Dr. Kirsten Ness’s expanded Glenridge Animal Hospital in St. Catharines offers specialists, CT scanner, and ultrasound.
Physicians and nurses aren’t the only medical professionals in short supply in Niagara.
As well, there are too few veterinarians to meet the region’s needs, said Dr. Kirsten Ness.
Niagara’s veterinarians are struggling with burnout as they work long hours, morally and ethically unable to turn away suffering animals.
It’s the same across the country.
Canadian Veterinary Medicine Association estimates about 5,000 job openings across the country, with only about 4,300 veterinarians either graduating from university or immigrating to Canada to fill those positions.
“There were a number of things that really contributed to the explosion in the veterinary field,” Ness said.
People adopted pets to keep them company while staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the population is growing due to migration within Canada and from other countries, Ness said.
“It produced a ridiculous amount of expansion.”
The pressures inspired Ness and her team to make changes to meet local needs.
It meant a huge expansion of Glenridge Animal Hospital, which she has run since the mid-1990s, and creating a veterinary specialist referral centre offering services not previously available in Niagara.
She moved the clinic into a vacant 560-square-metre unit — it’s about five times the size of her previous veterinary office — but while remaining in the same St. Catharines plaza at 224 Glenridge Ave.
In addition to investing in equipment such as a CT scanner “that cost more than my home,” and an ultrasound machine “that cost more than my car,” Ness said the expansion opened the door to recruiting veterinary specialists — a first for the region.
“We are now Niagara’s first specialty referral (animal) hospital,” she said Saturday while inviting friends, family and her many clients to an open house.
She said the hospital has since recruited an exotic animal specialist and an internal medicine specialist.
Ness said recruitment is “an ongoing process.”
“It’s word of mouth and we’re doing a lot of networking, but people are starting to hear about us. It kind of snowballs and reaches a tipping point where people are now calling me, which is awesome,” she said.
“We’re looking to get an ophthalmologist, a cardiologist and a dermatologist to round out our internal medicine.”
Ness said the expansion should reduce wait times for specialized services, which otherwise can sometimes mean months of waiting that a sick animal may not have.
“Our intent is to fill that void for the public. The next nearest place that they would have to go to is Mississauga and Oakville,” she said.
Ness said she has received a “very appreciative” response from Niagara veterinarians, who will now be able to refer patients to her specialists and equipment.
“This is to be my legacy to the Niagara veterinary community,” she said. “My goal is to get this self-perpetuating so it will never stop going.”
