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Beyond the stats
To make sense of the numbers, I looked beyond the AVMA's statistics. I informally compared AVMA's reports to VIN polls, allied medical profession burnout studies, and even to some of the relief-platform surveys, with an eye toward determining possible underlying causes rather than assessing the numbers documenting the trend itself. Here's what I concluded:
- "Unhealthy workplace culture" came up way more often than "greater schedule flexibility" cited by the AVMA survey respondents.
- "Burnout" was another common buzzword, with as many as 30-40 percent of us reporting severe burnout between roughly 2020 to 2025.
- Overall "job dissatisfaction" was another term invoked (with associates unsurprisingly reporting the lowest levels of job satisfaction).
- Other mentions included the desire to avoid "interpersonal conflicts" and other aspects of workplace culture, including "workplace politics" and a diminished interest in its trappings, such as team meetings and employee reviews.
An association with job turnover writ large
It's no secret job turnover among veterinarians and veterinary workers is at an all-time high. According to the American Animal Hospital Association's (AAHA) 2020 Compensation and Benefits publication, the rate of turnover in the veterinary profession was 23 percent annually (this includes all vet workers, not just vets). In other words, the average surveyed practice lost almost one out of four employees each year. By comparison, the hospitality industry (notorious for plowing through employees) came in at a comparatively modest 12-15 percent in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It's also clear an increasing number of veterinarians and veterinary technicians, in particular, have been electing to serially jump ship. According to a Covetrus study of veterinary technicians, up to 50 percent job turnover has been reported since 2020. Veterinarian turnover during the same period increased by approximately 15-20 percent (according to an MWI Animal Health survey), which represents the highest job turnover rate in healthcare. Meanwhile, Vet360 affirmed these values in a 2024 survey reporting 30 percent of veterinarians were considering exiting their current positions within the next 12 months.
Overall, these job turnover rate statistics reveal the average practice's entire team is replaced once every four to five years! They speak to an overall increase in dissatisfaction with life in traditional veterinary practice since the start of the pandemic.
Underlying industry shifts
It's undeniable that a variety of accelerating trends have been afflicting veterinary lifestyle over the past two to three decades.
- New economic paradigms have built on the backs of a ski-sloped rise in student debt and lower rates of practice ownership among vets.
- Factoring in the accelerating emergence of corporate ownership (placing downward pressure on vet incomes), veterinarians living near the median of the veterinary income curve have been earning less and less each year.
- We also have to contend with the changing role of pets within society, which have led to higher invoices for sure, but also to increasingly negative client attitudes toward veterinarians and veterinary medicine.
Post-2020 trends
A wide range of post-pandemic concerns also appear to be accelerating the above trends, all of which makes free agency seem especially attractive. Consider…
1) Retirement rate hikes
The veterinary retirement rate spiked right around 2020. Which only makes sense given that anyone over 60 was likely feeling squirrelly about working in a densely populated practice. Although more difficult to measure, an exodus among other vet workers seemed to parallel, if not exceed, these veterinary retirement rates.
2) Workplace shortages overall
It's impossible to overlook the toll of a diminished veterinary team. The job market was tighter than we'd ever seen in veterinary practice history. Although this has markedly relaxed in most markets, getting quality hires to sign on between 2020 and 2025 seemed almost impossible, which obviously affected morale adversely.
3) New management blues
Higher retirement rates often led to management changes, typically towards more formal, corporatized formats. These were bound to unleash a torrent of movement among workers who had previously enjoyed a stable workplace environment.
4) Changing protocols
During the first year of the pandemic, we changed our policies and protocols on a near-weekly basis. Survival seemed to depend on it. This degree of agility was especially hard on teams.
5) Shifts in client attitudes
This issue can't be overstated. It's hard to access job satisfaction when angry client rates rise and adversarial attitudes between teams and clients ensue. The pandemic ushered in a new era of client scrutiny and, consequently, demoralizingly high turnover rates within our client bases.
Cultural shifts
Underlying changes in our culture writ large are also relevant to the rate of relief work adoption. Consider the following factors:
1) Shifting attitudes toward work
Live to work or work to live? The latter now seems to hold sway among younger generations. Despite their disproportionally greater financial stress, younger veterinarians can't avoid the influence of a generation-wide mentality toward work.
2) A real need for flexibility
The still-growing percentage of female veterinarians is impossible to discount, as is the subsequent need for flexibility as we continue (frustratingly) to endure the burden of childcare responsibilities in our partnerships.
3) The rise of the gig economy
It's commonplace and increasingly respectable to work piecemeal. Gig work is ubiquitous and easier than ever to obtain, given the role of technology. Several online services may take an outsized chunk out of your per diem or hourly earnings, but they also make finding work a relative breeze.
4) Social media's influence
Finally, I'm convinced social media influences our approach to job satisfaction, particularly among those most susceptible to doomscrolling. These are also the individuals most likely to experience what I call the "grass is greener" effect (aka job envy). Practices always present better when they promote themselves online. That's the point of posts and reels, right?
5) The influence of non-competes
Just try finding a local job when you're legally unavailable as a result of your non-compete agreement. In some markets, non-competes have exacerbated shortages and/or forced associates into ER or indie roles.
Job or career?
Even if you don't factor in the rising ranks of relief workers, it s clear veterinary medicine is becoming more job-centric than career-centric. Now, you could certainly argue there's little difference between a "job" and a "career" (my husband's professional guitar career, for example, is serial but still serious), but there's something different about being a veterinarian that seems inherently less conducive to serial employment.
For one, ours relies on what I consider an essentially more intimate, one-on-one series of relationships that undeniably work most effectively when they're built over time. Not to denigrate relief (or ER) work in any way, but let's be honest: There's no realistic argument in favor of single-event clinical interaction when it comes to issues of trust, compliance, continuity of care, job satisfaction and client contentment. No comparison.
Moreover, it's incontrovertibly true the average relief worker will find it harder to meet their financial obligations, particularly when relying on services that siphon off their earnings and fail to offer benefits such as healthcare insurance, bonuses, and 401Ks.
What's wrong with relief?
As a career-long advocate of relief work for early-career veterinarians, I'd be hard-pressed to start denigrating it now. Much though I might find it an excellent way to get to know a community and determine which style of practice might work best for an individual over the long term, I still find it alarming to observe a trend unfold over such a short period of time. It speaks to the diminished social stability and delicate infrastructure we're currently laboring under in this profession.
The rise of relief work is wonderful in that it offers individuals a real-world solution to serious institutional challenges in our profession. Still, it's hard to watch as the profession changes so rapidly, particularly since this phenomenon probably speaks more to our unaddressed mental health challenges and quality of life issues than it does to a surge in new job opportunities. After all, relief workers may eventually find they've simply exchanged one set of job stressors for another.
Ultimately, when we're under stress, veterinarians shouldn't have to resort to stop-gap measures or escape valves like relief work to address systemic challenges in our industry. What we really need is to curtail our profession's most malignant tendencies. Only then are we likely to identify novel solutions to the quality-of-life concerns relief work can't always sustainably provide.
Patty Khuly, VMD, MBA, runs a small animal practice in Miami and is available at drpattykhuly.com. Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect those of VPN Plus+.
Resources
AVMA: https://www.avma.org/news/study-fair-pay-appreciation-work-top-factors-employee-retention?utm_
AVMA: https://www.aaha.org/trends-magazine/publications/relief-veterinary-medicine-opportunities-and-challenges/?utm_
MWI: https://www.amerisourcebergen.com/insights/animal-health/transform-your-veterinary-practice-culture-for-better-recruitment-and-retention?utm_
Covetrus: https://covetrus.com/insights/the-veterinary-workforce-crisis-whats-behind-it-and-how-do-we-move-beyond-it/?utm_
DVM360: https://www.dvm360.com/view/quick-ways-to-improve-employee-retention?utm_
Serenity Vet (relief service provider): https://serenity.vet/blog/new-study-launches-to-investigate-burnout-among-relief-veterinarians/?utm_
VIN: https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=11050604&utm_source=chatgpt.com&f5=1
Frontiers in Vet Sci paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10352684/?utm_
