got humming along. And that's really important. We feel particularly for some of our vets, who are somewhat isolated in their roles, it's a really important thing to enable them to be able to actually mingle with their peers.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:11:24]:
A huge part of what we do is around continuing professional development. So we provide access to a vast array of CPD through partners. We do deliver a little bit ourselves, but that tends to be only in a gap filling capacity. So if nobody else is offering something and it's needed, then we'll pull together. Program that was a decision that was made several years ago, that we would not be a provider of CPD and use it as a way to make money. We felt it was a better service to members to facilitate access to good quality CPD from people who know what they're talking about. And that's worked really well. And we now have a vast array of programs and webinars and tutorials and resources available on, on our vetlearn platform.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:12:17]:
That's really important, and members get big discounts to participate and access that information. Another area that we do a lot of work on is providing resources and things like supporting clinical activity in terms of how to maybe look at efficiencies in the business through the likes of our business symposiums, business support through the veterinary business branch, through the benchmarking work that they're doing. We've got a climate change ambassador, Jane O, who is pulling together a little army of climate change champions around the country. We provide a lot of resource in terms of certainly on the back of Cyclone Gabriel, around disaster and emergency management, and through some of the projects that we're working on, there's a lot of resources that people can access there. Another big area that we have invested heavily in is in wellbeing support. We made a call during COVID that we wouldn't charge anybody anything for any wellbeing support that they accessed. We felt this was pretty critical to support our members and we've not changed that. So when it comes to wellbeing, a large amount of really high quality material is on our website.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:13:37]:
I think that it's probably not that well known how much is actually available there. And it's not limited in terms of its scope. It covers a wide range of what we call power skills. We worked with the likes of Michael Meehan, who's a bit of a guru in the communications space, veterinary communications. So he's developed some programs for us around targeted types of communications to make our lives easier. And that goes all the way through to trauma management support in terms of how to actually help yourself and get help for your colleagues if you're in a grief and trauma stage. So it covers a vast array of activities there. We also provide a lot of pastoral care support through our team here.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:14:25]:
So we would be getting a call a day coming in to our vet team seeking support on some aspect of clinical activity, practice. We also get a lot of calls in around things like finances and membership and HR and those sorts of things. So we do a lot of pastoral support one on one with our members. And the advocacy part that we've sort of touched on is a very big part of what we do. So that's working with government and with industry partners on behalf of our members. And there's a vast array of things that we. That we do in that space, much of it behind the scenes. So day in, day out, a lot of our members wouldn't even know some of the work we're doing.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:12]:
But it's really important to have that seat at the table and to be trusted by both government and industry to be able to make a contribution on behalf of the profession.

Julie South:  Host [00:15:24]:
I'll ask you about advocacy in a minute. You mentioned Doctor Jane O with climate change. I just want to make a mention here to listeners that Doctor Jane has actually been on this podcast a number of times. So what I will do is put links to her episodes on climate change in the show. Notes for this advocacy. What's on your table right now?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:48]:
It's a long list.

Julie South:  Host [00:15:50]:
Okay. Right.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:15:52]:
And I guess advocacy comes in different forms. If I could go back in time when Covid arrived. Not many people know this, but veterinarians were not going to be an essential service when Covid arrived. And we were given 48 hours by the minister to convince him that we should be.

Julie South:  Host [00:16:13]:
And that was on a Friday night from memory, wasn't it? Because you guys worked all weekend.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:16:18]:
Yeah, and I mean, that's one of the other things. The powers have been a member because with our special interest branches, so we've got a bunch of special interest branches representing all of our members. With our special interest branches, we were able to pull together a really solid argument that we were able to go back to the minister and say, here's why you need to make veterinarians an essential service. And we were the only veterinary industry in the world for quite some time whose members were granted that status. So we were the envy of our sister associations for a long time until they managed to catch up. That was, if we hadn't been successful in that life, would have been a hell of a lot tougher for our members during COVID you know, similarly, we were able to negotiate with the government so that when Auckland was locked down that veterinarians could cross the borders. Same deal. And we worked really well with both MPI and Immigration New Zealand to enable vets to be brought in from overseas.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:17:21]:
During COVID it was a lot of heartache and it was difficult and caused a lot of sleepness nights for a lot of our members. But we did get a lot of people in. So it's at that sort of macro level, we do a lot of work down to advocating for specific topics. And I'll just throw a few out at some of the things that we have worked on or are working on advocating for the development of regulations allowing trained evps, that's vet nurses, to perform sub gingival dental procedures and companion animals. So that was a significant piece of work that was undertaken. We're advocating around rules around dog tethering. We're advocating to ban behaviour modifying collars in dogs. We have been advocating for years to ban the public sale of fireworks.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:18:13]:
We advocating against the use of dogs with extreme confirmations in advertising. So that's pug dogs and those sorts of animals that seem to be very popular with advertisers. We also have got an ongoing advocacy piece around responsible product stewardship through our antimicrobial resistance committee and our strategy that is attached to that. So our focus is on encouraging reduced use of antibiotics for animal health and wellbeing. We also work with our special interest branches to collate feedback on. There is a vast range of animal welfare code reviews going on, and so we coordinate all of the perspectives from our members through our branches and feed that into that process. And I guess this is the power of having an association, is that we can act as a single voice to government and to industry. And it would be virtually impossible for an individual business to spend the time to advocate in all these different areas.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:19:22]:
Having an association that is able to actually fairly represent your views is, I think, really a real plus in our collective pocket there. And we also develop position statements for the members on topical issues that our members are grappling with, so that we, as an association, we don't all agree, but we've got a perspective on things like rodeos and greyhound racing and live exports. That's an area that we do a lot of work, once again, with our special interest branches, because they are the folks who have got the technical know how in these topics. So it's a really powerful tool that we can offer. And as I say, much of this work is totally unknown and unnoticed by our members. But if it was not there, they'd really notice it.

Julie South:  Host [00:20:13]:
Talk to me, please, about one health. How does that work in.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:20:18]:
Yeah, so that's really important. So that's one of our three strategic priorities as dictated by our members. And really it's also a big part of our advocacy work. So what we're actually advocating primarily to government is that you've got a situation with a veterinarian wherever, perfectly placed at the nexus between animals, environment and people. We intersect all three of them, whether it's the value that a companion animal brings to human wellbeing, or whether it's the benefit provided to our country through our export industries, the veterinarian plays a critical role in that process. And I think that we've got one example where it's acknowledged, and that's in the foot and mouth disease response plan. So veterinarians are front and center in that, as part of that response, and it is part of a team. It was not the case in Cyclone Gabriel and the floods in Auckland, where the role of the veterinarian to ensure the need of the animal and the needs of the owners of those animals were catered to was not well supported.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:21:33]:
Our focus from a civil defence perspective and emergency management perspective was on humans. And whilst we totally accept that humans are going to come first, there's definitely a place. And so we are advocating very strongly that whether it's a natural disaster or a disease incursion, the veterinarians have got a critical role to play. And if we look at Cyclone Gabriel, it was the veterinary community was helping the general practice medical community understand the impacts of leptospirosis on humans because that reared its ugly head after the floods happened there and we had a lot of lepto going around being transferred from animals to humans. So we were the ones who helped our medical fraternity, a human medical fraternity, who didn't actually understand that connection, understand it. And it's just a very blunt example of how effective we are in a one health environment. So one health has to be a critical part of who we are as a profession and as an association. So I'm really pleased that our members have said to us, that's got to be one of your top three priorities.

Julie South:  Host [00:22:45]:
I just want to interrupt this chat for a very brief moment to share something exciting for clinics who are doing their own recruitment. Vetclinicjobs.com, you probably already know that traditional recruitment methods aren't cutting it anymore, so a different approach is necessary. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. Instead, what clinics need to do is showcase what makes your clinic a great place to work. Vetclinicjobs.com boosts your employer brand, which is not to be confused with your client marketing brand. And vetclinicjobs.com is affordable. So give your recruitment marketing the oomph that it needs@vetclinicjobs.com. where you can list your clinic and list your job.

Julie South:  Host [00:23:38]:
Now let's get back to today's show and the other two.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:23:42]:
So the other two are workforce and business sustainability. And right now that is mission critical for most of our profession. And the second one is leadership, advocacy and communication, which I've talked quite a bit about. You know, the members are saying we, we definitely need our association doing that stuff for us that hasn't changed in the last couple of years. So we go through a process of checking in with the members, through our branches, through our member advisory group to make sure that we're on track strategically. And the feedback that's come back is you've got to keep doing what you're doing because it's job's not done. And we've got a real challenge right now in terms of our sustainability of our profession with this perfect storm that's blowing at the moment of high inflation, high cost of living, low export prices, it's really challenging. So it's important to acknowledge that.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:24:37]:
And that's where a lot of effort is going in, in terms of trying to support our members in terms of dealing with that. And sort of in the mix is this workforce shortage, which right now is not such a critical problem because of all the economic impacts which are slowing things down. But as the inflationary pressure eases and cost of living improves and business and private consumer confidence increases, we're going to see that demand for service increasing again. We're going to have all of the pet owners that popped up in Covid needing their cats and dogs vaccinated and having check ups. So we're going to have our farmers wanting more support for their animals and we'll be back into a workforce shortage problem.

Julie South:  Host [00:25:22]:
For veterinarians who aren't currently members of the association, what would you like them to know?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:25:33]:
I think I'd like them to know who we are and why we're here and what we're doing. And we're constantly seeking out ways in which we can reach those who are not members. What we hear from a lot of people is that an employer will say to their team, well, you've got a CPD allowance, and if you want to spend some or all of your CPD allowance on a membership of NZVA, well, that's your choice, but you won't be able to go and do other things. For me, it's the disappointment about what they're missing out on in terms of services and support they can access. I mean, just one of the things we do in our wellbeing is that not everybody in their workplace has an employee assistant program. So what we have through NZVA is the ability for people to access counselling support free of charge. And we're just in the process of reintroducing our fund to the membership because it's actually called the Elizabeth Benevolent fund, but nobody really knows much about it, so we're going to be reintroducing that to the membership. It's an important thing that we can offer as part of that wellbeing package that we offer.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:26:46]:
And the website address, Kevin, is nzva.org dot nz.

Julie South:  Host [00:26:52]:
My final question, is there anything that you would like to say that I haven't asked?

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:26:59]:
I think the only thing really is that we have a vast array of projects which I haven't talked about, but it'd be great to come back and talk about those. Maybe get our vet team in talking about some of our projects that we're working on. And they're big ticket items that are going to make our members lives a lot better as a result of things like improving the options in terms of how we manage after hours.

Julie South:  Host [00:27:25]:
Right, let's definitely come back on that one.

Kevin Bryant - NZVA CEO - Guest [00:27:28]:
That's one of them. We've got a massive project in terms of supporting our dairy vets and creating a career pathway for themselves. We've got the CaV refresher scheme project for people that are reentering the workforce. So there's some really. And we've got a student placements project that we're working with Massey on. So there's some really significant things that we're working on which are directly targeting and addressing needs identified by the members and we can maybe talk about them at another time.

Julie South:  Host [00:27:58]:
Absolutely. Thank you for listening. If you are not a member of the NZVA and you want to know more, then you can find the links that Kevin mentioned by going to veterinaryvoices dot NZ. They will be there next week. I catch up with Laura Harvey. Laura is the head of environmental and animal sciences at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. She is also the president of the NZVNA, the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing association. She and I chat about the latest research project that she's been involved with, together with Boringer Engelheim.

Julie South:  Host [00:28:41]:
It's an industry survey, industry wide survey, that showed that veterinary nurses face workforce challenges different to those of their veterinarian colleagues. This is Julie south signing off until next week, inviting you to go out there and have the most fantabulous week you can. And to be the most fantabulous version of you you can be. Take care.