I am an emergency veterinarian and I work at a 24-hour speciality and emergency practice.
I’ve been in veterinary medicine since 2010. Veterinary school is a 4-year program. Unlike human medicine, there’s no additional requirement for, like, postgraduate training. I went to school in New Zealand — veterinary school is difficult to get into. There are more of them now, but when I was applying way back in the early 00’s, they published stats on admission every year, and there were 27 schools in the US.
The average number of years from first application to admission was 3. I applied to 9 different schools and didn’t get in, then I broadened my net, and was looking for schools that were accredited. It was, like, one of the top 5 decisions that I’ve made in my life. I did an internship coming back, at the hospital where I am currently, I did my hell year there, and I would totally do it again. Then, I was in general practice for about 3 years. Then, I got bored, I missed the practice and the people that I was working with, and so I came back and I’ve been in the ER field now for 10-ish years.
I mean, it sucks, but it’s like, this is the cost of doing it. This is what you agree to when you take on a pet.
I have never really wanted to do anything else. Have you ever read any of the James Herriot books? All Creatures Great and Small? I wanted to be him. I wanted to do that job. Some people make it through school and start doing the job, and then they find out they actually hate it, which sucks. You’re in, like, a pile of debt, and you have a job that you don’t like, and it wasn’t what you expected, or whatever. Some people will be like, you know, “I went into veterinary medicine because I hate people”, or “I’m doing this because I don’t like people, I like animals”, well, guess what? Animals don’t drive themselves to the clinic and they don’t carry credit cards, so you’re always going to be dealing with people, like in any other field. I really like the connection with people, the stories they tell and, especially in emergency medicine, you have a lot of crazy stuff that goes on, people coming in and in all kinds of states, and it’s just so fascinating to me. I’m so glad that I love it because not everybody can say that about their job. It’s a lot of work.
There are people that I know that discourage young people from going into veterinary medicine because they’re like, “You’re going to have a whole lot of debt and you’re going to be paying it off for a really long time”, because we don’t get compensated to the level that human medical professionals do, but we have just as much as just as much debt as they do. I tell people, “Yeah, I would totally do it again, I don’t care”.
People will use that against you sometimes, because the cost of care is increasing. Your routine checkups to your veterinarian are probably getting more expensive. The exam fees, costs for vaccinations, costs for surgeries and stuff like that, and I think people are very shielded from the cost of health care because of their own insurance. We’re a service industry, you know, it’s fee-for-service. So many people are like, “What do you mean, how can it cost that much? Don’t you love animals?” And I’m like, yeah, I do, but I also like my house and I like to pay my bills. Also, you’re here talking to me at three in the morning. I mean, it sucks, but it’s like, this is the cost of doing it. This is what you agree to when you take on a pet.
Ear infections, vomiting and diarrhea.
It’s funny, because the thing I wanted about general practice, the thing I was excited about, was not only helping animals, but forming relationships with people, following animals from puppy and kitten visits and through their lives and the whole arc of life and illness and stuff like that. There was some of that, but also I just got bored because it’s just all the same thing all the time. Ear infections, vomiting and diarrhea. You know, routine procedures like spays and neuters and, like, a lot of it just kind of gets a little mindless. It’s not that you don’t see interesting things, but it was just hard to stay engaged and feel challenged. I like pushing myself and I didn’t really get that. I also discovered that I don’t really like managing cases long-term. As an emergency veterinarian, you get all kinds of crazy things, you never know what is going to walk in the door, and that is, to me, very exciting. It is very butt-puckering, and very scary. But you never know what you’re going to encounter. I’m guaranteed to learn something every day. It’s a very emotional environment, but I like the challenge of working with people that are in a difficult spot. I like bringing them down, getting people to cooperate, getting people on board with plans.
General practice was just not for me. It was just too boring.
This practice that I’m working for right now was independently-owned for a long time, and then we signed with a corporation, probably 5 years ago. For us, that experience has been great because the company that we’re a part of didn’t make any mandates. There are some places where they’re like, “This is the prescribed way you practice medicine. These are the products that you’re going to use. This is what you’re going to do”. They have algorithms to follow. This practice is not like that. We got a larger HR department. We had access to more funds for updating equipment. More support, and access to information, and a nationwide network of veterinarians and recruiters and all kinds of stuff.
I was reading that veterinary medicine has become one of the top investment industries because it’s guaranteed money, because people are only caring more about their pets, and so they are willing to spend money. So, it’s very low risk for somebody to invest in something like that, you’re guaranteed to get money back. Part of that is the way they run their businesses. I can understand why that would be super frustrating. I definitely know people who, you know, their practices are bought out by a corporation, and everything goes to shit because they start making demands on things you have to sell, and things you have to do.
Most people think euthanasias are the hardest thing.
As I get older, it’s definitely harder. Doing overnights is hard now, recovering from a stretch of overnights is a lot harder than it was even 5 years ago. I don’t know that I’ll be able to work as hard as I am, or the way that I work that I do for the rest of my career. But I definitely plan on staying at the hospital where I am in some capacity.
Most people think euthanasias are the hardest thing. I cannot tell you the number of times in the middle of euthanasia, people will be, “I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I could never do this”. I’m like, “This is easy”. I look at it as a gift in my practice of medicine, because we can make a choice to have a dignified end, and your pet can be pain free and surrounded by the people that it loves. We don’t really have that in human medicine. I know my patient is not suffering anymore. I have to advocate for my patient. I have definitely tried to talk people into euthanizing their animals because I think it is the correct thing to do, and they won’t. I have also had people come in and they were like, “I want to euthanize my dog”, for whatever reason, and I’ve said, “I’m not going to do that. What you’re asking me to do is inappropriate because you haven’t tried to do anything, and your pet’s condition is not lethal, there are more options.”
People have become so separated from death, as a culture. We don’t understand what dying is, or we just don’t understand the process. So that, for me, is not a big deal. I think that talking about money and managing the owners is the hardest part, because at this point, I feel like I’ve been doing it long enough that the medicine is not the most challenging thing. There are certainly cases where I don’t know what to do, but, I mean, I have textbooks, I have specialists, I have resources that I can go to for help.
I worry, sometimes, about our profession, because I feel like we’re producing a lot of veterinarians that just don’t think, that practice fear-based medicine and just react. We’ve had an internship program for a long time. Internships are being actively discouraged by educators in veterinary schools, like, if you’re not going to do a specialty, then it doesn’t matter. I really disagree with that. My internship year was super duper hard, but I learned so much and I think it made me a better clinician, and I think that that is important. It taught me how to think, because you learn so much in school, but when you come out and you’re synthesizing the information, putting it into practice is really hard. That’s the hardest part. It’s like, you do your physical exam the same way every time so that you know, “I looked at everything”. It’s the same thing with problem-solving. We need to train people to think through things instead of just being like, “Well, I don’t know, I was just going to do bloodwork and X-rays, just to see…”. I think that we probably need to have a different training standard for veterinarians coming out of school. But, that’s a hard thing, too, because the cost of care is going to continue to rise. There’s pet insurance, but it’s like regular insurance. A lot of them, they just totally try and wriggle out of things. And it sucks. So I don’t know, I guess I don’t know where our profession is going.
We do it because we love it and it’s a passion. But, it’s really hard.
I think that the thing I would love people to know is that we appreciate you saying “Thank you”. Like, I mean, what we do as a profession can be very difficult, because we are intimately involved in our clients’ lives, we are making decisions and recommendations for a member of their family. A lot of people see their dogs and their cats as their children. It’s so easy to be shitty, instead of focusing on the things that we can do and take the help that we are offering, like, it’s just nice to have people say thank you, instead of just yelling at us about how much it costs, and how we only want the money, and how we’re telling you we have to kill your dog. I think that just having some compassion for our profession and the things that we do, the shit that we put up with, would be lovely. There are a lot of people that do that, like, with euthanasia or end of life talks and, and it’s so wonderful to hear people say, “Thank you.” “Thank you for making this easy.” “Thank you for being compassionate.” And I’m like, I hope that everybody else would do the same thing. But, it’s nice to hear it. What we do is difficult. We do it because we love it and it’s a passion. But, it’s really hard.
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