Coastal Vet Collective’s Brodie, Dr Kevin, Kerrie and Dr Luke are passionate about pets, both in their professional and personal lives. Photo: Supplied.
A new vet clinic in Fairy Meadow is putting people and their pets as a top priority as it starts to build relationships and trust within the community to help combat a widespread shortage of vital animal medical services and improve access for owners across the Illawarra.
Coastal Vet Collective was the passion project of veterinarians and directors Dr Luke Michel and Dr Kevin Calleja, who each have more than two decades of experience within the industry.
“It’s something I always wanted to do,” Dr Luke said.
“I’ve worked in the industry for a long time and run some big hospitals but never really been involved from go to whoa.
“It became a bit of a case of now or never – I’m at that age and stage in my career that if I wanted to start something, I need to do that now.”
Dr Luke has spent the past 12 months working in other clinics across the region while chipping away at his own vision, which came to life in the old Godfreys site on the Princes Highway at Fairy Meadow.
“The location – having high visibility and parking – is something that is really hard to find,” he said.
“I was looking for quite a few months for something that would work for us, until I saw this one.
“It was a blank canvas that was set up that allowed us to make it the way we wanted to, which is exciting.”
With local building group Cyclo, the Coastal Vet Collective team transformed the old showroom into a new state-of-the-art hospital with consultation rooms, ample parking, separate dog and cat waiting and hospital areas, a large surgery theatre, digital radiology, ultrasound and in-house laboratory services.
But while the setup is important for the delivery of services, Dr Luke said the staff would be the most crucial part of the hospital’s success.
“The most important part is the team, that’s what I have learned. It’s all about the people that are inside the building,” he said.
“You want a facility that is going to allow you to provide the highest standards of care, but at the end of the day it’s a people industry.
“People want to give their pets to someone that they trust and build that relationship, and I think that’s what it boils down to.”
Dr Luke said finding the right staff who shared the same values and could support each other was particularly important on difficult days.
He hoped to provide for a full spectrum of staff, from those just entering the industry to other, more experienced employees who could mentor them.
That positive relationship within the team is expected to translate into the care members provide and the experience for patients and their owners.
“It’s like us going to our GP,” Dr Luke said. “You have those consults where you just go through the motions but when something’s really wrong, you want that person that you’ve dealt with in the past because you trust them.”
Accessing veterinary services can often be difficult, particularly at busy times of the year or at short notice, and Dr Luke hoped the new clinic could help relieve some of the pressure by offering a full range of services.
“We will be able to offer everything you want done in a general practice, so we can do a lot of surgeries, dental work, routine check-ups to when patients aren’t well, basically everything from when you first pick them up to the end of their life,” he said.
“There’s a shortage of vets and that’s a worldwide problem; there’s more pets and less people to see them.
“So hopefully, starting something that’s locally owned and building the team, we can help to provide those services within the Illawarra.”
The clinic is now open and the extensive space could provide opportunities to expand the team in the future.
But Dr Luke is focused on retaining the quality of the services on offer, not the quantity.
“I hope just to be a really good-quality practice for people to bring their pets to and that we get a good reputation within the Illawarra for being that service,” he said.
“There’s all these exciting new developments in vet science at the moment, so hopefully we can bring that to everybody.”
To find out more, visit the Coastal Vet Collective website or phone (02) 4217 0111 to book an appointment.
