‘It’s only a flesh wound’ – understanding the safety culture in equine, production animal and mixed veterinary practices
‘It’s only a flesh wound’ – understanding the safety culture in equine, production animal and mixed veterinary practices
Open access
In our edition of: Jun 2025
In our categories of: practice management
our summary:
Tulloch, J.S.P. et al. (2025) ‘It’s only a flesh wound’ – understanding the safety culture in equine, production animal and mixed veterinary practices. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 241, 106541.
The aim of this cross-sectional online survey was to describe the prevalence of work-related injuries in equine, production animal and mixed veterinary practices, and to understand the injured person’s decision-making behaviour in these settings.
The survey was distributed to all employees working in equine, production animal, or mixed practice, at UK veterinary practices belonging to a large veterinary group. Respondents were asked about working hours, job role, and work-related injuries. For analysis data was categorised by injury prevalence, job role (non-clinician or clinician), type of injury, and whether the injury was reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulation 2013 (RIDDOR)).
A total of 144 responses were received from 40 non-clinical staff and 104 clinicians. Due to low number of responses from veterinary nurses they were combined with the veterinary surgeons to form the clinical staff groups.
More than 90% of all clinicians and 32.5% of non-clinical staff had received a work-related injury. Non-clinicians were predominantly injured within the practice setting, injuries to clinicians mainly occurred outside of the practice setting. For clinicians more than 70% of injuries involved animals, and almost half of these related to a clinical procedure or exam.
Injuries to equine clinicians were predominantly kicks to the leg or head. For production animal clinicians the most prevalent injuries were crushed hand, kicks to the leg, crushed foot, and bite to the hand. Around 30% of equine clinicians reported wearing personal protective equipment when recently injured.
Across all clinical groups injuries often resulted in fractures (>16% equine, >17% cattle and >22% mixed practice). Hospital attendance was required in over 25% of injuries to equine clinical staff and over 40% of injuries to production animal staff. For equine clinical staff 11.6% of injuries were RIDDOR reportable, for production animal staff the figure was 13.3%
Over 50% of equine and production animal respondents reported recovery times of more than seven days following injury, of these 20% of equine, and 60% of production animal clinical staff returned to work in seven days or less and therefore before full recovery. Return to work before full recovery was also reported by non-clinical staff.
Reasons given by clinical staff for not taking time off work included ‘not serious enough’, not wanting to ‘let the team down’ and feeling guilty if they were away from work. For non-clinical staff the majority stated the injury was ‘not serious enough’. Most clinical staff indicated that they planned to change their behaviour post injury, changes included using protective headwear, increasing awareness of surroundings, and using better restraint.
Lack of awareness of the need to report work-place injuries, time pressures, acceptance of injury risk as part of the job, and the belief that reporting would have no impact were given as reasons for not reporting injuries. Most respondents were not aware of any practice policy that would have minimised risk preceding the injury.
Limitations of the study include the low response rate, particularly from farm and mixed practice clinicians, and that the survey population was from a single veterinary practice groups meaning the results may not be generalisable to other settings.
This study provides some evidence of the level of work-related in the equine and production animal sectors. The data suggests that reportable RIDDOR injuries were under-reported and that staff considered work-related injury as a normal part of the job which highlights a need for improved safety practices and increased training within veterinary practices, and a commitment from the practice leadership team to cultural change.
The following may also be of interest:
Workplace safety [BEVA] [online] Available from: https://www.beva.org.uk/Guidance-and-Resources/Practice-Managers/workplace-safety [Accessed 20 June 2025]
RIDDOR – Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations [Health & Safety Executive] [online] Available from: https://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/ [Accessed 20 June 2025]
Furtado, T. et al. (2024) Pain, inconvenience and blame: defining work-related injuries in the veterinary workplace. Occupational Medicine, 74 (7), pp: 501-507. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqae068
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