They know how to get their pound of flesh! - Student Veterinary Nurse Medivet Employee Review

Unfortunately a lot of the management are bullying, condescending and manipulative. I believe with a lot of new employees and ESPECIALLY students, they have a wily system of really slapping people down so people constantly feel like they're under surveillance and under someone's shoe which I think is a clever way of inciting fear into employees to not feel like they can speak up for themselves. Like someone else has said, a lot of backstabbing and tattling behind backs to 'management'. What is the point of asking two people (who are in the pocket of the management team and are out to be super-picky) out of an entire 10+ person team about one person? Why do you not value the opinions of junior staff, student nurses/vets and pcas? Medivet claims to have a network of value for it's staff and they spend a lot of time and money with a cosy induction day welcoming staff. That is about is far as the fuzzy feelings go. Relating to this review title - staff are shafted with extra shifts, hours and a rather lovely on-call rota which points to the fact they don't (or cannot?) employ enough staff to cover everything. I think it's probably more a case of 'don't want to' as Medivet are clearly very good at making money, yet very stingy at paying! Oh, yes that's right - if you do extra hours, they do not pay you! You get time back in lieu of - which is a fat lot of good when your practice is so busy that you have to beg management for a day off. Staff are expected to drive animals to and from practices even AT THE DROP OF A HAT if it isn't in your job description (hello? I'm a nurse, not a taxi!) which invariably means overtime, stress and seriously feeling undervalued. They have an interesting (read: very wily) system of training student veterinary nurses - basically you start of as a Pet Care assistance (aka PCA) and are in a 'queue' for at least a year where you are a glorified cleaner and skivvy. Chances are another student veterinary nurse will be teaching (anyone should know how BAD this is!) you because Medivet aren't really willing to have like more than one QUALIFIED veterinary nurse in any one practice. In return for this lovely role, in which you are bullied, expected to work to the bone and work weekends for only half the time back (yes seriously) and basically treated like no-bodies (see earlier, no-one EVER asks a PCA or a student nurse their opinion) you may EVENTUALLY get to enter their Medivet college and get to study. ....Study the things you've probably already been doing. As a Student Veterinary Nurse you are expected essentially to have all the skills of a qualified veterinary nurse, just Medivet doesn't want to pay you as much (oh and they're taking your student fees out of your wages too! lovely). You have a clinical coach and if you're lucky they will actually work at the same practice as you! If you're unlucky they work at god-knows-where and you only see them once in a blue moon and you have to hike yourself all the way to them to work extra just so they can sign your NPL off... or like, not sign it off because THEY HAVEN'T SEEN YOU WORKING. 80% of people there are planning to move onto better things, a lot of them students so they're like WAITING TO BE FREE. And the charges! Oh good lord that really opened my eyes at how Medivet loves to ramp up charges. It made my eyes water. No wonder Petplan loves Medivet. Hey, I believe in charging the appropriate amount for professional services but Medivet is EXCESSIVE. Using the excuse of paying for 24 hour practice stuff is NO EXCUSE. Medivet services are NOT worth that much and I am ashamed to see the amounts charged when I've been in a similar non-Medivet practices achieve and do comparatively the same thing for a fraction of the price. Overall, I'm rather ashamed of Medivet overall and I would not recommend it as a place to work OR take a pet. Remember that Panorama program? No, things haven't changed that much from then.