30-Minute Consults as Standard: Dr Jocelyn Birch Baker - High Street Vet Surgery - ep.1001

Julie South [00:00:04]:
What if you could actually have time with your patients instead of rushing through 15 or 20 minute consults? 

Hi, I'm Julie south and you are listening to Veterinary Voices, the podcast that celebrates and showcases employer of choice veterinary clinics. 

This is our High Street Vet Surgery series where you'll discover what it's really like to work somewhere that gives you genuine 30 minute consults as standard. And yes, guess what? They're looking for their next companion animal veterinarian. 

You're going to hear about the technology that eliminates everyday stress, team culture where professional interests are really genuinely supported and a workplace where people actually want to stay. 

Most importantly, you'll get to know Dr. Jocelyn and her team to see if this might be exactly the kind of place that you've been looking for. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by Vet Clinic Jobs, the job board direct hiring reimagined no agency. You owe it to your team to be able to make job offers from your job ads, because let's face it, success when it comes to job ads should lead to your new hire starting within a couple of months.

Julie South [00:01:27]:
If that's not happening for you right now, then head on over to vetclinicjobs.com because the average there is about seven weeks from go to. Whoa. Now, let me introduce you to Dr. Jocelyn Birch Baker, High Street Vet Surgery's owner, who's been practising veterinary medicine for over 40 years. She shares some pretty incredible culture initiatives she's introduced to her clinic. As you'll hear, it's the kind of workplace where veterinarians actually want to stay. You can catch up with Dr. Jocelyn at Vet Expo in Melbourne on the 3rd and 4th September, where she's speaking in the business tract about women in practise ownership.

Julie South [00:02:13]:
I'll be there as well, speaking in the tech stream. So come visit both of us if you want to chat about what what you hear in this series. Now let's join Dr. Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:02:30]:
Hi, Julie. I'm Jocelyn Birch Baker and I have this just lovely little veterinary clinic in Rockhampton which is in central Queensland. I've been a vet for over 40 years now and tried a few different things, but now I've really settled into clinical work with small animals and am just loving it. And having the practise has just been a real blessing because I really like, really love watching young people and people grow and develop and become part of our profession and have the careers that they want to have and be the person they want to be, and even if that means they move on but just reach their ambitions and goals as well as. So that it gives me such a great place to be in owning a clinic, because I can also work with people, but I also work with the patients and the animals and healing them and then again the patient's family. So I really feel like I'm in a very privileged position. Yeah, I love it.

Julie South [00:03:30]:
You are. Now, if my memory serves me correctly, you started your life not as a small animal vet, is that correct? You were. Because I vaguely remember you telling me that you've worked with cattle or production animals.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:03:45]:
Yeah, yeah. So when I graduated, it was actually hard to find a job back in the 80s. It's a bit different now, but that's the way it was. I did start working in mixed production, mixed mixed animal practise. And then I went onto cattle station and I did a lot of beef cattle work and worked for Meat and Livestock Australia and government. And then I came back to mixed practise and I did a little stint with IVF in cattle and that was a bit of fun. But that's a bit. Yeah, it's pretty hard to make that viable.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:04:17]:
Comes and goes. But it was really interesting and fun. You know, I leave the cattle work and the horse work to the young ones now. They're a lot quicker than me nowadays. Yeah. I really admire people who are doing the cattle and the horse work. I think things have changed a great deal. You know, cattle work particularly is very technology and data driven.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:04:38]:
Horsework. Well, that's. That's hard work. That's. I really admire them. Yeah. You got to be quick, you've got to be on the ball all the time, on your own very often.

Julie South [00:04:48]:
You've also got to love horses, which of course not everybody does.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:04:53]:
No, no. Apparently I quite like horses, but apparently some people don't.

Julie South [00:04:59]:
Yeah, I. I talk to lots of vets and it's like I'm not an equine vet. You're not a native of Rockhampton, are you? You're in. And I'm using air quotes, you're an import, is that correct?

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:05:13]:
Yes. I was actually born in Zambia. Mum and dad and my brother and I moved over back in, in 1969, I think. We travelled up from Melbourne up to the Queensland area and settled up here. Yeah, So I was sort of raised mostly at Corral. We had a lovely little one teacher school, which was great. We rode our pioneers to school. So that was kind of fun.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:05:36]:
Just roamed around the countryside for a number of years and then off to high school and then onto Brisbane to uni. Yeah, Rocky and then out west and then back here to Rocky. Yeah. So mostly Queensland, but yeah, here and there.

Julie South [00:05:49]:
Describe Rockhampton for me, please. As a veterinarian and as a mother, what's it like living and working there? Because like we talked about before we started recording, I had absolutely no idea how significant Rockhampton is in Queensland and to Queensland. I had no idea. I thought it was. And I'm somewhat ashamed and embarrassed to say this, I thought it was a blink and miss it town, but it's not. It's huge. It's powerful. So talk to me about that place.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:06:35]:
Yeah, Rockhampton. Oh, well, it's not on the coast and it's not a big touristy place but it's a great place to be and honestly a great place to raise your children. I brought my two up mostly in Rockhampton. We were out at Middlemount for a while, but once they sort of got to school age, we came to Rockhampton and the schools here are fabulous. We've got really, really good schools. Some of them are boarding for all the central Queensland western areas. Yeah, it's only like half an hour to the beach and so you can have a boat at the harbour. Keppel Islands are just off there so you can go out to Keppel Islands for the day.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:07:11]:
All that beach activities are right there on the other side of Rockhampton. There's. You can get yourself like a 10 acre, 40 acre, 100 acre block of land and have animals out there, have your cattle and horses. We were very involved with pony club when my children were small. So we were travelling with ponies or horses and kids. There's any sort of social activities here. Like there's a lot of sporting, there's hockey's big here. Oh, cricket.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:07:37]:
One of our vets, Virginia, she, she plays cricket and we sponsor the cricket group, the Ladies Cricket Group. She plays in the Masters. She's amazing. And her children have played cricket in Rockhampton. So it becomes a very community set up in Rockhampton because your children are here, they grow up, they meet other children of probably clients of the clinic. So you can go down the shopping centre and you'll meet clients of the clinic. And that's, that's just really lovely because they'll stop and have a chat about their pet, about their life, whatever. It's really, really, really nice.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:08:11]:
So there's only sporting, there's the theatre, we have the theatre and yeah, I went off to the theatre the other day and the schools, I think they're having Tarzan shortly at the Theatre, so that'll be a tonne of fun. I might take, Take the team. It's the beef capital of Australia, so they have a really, really, really big beef expo every three years. It's totally national and international. We have a lot of international people here. Come and see our beef cattle, our breeds, our processing. We've got two big processing plants here. So, yeah, it is a really big thing.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:08:47]:
Yeah, it's a really nice place. It's not too big. I think there's about 60,000 people here. So. So if you want to join a group like Toastmasters or someone, you can just go and join a group and there will probably be someone who knows, someone that you know, so that you can fit in quite easily and quite quickly and feel quite comfortable. It's. It's a very friendly town. Yeah, it's.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:09:08]:
It's really nice.

Julie South [00:09:09]:
That has led perfectly into my next question, which you probably don't even need to answer it now because of that, is how welcoming is the community of outsiders?

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:09:25]:
I think we're very welcoming. I really do. Particularly, I think. Well, you know, from my point of view as a veterinarian, very welcoming because people really appreciate us. They appreciate that we live in Rockhampton, that we're there for them very much so our clients are just fabulous. We really try and look after them, look after their animals and they appreciate that. You'll see a lot of feedback on our sites about the care that we give. We do after hours as well, not full on.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:09:55]:
We share it with another clinic as well, so that we're not worn down, burnout. And they really, really appreciate that we're there, there for them after hours as well, because that sometimes doesn't happen. And I think in the big cities it probably doesn't happen so much now because they get sent to an emergency department. So we're still. I don't know if you call it hanging on to. But I think we're still there for people as part of their life in our community. I mean, I've been there for the clinic well over 20 years, so I've watched animals come and go, I've watched their families grow and their children grow up and leave home. So we often have discussions about my children and their children been to school together.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:10:39]:
So you really do get quite immersed in the community. And yeah, Dr. Virginia, some of her cricket friends will be coming into the clinic because I think crust is such a big thing, isn't it, Julie? In that people get to know you maybe outside of the clinic, and they go, oh, that's Jocelyn or Virginia or Renee or any of our people. And they go, they're nice as they're a good person. I'll come to their clinic. So I think it all evolves how you present yourself wherever you are and you just do meet lots of people within your community. It's pretty easy to develop friendships and be part of community here.

Julie South [00:11:21]:
Jocelyn, as the clinic owner, what would be one of the things that you are most proud of regarding your team and or the clinic?

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:11:36]:
I think I'm most proud of the way we tackle challenges and grow. We're forever learning new things. We're forever evolving. We're forever getting better at what we do on lots of different levels. We use technology as much as we can. We use EasyVet to a really high level so that we're not doing jobs that EasyVet can do. Our people are reaching to other people and to our animals, not doing some tech things, reminders and all that that easyvet can do. So we use our tech really, really well.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:12:13]:
We've got the equipment that works really well, our Dr. X rays, so that the process is really quick. We're not fiddling around with CRS anymore. So we evolve and we develop really quickly. Change is not a big problem for us. If something new comes along, we. We discuss it, we throw it about, we decide if it's going to be beneficial or not to the clinic and then try. If we don't like it, we're not afraid to say no.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:12:44]:
We've got a cubex system now. I'm not sure if you know about those, Julie. They're all our inventories. And the medical inventory stays in these big boxes so that you have to use the fingerprint to get them out. So we put it through EasyVet, dispense it through Easy Bed. I'd like Amoxiclav. And then you go to the big box and you get your little label, you put your fingerprint in and you can open the door that lets you get a moxiclav out. So that just improves our inventory, but also our safety, particularly with the S8s.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:13:18]:
No one, only vets can get the S8s. Only vets can access them. It's just. Yeah, just another level. So that just makes it better for us all. And also we really upskill our staff, our team, our nurses are upskilling all the time, learning new things. And some of them move on. And sad for us, but good for them.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:13:39]:
They move on. Some of them have gone on to be sonographers, paramedics, all sorts of Things worked at the university so, you know, even they've got to develop as well and learn new skills and go out in the big wide world. I'm not afraid of that either. Things change. So, yeah, that's what I'm proud of, of just getting better and better at what we do and looking after animals. We've got a really good relationship. One of the clinics in Brisbane, Brisbane Veterinary Specialist Centre. So if we get to a point where we can't help an animal any further, we talk to them and they often take it on if the owners can take it down there, if they can't, we do the very best we can.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:14:20]:
They're just brilliant. They looked after a dog with a pericardial effusion for me the other day, did surgery for that. So, yeah, that's what I'm proud of. We just do the very best we can and reach out.

Julie South [00:14:30]:
Can you just qualify S8 in case it's not a global reference, a global classification, because there might be somebody listening from overseas whose country doesn't use or refer to that terminology, S8.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:14:47]:
I think that drugs of addiction. So they're your opioids and those sort of drugs of addiction. Yeah, that we use in our sedations and anaesthetics. We also lock up our euthanasia solutions, of course, but all those sort of tricky drugs that we need to keep tabs on and that. And they see that saves so much time and so much worry because it's all. It's all documented within Cubex and Easyvet. So we're not filling in books saying, I use 0.05 of a methadone. It's all in there already double checked.

Julie South [00:15:18]:
Is that something that would be utilised by lots of clinics, do you know?

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:15:25]:
No, it's not actually.

Julie South [00:15:27]:
So you're leading the charge here.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:15:29]:
Yep, yep. Gladstone, I think, have got a small one and we, we've. We sort of encourage and of course, and because it's just great. There's a clinic up north that we've helped set up. Not help set up, but recommended. And they've set up. Some of the big, big clinics have them because they have lots of people so they want to regulate access to and they sort of think, oh, well, does a small clinic need it? Maybe you don't need it, but jeez, it's wonderful. It just, just helps smooth everything out for us.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:15:59]:
Particularly me, you know, I need things very straightforward. I sort out my. What I need for an anaesthetic. I get my labels, I get them out of the machine. It'll only open one box. If I say I just want some ace promising. That's all I get. It won't give me anything else so I can draw up my ace prosine and not worry that picked up the wrong bottle or anything else.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:16:24]:
So it's really great. Yeah. Particularly if you get busy or anything. And when you've got a lot to do, it just smooths the process. It's lovely.

Julie South [00:16:31]:
It sounds like it would be a major stress reducing tool.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:16:38]:
Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I find it really hard to. How do you put numbers on that? I like it. Yeah.

Julie South [00:16:44]:
Great. Okay. Something else that you've done that is different, like radically different. 30 minute consults, that is unheard of. When really in New Zealand. I actually don't know. I'm trying to think and I, I, I cannot think of another clinic that has 30. I don't know of any other clinics that have 30 minute consults.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:17:16]:
Okay, okay.

Julie South [00:17:18]:
That haven't been influenced by Jocelyn and smooth operating vets. Okay. Let me qualify that, Let me qualify that.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:17:28]:
Yeah.

Julie South [00:17:29]:
So, yeah, talk to me, please, because that's huge.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:17:35]:
And I guess that's, you sort of need to choose what your clinic means, what your clinic wants to do, what your clinic wants to achieve. And with our values, our values are team, professional, empathy, integrity and relationships. And I can't see that you can develop a relationship in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. So our relationships are developed in that 30 minute consultation so our owner, our pet family understands what's going on with their pet. If we have to run bloods, we have time to run bloods and follow through with that. We just have time to hear what's going on. Because sometimes you tell people, we're going to vaccinate your dog and we're going to do this and we're going to do that, but you need to hear what's going on. Where does the cat live? Is it in the house? Is it outside the house? Is it, you know, being beat up every second week? I don't know.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:18:32]:
So why not listen and develop that relationship? Because. And that again, is where your trust becomes so important. They trust you to do the next thing with your animal. If you have a 10 minute consult with someone and say, we're going to do this and this and this, and they go, oh, really? Wow. And what does that all mean? And you've got 30 minutes to say, we would like to do this and this, because this is what's happening. This is the benefit. This is how it's going to happen. This is how long it's going to take.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:19:02]:
And this is my nurse, nurse Renee, and she's going to help me take the bloods and we will call you, contact you, discuss the next level. Would you like to do this, all that sort of thing and 30 minutes, you, you know, even if it's a vaccine, you're looking at teeth, you're looking at the heart, listening to the heart. That's where you find, oh, we've got a murmur here. What are we going to do about this? We don't just go, hey, you've had your vaccine out of here. Would you like us to follow up the heart murmur, yes or no? Like you're not going to make them. It's a relationship. We have discussions and move forward through that. So 30 minutes is great.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:19:40]:
It gives you time to write everything up again. EasyVet has templates in it, so we're very consistent about how we log all our data because it's very consistent. We have a template. So I know and all the other vets know what's in those templates, what's expected as a basics of your thing and then you add any extras. It works really well for everything. For your hospitals, for your consults, for your medical workups, everything. Yeah. And we get all sorts of things.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:20:08]:
It's not like we only get vaccines for a day. Anything could come in the door. We'll have a hit by car, we'll have a snake bite, we'll have a tick paralysis. 10 minutes is not enough. 15 minutes is not, not enough. If you've got a tick paralysis, then people need to understand which way they need to go and find some money and all sorts of things. Yeah. No, we need to develop that relationship so that we can work with them.

Jocelyn Birch Baker [00:20:31]:
Best outcome for that animal.

Julie South [00:20:37]:
That's part one of our High Street Vet Surgery series. Next time we're going to dive, we're going to dive, we're going to dive deeper into those 30 minute consults, how Dr. Jocelyn's team actually asked her to keep them and how they're creating better outcomes for everyone involved. You can find out more about working with Dr. Jocelyn's team at vetclinicjobs.com highstreetvetsurgery and that's street is St. So hi St. Vet surgery. Another big thank you to vet clinic jobs.

Julie South [00:21:17]:
The job board, direct hiring, reimagined, no agency. Revolutionary doesn't have to mean risky. Sometimes the best innovations come from simply listening to your team and putting patient care first. And that's exactly how Dr. Dawson and her team at High Street Vets operates. Until next time, this is Julie south inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self because you work with a team like Dr. Jocelyn's at high Street Vets.