Veterinarians Are Despondent, Depressed and They Deserve Better
I recently wrote about the biggest problems in the U.S. veterinary industry, one of which is the growing mental health crisis among veterinarians.
Below, in my second piece on the state of the U.S. veterinary industry, I reveal the many bad incentives in the system that make it harder for vets to do the one thing they want to do most: heal animals.
Imagine you are a doctor whose patients keep on dying. You are overworked, exhausted, underpaid and still in debt from graduate school. And the large chain that owns your hospital is pressuring everyone on staff to be “more productive.”
Welcome to the life of many 21st-century veterinarians, who increasingly feel like hamsters on a wheel rather than doctors empowered to heal.
Many aren’t just unhappy. They’re increasingly hopeless. One in six vets have thought of committing suicide and female vets are 3.5 times more likely than the general population to take their own lives, according to a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control. More than 40 percent of veterinarians are considering leaving the profession and only 33 percent of veterinarians would recommend that young people follow in their footsteps.
How did so many vets become so unhappy and what can be done about it?
Most veterinarians I’ve met are driven by an uncommon idealism and they get into the profession for a very simple reason: They love animals. ?
But at each step in their journey through the veterinary profession, they’re confronted with frustration and challenges that would challenge anyone’s mental health and happiness. It starts in veterinary medical school, which costs between $200,000 and $275,000, according to the Veterinary Information Network Foundation. Veterinary students graduate with an average debt of about $150,000 while their starting salaries in their first jobs average $85,000 a year.
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Veterinary title or pay does not move much higher as they progress through their careers either. Most professions have well defined career tracks but many very capable vets can remain as “associate veterinarians” for decades. A survey of veterinary practices by the American Animal Hospital Association?found veterinarians made an average salary of about $103,000, compared with $237,000 for human primary care physicians and $341,000 for physician specialists.
The result: veterinarians have a higher debt-to-income ratio than other medical professionals, including physicians, dentists, pharmacists, and optometrists.
Veterinarians aren’t just poorly compensated – the compensation they do get is often tied to the volume of the services they render rather than the value of the care they provide. It is commonplace for vets to work long hours, nights, and weekends as they struggle to make their numbers.
Then there are non-economic factors that take their toll on vets, such as how often they see their patients die. Unlike human doctors, vets often treat their patients from birth to death. Over and over, they see spritely puppies and kittens age and reach the end of their lives. On average, a vet will have to euthanize an animal more than once a week.
Given all these economic and emotional challenges, it’s not surprising that 31 percent have experienced depressive episodes since leaving veterinary school.
Here’s why this should all matter to pet owners. If working conditions don’t improve for vets, more will leave the profession. With pet ownership expanding exponentially, there won’t be enough vets to deliver the care our pets need.
Of course, some challenges of the veterinary profession, such as the short lifespans of animal patients, can’t be changed. But there are obvious changes that could and should be made.
Vets need better pay, a greater slice of profits, and incentives that reward them for the value – not the volume – of the care and customer service they deliver. They need psychological support services. Above all, they need to feel like their primary mission is the one they thought they were embarking on when they first went to veterinary school:
Healing animals.
Emergency and Critical Care Small Animals
1 年I disagree that the problem is that vets are underpaid. The big problem is that veterinary care and consultations are too expensive so there is a constant struggle to be able to do the right thing in terms of testing, hospital care and treatment. And these are not too expensive because vets are expensive. They are expensive because the business is owned by shareholders who want the highest profit screwed out of desperate petowners. And the vets are supposed to get this money out of the owners using their professional knowledge. That is what gets vets into despair. I cost my boss less than ￡50 per hour, yet I have to charge ￡400 to ￡600 per hour to do surgery. Yes I need a nurse to asdist and an operating theater to work in. But do not tell the owner they are paying for my high skills and experience and dedication. They don' t. The money goes straight into the investors' pockets. And pets get euthanised because the owners cannot pay. That is what makes vets depressed, not that they are being paid less than their college room mate who became a dentist.
Building a better veterinary experience for front-line teams and pet parents.
1 年Having a real chance at improving these industry issues helps me get out of bed in the morning. Nicely said.
Chief Experience Officer @ Pumpkin. Design Leader. Animal Lover.
1 年Excellent article. Thank you Josh for writing and sharing this.
study director at BASF SE (Experimental Toxicology and Ecology) , cand. MSc Epidemiology @LSHTM (University of London), veterinarian
1 年It makes me always sad to read and hear from passionate colleagues in clinical practice not being financially and emotionally valued… in Germany, the monetary side of veterinary services is even worse with half of the income mentioned in the article on average (for a vet with profound years of experience, for beginners even worse to say). Thanks for sharing these important insights.
Senior Manager of People Operations at Small Door Veterinary
1 年These statistics are staggering and scary. Before working for Small Door I had no idea that depression and suicide were so common for veterinarians, and this is something more people (with pets like me) need to know about.