If you have the stamina and topical interest to do a specialty, I feel like a higher percentage of them enjoy their jobs. Of course, that comes with the stress of doing an internship, getting into and through residency, etc. Not having done it, I can only tell you what I've observed in the ones around me. There are certainly unhappy specialists, but I think percentage-wise they come out better than the rest.
Arranging your life so you have the financial luxury of not being trapped into any particular region or job probably would help.
I think this approaches one of the biggest issues. Vets are generally overworked, underappreciated, abused from management, clients, and each other. It's just not a healthy life.
I don't think 'salaried' matters. I'm not really salaried, but all those things apply to me. Bottom line is - you are under more stress and working harder than you are compensated for.
The lack of respect for boundaries is astounding. There's just this expectation that you'll keep giving and giving and giving - whether it's giving up a lunch break, doing all your charts on your own time, whatever. I'm seeing 30% more cases than last year, and the only thing I'm getting for it (aside from the production increase, which means making 30% more money) is an occasional email from people upstream saying "hey, we know it's stressful out there - keep up the good work." Ok. Thanks for taking 5 seconds to send that from the comfort of your cushy office chair. Believe me - the increase in income does NOT make up for it. But we keep struggling through the load, so what's management going to do about it? Nothing - they're thrilled because their numbers are up with the same employee costs. Yay for them! From even higher up, management looks like rockstars because they're increasing revenue while keeping staffing costs level. Wooooohooooo!
Yup. Just a few weeks ago our hospital manager, a former CVT, refunded a client because the client was unhappy with me because I didn't find something that they didn't let me go look for. Their pDVM found it after doing the diagnostics that I recommended that the client declined. That's money DIRECTLY out of my pocket. So I lost money because a client was a dickhead and management was more concerned with appeasing them than my quality of life and income. Wooooooohooooo!
Aside from ownership, if that's your thing. (as you noted later in your post). Which brings its own set of difficulties and stresses. But some people really dig it and find it rewarding.
But there's no REASON they can't. There really isn't. At our busiest hospital, there are multiple ER doctors on 20 out of 24 hours of the day. At my hospital (our next busiest) we have multiple ER doctors from mid-morning to midnight. No reason there can't be scheduled breaks.
For that matter, there's no reason there can't be scheduled breaks even with 1 ER doctor. All management has to do is say "we're going to accept that a client may have to wait 30 minutes even when they are the only client here." Obviously, you'd make exceptions if an unstable patient came in, but for any other cases? Why NOT make them wait? Which matters more - that one client's convenience or my every-shift quality of life?
The only reason we don't get breaks is because we've never GOTTEN them, and nobody wants to fix the issue.
Just another one of the lovely aspects of this field! DVMs sniping at DVMs! It's absurd. I worked 15 years in another field and NEVER saw REMOTELY the level of nastiness. We all talk about respecting that there are different ways to approach a case, but at the end of the day, we all feel OUR way is the BEST way (duh, that's why we do it) and most of us aren't big enough to truly step back and say "I'm not gonna snipe that vet for doing the best they can in the situation they are in where I may not know all of the details." We all talk about not judging another vet because we weren't there and don't know how the animal looked or what the owner said or all that ............. and then we do it anyway, because we're so much smarter and better than that other vet, OBVIOUSLY.
I turf'd a case Monday morning to an IM doc. Was possibly a surgical gallbladder, but it wasn't clear from aFAST/BW/etc. I didn't take the dog in; it came in Sunday afternoon, was given to me Sunday night. It was on pretty typical liver-gallbladder therapy. I added some abx for potential ascending cholangiohep, and some fentanyl because it was becoming more painful. The IM DVM taking over the case - who has historically ALWAYS been difficult to work with - saw how craptastic the dog looked and muttered "well, at least WE'LL do something about it."
JFC, lady. You MIGHT have 3-5 cases hospitalized - AT MOST. And you'll see 6 - max - appointments during your day shift. I managed 12 inpatients overnight and saw 30 outpatients, and I still took time to re-fast the dog to make sure it wasn't immediately surgical and I did everything I could to make it comfortable and improve its situation. And, managed to find time to scope some crap from a dog's stomach. Which is easy, but really cuts into my time. The last thing I need is some PITA specialist making me feel like crap for not treating it like she would, because apparently I'm supposed to have that level of knowledge without, yanno, actually being a specialist in her specialty, while simultaneously seeing 2-4x the number of cases. Take a hike. Sooooo discouraging.
And this is a pretty consistent experience. You'll hear it from one vet after another. Specialists suck. They're great when they work magic, or when you stumble onto that rare pleasant one, but ...... you WILL get beaten up by a specialist. Inevitably. Because that's what they do.
No offensive,
@SocialStigma ... perhaps you can be in the minority.
🙂
And that's just one aspect of the DVM-on-DVM attacks. It's all over the place, not just specialist to non-specialist.
Knowing what I know now I would not do it again. Specialization or not. The industry is broken.
The problem is this: I love medicine (and specifically emergency medicine). And I love animals. And I love working with good clients. I like the idea of being a vet.
I just can't find a way to do this - so far - without the overwhelming negatives that are present in this field. And I'm not sure there is one. And they make what could be a really rewarding job just .... bleh.
At one point I wanted to go into meteorology, but I found out calculus was NOT my thing. I stillll think I chose the path that was right for me, but ask me in a few years. We will see!
This was just a general thing I was taught in my undergrad statistics class as a potential bias when looking at surveys or reviews.
