CAAHTT Report: 2002-2003 Professional Survey

The stated opinions and facts provided by the respondents on their individual surveys have been compiled and a summary has been prepared by your survey coordinator. This commentary is offered to you as a coordinator’s reflection in summary of the facts, opinions and statements made by the survey respondents. It is intended to assist you in challenging your current thoughts and paradigms and expanding your understanding of the Provincial and National AHT/VT. Provincial analysis and direction, as influenced by this data, must work to keep a National definition and unity of the AHT/VT in mind.

Sincerely,
Lucille C. Landals, AHT
November 2003

The Canadian Association of Animal Health Technologists & Technicians is pleased to present you with the opportunity to get to know your profession better! CAAHTT wanted to collect information from its member Associations. 659 Animal Health Technologists/Veterinary Technicians across Canada who participated in this survey have provided us with their opinion and other work related detail. It is hoped that this information will assist Canadian AHT/VT Associations by broadening our perspectives and challenging current opinions and understandings.

This information was used in 2003 in Strategic Planning for our National Association. Better planning, goals and strategies are the direct result of using this data in forming our National CAAHTT 2003/2004 strategic plan.

Distribution at each Provincial Association’s annual conference helped us keep the cost of doing the survey down for our organization. Members attending these conferences are the ones whose opinions and detailed information we are reviewing today. Very few surveys were mailed or faxed in after each event. This is a ‘snapshot’ of our membership – all 659 of us who took the time to fill in the survey.

New information challenges our present perspectives and opinions. Study and use this data. No survey is worth doing unless the data is utilized somehow in forming new activities and plans. Recognize the importance of regular collection of pertinent data. Help us get to get to know our Association’s members better and by so doing, creating more effective plans and goals for our organizations. This initial project of CAAHTT should be repeated on a planned and regular basis both at the National and Provincial level. Sharing this type of data annually at CAAHTT and Provincial meetings is vital. On-going tabulation of summary data thus collected at CAAHTT would be an excellent resource for future provincial Association boards.

Certain topics lend themselves well to quick answers on membership applications or renewals, CE evaluation forms, newsletter-fax in responses, etc. National agreement as to the key survey data useful for the future would raise the value of this exercise, keeping uniformity of question and answer modality as a priority for easy tabulation and analysis.

The information collected is shown as a National average of the total respondents. Seven Provincial conferences held during the fall of 2002 into the summer of 2003 provided us with the opportunity to distribute, collect and tabulate our data. Our country is varied in its definition and use of the Animal Health Technologist/Veterinary Technician. Each province has a personalized copy of the data showing both the national and provincial averages and ratios.

We are, in majority, a female populated work group. Our respondents are more or less equally single or married. 72.38% are below the age of 35. When assessing provincial data, look at these figures to help you decide what priority or rank of importance there is for provincial and national organizations.

As we age, different aspects of our career and our employment become more important. For example, Retirement benefits may not be important to someone who is 19 years of age, but very important to a 35 year old person. Health and Dental benefits appear to be more popular with the married, family person. Dollars per hour is more important to younger, single workers.

Annual salaries reflect employment, irregardless of part time or full time employment. Remember to adjust your thoughts, especially when looking at 21.85% of workers being in the <$20,000 category. We can assume 261 paid days per year to equal full time employment. A wage of $30,000 annually would translate into $14.36 per hour; $50,000 would equal $23.95 per hour.

BCAHTA’s # 1 reported income may be reflective of their 30-34 years of age majority rather than a provincial salary average higher than the rest of the country.

This type of information could be scheduled for regular collection every 2-3 years of employment.

Names…. What’s in a name? Our profession cries for recognition and professional status but, over our country, we are known by many professional names. Name preference is influenced by our provincial respondent numbers. As a profession, how can we expect the public to recognize us and our roles in the veterinary and animal health fields when we aren’t even wearing the same professional title?

A veterinarian is a veterinarian no matter which province he or she comes from. That is not the case for us… Perhaps we need to focus our minds on creating a nationally recognized title and graduate designation. This thought is the basis of our need to establish reciprocity and national recognition of our credentials and training. Our image and professional recognition might then be headed in the right direction…

In some provinces, there exist both registered and un-registered AHT/VTs. The issue of using Registered or not in the title appears because of variance in provincial legislation. In a province where legislation requires that the AHT MUST be an active, registered member of the AHT/VT Association, the issues of differentiation do not exist. Mandatory CE appears to exist in some provinces for the registered AHT/VT but not consistently for the unregistered one. Do we want to lobby for unity in these matters? How important to you is your professional name or workplace title?

Benefits of employment include both labor standard required benefits of paid vacation, employment insurance, Canada pension, and workers compensation as well as employer voluntary programs. Recruitment efforts may benefit by offering more benefits. Staff retention may be increased with providing benefits based on seniority.

Cost of employment does rise with each benefit provided. Employment packages, including wages and benefits need to fit into the recognized margins of budget our work sites experience.

One of the ways we could influence better relationships with AHT/VTs and our employers would be to encourage discussion between the CVMA and CAAHTT groups in a joint project similar to a recent effort by the CVMA in producing an employer’s guide to veterinary associate work agreements/contracts and employment terms. Very few similarities exist between Provinces as to the top 10 benefits. National averages are used above. Please refer to your detailed report for your provincial data.

Full time, technical duties and companion or mixed animal practice are the main employers of our respondent group. Our technical training, CE and membership services need to address the majority of these aspects of our members’ work lives. Increasing awareness of alternative employment opportunities may help us retain longer term involvement in some aspect of AHT/VT employment. A suggestion for increasing awareness of our majority or alternative employment opportunities would be to feature a work location, or an individual member in a work location in our newsletters. Publication of our award winners such as Vet tech of the year, student award winners and their planned work sites, etc. may help us become aware of alternative work sites that will help us stay excited about our profession. Recognition of our profession needs to start from within...

The highest level of number of years with current employer was in the less than 1 year category of employment. This may indicate a similar percentage in the mobility of the respondent workforce. Are we seeing attrition from our workplaces due to marriage, children, working conditions, benefits, regional work availability, personal professional development and awareness, etc? Are the changes due to attrition from our profession, or simply us moving around, trying to find the ‘ideal’ place to live, employment or job description. More questions need to be answered...

Ratio of support staff to DVM staff is one of the parameters used regularly in business management of our workplaces. Using the AHT/VT as an extender of the DVM requires that both parties are capable and willing to make the necessary job descriptions and competencies important. A DVM may need more management, supervisory and delegation skills. An AHT/VT may also need these skills if she/he is responsible as a team leader in their work environment. Medical and surgical skills must be polished, etc. Practice owners recognize that there is a balance whereby the maximum profit can be made when DVMs work effectively through delegation.

More staff members do not, however, help the mixed practice DVM with night call duty…so the decision there may be to increase the number of DVMs rather than AHT/VTs, with the understanding that more ‘technical duties’ may be a part of a DVM job description at that work site. Future surveys could improve on this information by separating the data by work type.

Our training is not the same. Different courses, outlines, years of training, appear to affect the competency and suitability for the employment marketplace. And yet, we all graduate and work with the same designation as an AHT/VT. Depending on our individual work requirements and interests, we may take additional training, and yet professionally, do not gain recognition.

Is there a difference between a registered or unregistered AHT/VT? Is there a difference between a CVMA accredited course or a non-CVMA accredited course? Is CVMA accreditation the recognized national and international standard for training the AHT/VT? Promotion of a National accreditation standard to our training sites has long been a mandate of CAAHTT, aimed to improve our suitability for employment throughout our country. Our members, our employers, our professional associations need to question and lobby for an improved recognition of this goal. We also need to ask if a national standard of the different levels of membership providing recognition for basic, advanced, and specialty AHT/VT is needed?

Discussion between our AHT/VT Associations and the Veterinary Medical Associations of our provinces and our national bodies may help us recognize the definition and future direction of our training programs. What appeared most important to our respondents was a National acceptance of AHT/VT training program accreditation, Association membership requirements, reciprocity, professional recognition, career options, and recognized specialty training.

We have 47.19% of our respondents being AHT/VTs for less than 5 years. Do you gather this data provincially? If so, can we share this with each other through our National organization (CAAHTT)? If not, can we agree to start to gather this type of data with our membership renewals and applications for membership?

If we know the actual distribution reflected by this question, we would be better prepared to address attrition and perceived shortages of the AHT/VT in our different employment sectors. We could track trends over the years, allowing us to evaluate if a shortage exists because of attrition rates or because of work site preferences, job description choices, etc.

What do we do in the context of our workdays?

Non-clinic environments offer us employment using their own required skills and knowledge. Those respondents who worked in locations other than a veterinary clinic have indicated the activities of importance for them. Teaching, analysis, organizational skills, human resource management, marketing and other skills take on a higher level of importance in this environment. More detail and background into this area is available in the full report provided to each Association.

Clinical settings require us to be high end multi-tasking. The average importance of what we do daily is shown by the summary. Priorities of our day include patient care, customer service and more. Depending on our practice, we can see different structures to our day. We may dedicate all of our time to assisting in surgery, or just 10% of it. This variation exists in all clinical tasks listed.

Provincially, we are allowed to do a specified set of duties in veterinary practice. These duties are outlined for us by Provincial legislation and Veterinary Medical Association bylaws. Having a strong working partnership between our Provincial VMA and AHT/VT Associations allows for the privilege of being part of the formation of these rules and guidelines. Variation from Province to Province exists as to the order of importance of these duties.

Staff training programs, performance appraisals and self interest courses help us keep up with the constant changes to our workplace job descriptions. Keeping up with the world of veterinary medicine takes continual learning and improvement.

How important is our professional identity to us?

Once again, we see that we are titled in our workplaces with as many names as we can imagine. Perhaps we should look at designing a ‘national image’ for our profession. We could encourage our workplaces to change those titles we wear daily to match this ‘national name’!

Recognition comes by design, not by happenstance. What can we agree to? Should we hold a national contest for the ‘perfect’ name? Lobby to educational program heads? Lobby to AHT/VT Associations?

The average number of years we can keep someone in our Association appears to be relatively low, considering the length of time our profession has existed. Are we not drawing our long term members to our annual conference? Is there an attempt to canvas these long term members about what would entice them to attend our conferences and meetings more often? Or, do we not have any long term members? In that case, working with our National Associations to enhance our member data and enhancing our understanding of the role and the future of the AHT/VT in veterinary medicine may assist us in retaining our members in our Associations and in our profession.

MCE was noted as required for registered technologists and not for unregistered technologists in some provinces.

Getting our members out to General meetings… Every Association executive must ponder over how to entice members to attend.

As members, have you ever attended a morning of CE, aimed to make your day worthwhile, and instead of remaining present to participate in the meeting, have left to go on to home or someplace else? As members of our Association, do we not realize that we have no Association without participation as a member? Promotion of our Profession and our Association needs to start with us. Unless we demonstrate VALUE in our Association membership by attending general meetings, can we expect any more benefits and strength in our industry than we currently have?

Fees for our dues are relative to the benefits & activities of membership and vary provincially. Funding for the activities of our Associations come directly from our member fees. Expecting 100% approval for the level of fees is realistically not reasonable. There is a reality in business… there will always be those who accept the cost when value is perceived… and those who do not perceive value will complain. Our job is to create and promote the value of our member activities and Association goals. If we succeed at this, then our membership will, in majority, as shown above, accept the fees charged. In certain cases, finding options for payment such as regular monthly pre-payment programs may assist those who need an affordable, budgeted approach to paying their fees.

Overall, AHT/VT Association fees are less than or equal to one day’s employment. In contrast, provincial DVM Association member fees are assessed at an average of 5 days of full time employment. If we want more from our Associations in member services and administration of our profession, then we must contribute through our fees to this cost.

Time and Distance appear to be the primary reasons for difficulty in achieving mandatory CE requirements. Promoting on line, CD Rom training programs such as Lifelearn, audio-conferences, correspondence and other modalities will make it easier for all of us when life demands make it difficult for us to leave home or work to achieve our continuous learning requirements. Publishing these modalities in our newsletters and web sites would encourage those who take the time to access these venues. Discussion with MCE committee representatives and the membership will make these sites better known.

Newsletters are an important communication link with our members. Make sure that you campaign for the goals and the priorities of your Association – provincial or national – in the content of your committee and executive reports. This venue offers you the opportunity to speak honestly and openly with your membership. Writing is the most difficult medium in which to achieve effective communication. Learning how to write effectively is a skill that you can learn. Taking the time to learn this skill will pay you back dividends!

The survey respondents indicated that these were the top 8 topics they needed from our Association activities. When asked to rank the importance of the topics however, we found that the rating does not match the number of votes. Importance and popularity are not the same! When respondents indicated by a checkmark (yes) for importance, they were indicating by their # of votes that the item was important to them. The % yes shows the popularity of this item overall.

The rank of importance is a priority rating that the member indicates to Provincial directors the level of importance for provincial strategic activities and focus. Popularity and Priority are the differences here.

For example, job postings are # 3 in the votes – we all need this service at some time in our career! We ranked this service as #13 in importance as to the duties of the Association. What does this mean? Focusing ourselves as executive members requires that we understand what our roles and our duties are. Members of Associations need to be polled regularly in these preferences in popularity and in the rank of importance. If CE and Promotion of our profession are # 1 and # 2… what activities can we think of to form our annual and 3 or 5 year Association plans and form strategies to achieve our goals? Permanent office staff was the least popular item… however; we recognize the importance of effective administration and rate it 4th in importance nationally. These results varied with each province… check the full report out to identify the differences in each area of our country!

Continuing education preference nationally and provincially varies. If we are planning a national conference, the survey results of this topic shown above would help us formulate a session plan that would entice us to attend. Popularity of topics presented is the foundation of each successful conference. CE committees will find the information in this section useful. Examine the differences between the national and provincial results.

Polls taken after each CE event should be charted to indicate the # of votes and the preference of your membership. Make their attendance worthwhile, demonstrate value, show that you listen to them. Charting enhances trend setting and establishes an evolving member preference for CE topics.

Sharing this information nationally helps us understand the variable workplace trends across our country. Topics that show up last on these surveys… perhaps a more focused event for a smaller group of participants would be successful. Look at the popular vote numbers and at the rating of importance. Use this information to help you make more effective decisions about your next CE event!

Our National organization is not well known by our survey participants. Getting to know our National organization is the job of our provincial representatives. Getting to know the activities of CAAHTT is at times difficult even for our representatives. CAAHTT needs member support in the form of increased fees in order to afford the simple pleasure of increased communication opportunities, funding for advertising, sending your national delegate to neighboring provincial meetings, conferences, etc. It is difficult to increase communication without increasing CAAHTT budgeted cost.

Did you know that, originally, national representatives estimated that our fee to CAAHTT should be $10 annually per member? We are currently at $5 per member now… We need to encourage our national representatives to campaign for an increase in CAAHTT fees. Consider what we could get in national representation for the small sum of $10 per member per year!

Our national organization focuses on several issues. We vary in our provincial assessment of what we want our national body to be focused on. CAAHTT needs to take the average of our country as well as identifying the ‘hot’ provincial issues and campaign for changes at the national level. We are seeing more CAAHTT involvement and communication with the CVMA body. Building better relationships….

Provincial Association members may not be happy with the goals of the national organization based on plans made by a national average of priorities. As seen in charting the # 1 priority by province, we can see the level of variation present. CAAHTT representatives must relay the activities of CAAHTT to their provincial memberships keeping these averaging realities in mind when presenting CAAHTT information to their membership.

If promotion of the profession ranks # 4, why do we rate National Vet Tech week last? Is it not intended to promote us as professionals? What do we know about the IVNTA? Thinking about these questions may help us provide better feedback to our Association representatives. Finding out about our National organization is important. Let’s think of ways to increase the profile of this organization to our provincial members…

Job satisfaction is important. The complete report will provide interesting reading for our Association executives. Getting to know our provincial members better and using the information locally to educate ourselves and our local veterinary industry partners will help us plan better for the future… We need to think of topics that would assist our members in recognizing ways to increase their value and worth to their businesses.

Benefits and wages are linked to payroll costs which are tied to availability of money to pay these costs. Income generation and expense management are the responsibility of all workers in the workplace. Efforts should be made to educate ourselves in the business aspects of our workplaces.

Satisfaction and desire to stay with this career seems to be the majority vote here. So… why do we experience a reasonably fast attrition rate from the workplace as shown at the beginning of the presentation? From the data we could assume a loss of about 22.15% of our workforce between 5-10 years of service. If a complete member survey was available, would this % be the same? We need to chart this valuable information.

Value of our services, perception of low income based on education, understanding legislation and how it can help or hinder our profession, strategizing ways to promote our profession to the general public… all necessary focus for our provincial and national bodies to consider. Raising member awareness and concern about these important topics needs to one of our goals… A successful organization will consider all of these matters and find positive ways to promote the great things about their members and their profession.

Members of each Association should communicate regularly with their board members, indicating their positive or negative opinions about their job satisfaction. If possible, these communications should be tracked to indicate a trend of increasing or decreasing concerns about job satisfaction in our workplaces.

What issues will become important in the future? What is important now? How can we improve our understanding of these issues? Who can we partner with to positively deal with these topics? How will this knowledge influence our provincial Association activities? Give these titles some thought… enjoy your conversation!

Look at your Provincial and National top 10 issues to be faced. Schedule executive member discussions, CE trainings, or workshops, aimed to clarify the concerns of your members and to brainstorm possible activities that would help us deal with some of these issues positively and progressively.

Listen to your Association members. Happy people finding the positive in their employment situations, having fun gaining additional knowledge through continuing education, experiencing good relationships with their employers need to voice their opinions just as much as those who are feeling negative and voice their opposing views.

Create many opportunities to collect survey information on small, easily administrated surveys attached to a regular communication such as newsletter – fax in response, membership renewal and application forms, CE events, General and Annual General meetings. Collect this data and tabulate it in such a way that retrievable, significant data can be utilized for Association planning, reports to members, and to our Provincial and National Veterinary Association bodies. We have a much stronger voice when utilizing credible data in our decision and opinion statements.

Best wishes to you…. Sincerely, Lucille C. Landals, AHT

  2008-02-12