A Growing Problem: Too Many Veterinarians

Winner, Forum
Shira Rubin, Cornell University 

Forum: "There are proposals/plans for new veterinary education programs in several places including Utah, Arizona, and New York.  There is still controversy over whether there is a shortage or excess of veterinarians to fill the workplace demands.  Weigh in with your opinions, comments, or suggested solutions."

There is ample evidence that there are going to be more veterinarians than jobs for veterinarians in the U.S. in the near future.  With plans for four new veterinary schools in the United States underway or in existence and class sizes increasing at many exisiting US veterinary schools, the number of graduating veterinarians is set to rise, perhaps dramatically.  Combined with the recent American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) accreditation of several overseas veterinary schools and expanding class sizes at Caribbean veterinary schools, this could quickly become a crisis for the American veterinary profession.

 

Although the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) contends that there will be a shortage of 15,000 veterinarians by 2025, there is little evidence to support such a claim.  In fact, there may be too many veterinarians already, especially in small animal practice.  One indication that the supply for veterinarians has outpaced demand are the results of  the annual survey of employment, starting salaries and educational indebtedness of new graduates from U.S. veterinary medical colleges published by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA).  Their reports show that since 2010 new graduates have been receiving significantly fewer job offers and the starting salaries of new graduates have gone down.  Even the oft-touted claim that there is a shortage of large animal veterinarians has recently been challenged.  The Association of American Bovine Practitioners (AABP) released a statement in 2011 that, "Continuing to increase the number of veterinarians interested in serving rural areas will not solve this problem. In fact, creating an ‘over supply’ of food-supply veterinarians will lead to widespread unemployment or underemployment of food-supply private practitioners and will have a significant detrimental effect on salaries for all veterinarians."

 

So what are the motivations behind the founding of these new veterinary schools?  And who stands to profit from them?  

 

1.  The developers for the proposed veterinary school in Buffalo, NY won a contest to renovate an abandoned human hospital.   If all goes according to plan, as many as 600 students may be enrolled at the campus within 3-5 years.

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Should we incorporate ourselves?

Corporations and private investors are becoming a growing part of veterinary medicine.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of increasing numbers of corporate owned veterinary clinics? What are your experiences with this type of system, and will you or are you considering getting involved in corporate veterinary medicine in the future?  Why or why not?

Winner, Forum category
Becky Lee, UC Davis

 “Don’t work for them if you can help it.” This was advice I received from a vet working at one of the large corporate-owned veterinary hospitals. For some veterinarians, the reputation of these corporations can be dismal. In my personal experience, working for these corporations in the summers during vet school and on externships, I feel I’ve gained a general understanding of the pros and cons.  Although I try to keep an open mind, I have seen sides of the corporate behemoths that would make me think very carefully before signing a contract.

    I must admit that the compensation from some of these companies is very appealing, and the benefits they offer help keep our industry standards high. In some ways, I am grateful. This is important to us as students with our colossal loan debt. Of course, money is not the bottom line for us; otherwise, we would all be working on Wall Street or managing hedge funds instead of being vets and treating hedgehogs.  

    Large corporate-owned practices also have an abundance of resources. There is consistency in staff training and likely similar technology available between practices. If you are out of heartworm tests, you can drive over to your neighboring corporate location and borrow a few. Or if you have a staff member out sick, it’s probably easier to find a back-up technician as a substitute compared to working at a single, independently-owned practice. I also have to admit that I think wellness plans can be a good thing and encourage preventative medicine, so long as these plans are not rammed down the client’s throats, and the pets aren’t receiving unnecessary services.  Fortunately, I think the medical services provided with these plans have improved over the past few years. Lyme vaccine and tonometry, anyone?

However, despite the ample resources these corporations have, one issue that left a negative impression with me was the pressure to sell. “Were you sure to offer the wellness plan?  Did the receptionist, nurse and doctor all offer the plan to the client? Why aren’t you getting people to sign up for these wellness plans?” Questions like these were emphasized and re-emphasized by regional directors in their visits to the hospitals. In my opinion, the pressure to sell was much stronger in corporate veterinary medicine than compared to the independently-owned practices where I’ve worked.

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Lesson from the Roman Empire

"We receive hundreds of emails each week, we study on computers (likely with earphones in our ears), some of us have fully computerized notes, we navigate with our GPS, communicate with Skype, and do just about everything on smartphones. What do you think of all this technology in a vet student’s life? Making things easier or more complicated? Do you prefer to communicate and study electronically or would you be much happier unplugged?"

Oneal Peters
Colorado State University, '13

Tap tap tap. This is the noise of vet school. Facebook flashes by on the screen of a classmate sitting in front of me, no doubt updating her status from sitting in Equine Medicine and Surgery to sitting in Bovine Herd Medicine, I guess it’s pretty big news. To the left of her someone is taking actual notes during class on their laptop, adding to the already text happy power point slides that the professor is reading to us. I shouldn’t criticize; I am watching all this while I peer over my own computer screen. This is the new look of vet school.

About sixty percent of my classmates take electronic notes. The other forty percent spend money each month purchasing their paper notes, print outs of the power point presentations that will be given by the course professor. As long as you have a working computer, taking electronic notes saves you about $100 per semester since electronic notes are free.

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Living the 2+2 Program Reality

By: Jennafer Glaesemann

Iowa State Univeristy by-way-of University of Nebraska, Class of 2012

Consider 25 students, approximately 30 faculty and staff members, 2 classrooms and 3 teaching laboratories, and 3 student organizations... and then 120 students, approximately 500 faculty and staff members, over 565,000 square feet in the largest academic building of its respective university, and 33 student organizations.  Then consider being separated by 223 miles and approximately 3.5 hours, depending on construction, road conditions, and the foot on the accelerator.  When the new kids on the block enter the playground of one of the oldest public veterinary schools in the nation, these two groups are thrown together in a maelstrom guaranteed to produce sparks.  Those sparks have instigated an innovative educational design that is spreading like wildfire in the veterinary education field as institutions struggle to balance resource constraints with societal demands for increased numbers of veterinarians.

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"2+2" Programs to Boost Enrollment

By: Stephanie Silberstang

Cornell University, Class of 2013

The “2+2” programs are being considered by universities in the hopes that they will allow more students to enroll per year, increasing the number of veterinarians graduating every year. These programs can be one way of addressing the shortage of veterinarians nationwide. The “2+2” programs have obvious advantages but also have a few hurdles to overcome before these programs can be successful.

Advantages of the “2+2” program include a larger number of graduating veterinarians without having to build new facilities or larger class rooms. These programs also allow students to take advantage of any state-of-the-art facilities that exist at either or both of the universities they attend during the program in addition to allowing them the ability to experience two different teaching faculties. These programs can theoretically be taught at any college with veterinary professors on staff and the space for this group of students for 2 years.

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