Would you like to become part of an Employee Ownership Trust?
Do you want to grow professionally?
Would you like to live by the seaside?
Our practice is in an area where you can go surfing, sailing or bird watching or walk the 186 mile long coast path (named by Lonely Planet as "one of the best long distance trails in the world!"), but we also have a theatre just around the corner from us if you want some culture.
Pembrokeshire and the Pembrokeshire National Park has been repeatedly given high accolades as a tourist destination and YOU could be paid to live here!
Our practice:
If we may say so ourselves: Our practice is beautiful - light flooded, spacious and in a grade II listed building that is part of Milford Haven's history on the outside and modern on the inside!
When the weather is good, you can watch the ships in the harbour while you have lunch at our picnic table!
We were established in 2009 and are independent. The practice is still growing, but we also believe in letting people grow and develop their passion.
Our aim is to improve lives - for our patients, our clients and our team members!
Beside the usual mix of dogs, cat and small mammals, we also have a variety of exotic and wildlife cases, we are providing free work to one of the local bird rescues.
Our care:
We do run our own OOH service - we want to be there when "our" pets need us most, rather than shipping them off a long way down the road, but we don't get many - around 3-4 per week. We have a vet and nurse attending to the emergency together routinely to make the job easier.
We are patient, calm and gentle with our patients. We give them time - we don't practice conveyor belt medicine. We might just play ball with an anxious dog in the waiting room on several occasions to give him time to settle down. We have plenty of treats to persuade them that this is a good place to come! The waiting room is large enough that pets can keep their distance and our dog and cat wards have dimmable lights. (We practiced "Fear Free" before it even became a "thing".)
We treat our clients with compassion and empathy. We practice good quality medicine to find the best way to help their pets. Our health plan is called Family Plan for a good reason, we want our clients and their pets to feel like members of our extended family who enjoy coming to see us as much as we enjoy seeing them!
Our growth:
We are hot on personal development of our team members! We encourage and support areas of special development. They have been to CPD at BSAVA,BVNA, BVRA, London Vet Show or partied at Vet Fest with a generous CPD allowance of £2K per year for vets and £1K for nurses and £500 for receptionists, so that everybody can be on the top of their game. We have also previously held in-house CPD with external speakers under our Coast & CPD banner. This has stopped in the last few years, but our aim is to get back to this, because we love the enthusiasm that these events create and which help us to improve and expand the services that we offer. We are not for standing still!
If you are passionate about something that would also be of benefit to our patients and the practice, we happily back your progression in this area!
Oh, and because we believe in personal growth, we are a nurse training practice and our newest student nurse has until now been known as one of our receptionists!
We like innovation and we were "first" in several things in our area:
- to have digital x-rays (and have recently upgraded to direct digital - awesome pics!)
- to offer laser therapy
- to have dental x-rays
- to offer laparoscopic spays (currently on hold though - would you like to restart it?)
- to offer a dedicated house visiting service (but we need more manpower for this now)
- to offer a health plan that offers free consultations
Our values:
Together, we have developed our core values: Compassion, Respect, Quality, Loyalty, Knowledge and Openness.These are important to us and it is what we are trying to apply to everything we do and to everybody we are dealing with. We are not perfect, but they are our base line to come back to when at times we may stray off them!
Our team:
At full strength, we have a team of 5 vets - some part, some full time, 8 qualified nurses, 1 student nurse and 4 receptionists. Two of our nurses are currently sharing the practice manager position.
Our nurses all have their own areas of interest. They admit and discharge routine patients, do post-op checks and (usually) run puppy parties, nutrition and diabetes clinics, deliver laser treatments, take dental and general x-rays and advise our clients and generally make life easier for the vets!
Our vets have clinical freedom in the way they would like to treat their patients and we encourage continuity - we love it when clients come back and want to see "the new vet" again! If you would like to develop into a particular area, this will be encouraged.
All team members are very versed with PetsApp - we have been using it for anything from virtual consults, or, during covid, for consults with the owner in the car and the animal on the consult table, to updates about in-patients, orders for food and medication or payments.
Our equipment and facilities:
- Separate dog, cat and exotics wards
- In-house lab: the lovely, easy to use, quiet Scil biochem machine and haematology
- Spacious theatre suite
- Nomad & CR7 digital dental x-ray system
- Direct digital x-ray and Buckey table
- Laparoscopy kit and a 2.7mm rigid scope
- Mindray ultrasound machine with colour doppler, linear, vector and cardiac probes
- our very popular and successful K-laser (treatments are administered by our nurses)
- an awesome visiting physiotherapist
- Humphrey ADE circuits on all anaesthetic machines - keeping things simple!
- Small fry like Bair huggers and infusion pumps
- a decent size staff room
We start the day with a morning meeting so that everybody knows what is planned for the day and we finish it with a track of Bodygroove to fire us up (or get us laughing or both - don't worry, you don't need to participate if you don't fancy it!). In the past, we have held in-house pilates and mindfulness courses in our waiting room, which has also been the background for a harmony singing class, wreath making and great murder mystery parties at Christmas (see photo)!
What we are looking for - is this you?
- You are a team player who's values are in sync with ours.
- You enjoy practicing high quality veterinary medicine, but you are also willing to do
your best for the client who can't afford "gold standard"
- You have some experience and you are happy to share your knowledge with other
team members - we can all learn from each other
- You love to learn and improve and want to help the practice forward and expand the
services we are able to offer
- You enjoy people as much as you enjoy pets and are able to communicate well with
clients and team members
- You act in a professional manner and can stay calm even in challenging situations
(because life is never without those)
- Your enjoy taking part in decision making and perhaps even the business side and
you are interested in helping to improve what we are doing
- You prefer rural life and fresh sea air to urban hussle and bustle!
What we can offer you:
- A working week of between 20 to 36.15 hours - averaged - you choose!- with one
weekend on call every 5 weeks on call every 5 weeks ("Full time" to us means 35
hours over 4 days plus 1:5 Saturdays.)
- A yearly CPD allowance of £2000 for vets, £1000 for nurses and £500 for receptionists
to help you grow
- Benenden Healthcare membership and Peninsula's Health Assist to look after both
your physical and your mental health
- 30 days holidays (incl. bank holidays)
- A salary depending on experience and hours chosen to work
About the area:
Pembrokeshire is a dream for anybody who enjoys watersports and outdoor pursuits and very family friendly.
It has a breath-takingly beautiful coastline with 99 beaches, several of them award-winning - anything from mile-long sandy stretches to coves with red and green pebbles!
If you want to go and visit the puffins on Skomer in the summer, they will walk right up to you!
Or you might want to explore one of our multiple historic sites which in the summer host outdoor theatre or concerts.
Have a look at www.visitpembrokeshire.co.uk to find out more!
Our location:
The practice overlooks the Milford Haven harbour (the second deepest natural harbour in the world) with the shops and cafes of the marina only a short stroll away.
Going forward:
Send us your CV to billa@allpetsvetcare.co.uk or give us a ring on 01646 663 883 for an informal chat with one of the other vets first!
