This got on the ballot through a signature initiative, so didn't even go through the Colorado state Congress. Extremely annoyed because I'm pretty sure the CVMA could have killed it at that point.
This. There isn’t a vet shortage in small animal GP. We will never stop churning out vets, and vets are not terribly likely to leave clinical practice…at least not at the rate support staff is leaving the profession altogether. There is absolutely a tech/support staff shortage, which severely limits how much a vet can do in a day.
-headdesk-
This. Also, the increasing cost of care is a huge obstacle for many people - how many of us (DVM, VAVT, CSR, everyone) and sometimes our families say we couldn't afford our pets either at present or in the past if we didn't work in the field?
I feel in time there will be a glut of all doctor schools. New MD/DO/DVM schools are coming on line. Of interest the parent institution does not care about this. Student loans are guaranteed so it is a money for the school with really no risk. IF the newly minted doctor can't find a job and/or a suitable salary, well it is not the schools fault. There is really no incentive not to open new schools or enlarge existing class size. This is a nice little racket.
This would probably abolish the technician positions. Not that a lot of places aren't already operating with a severe tech shortage...but yeah. Why have a few techs, a few midlevels, and several DVMs when you can have no techs, a few midlevels, and one DVM?
I agree with this too. From an ER perspective, I'd say 40-60% of our cases at one point were pets that had a minor problem/were quite stable, but their pDVMs could not get them in for several weeks. The several week wait was always understandable - massive influx of pets, staff leaving the field, etc. We also had a lot of GPs closing down to quarantine themselves in early COVID - it was a complete nightmare. Don't even get me started on the uptick in parvo cases from people that blamed their GPs for not 'being able to' get the pup vaccinated and the huge increase in pet store puppy sales. Toward the summer of 2022, when I left ER, we were already seeing pDVMs in that area be able to get back to more normal operations.
Saw an article a while back that stated there were 40-50 or so new US medical schools in the last 20 years alone. Don't remember if that was MD, DO, or both, but still. There's been 5 vet schools in the last 10ish years, I think?
Interesting that he was a major part of the veterinary nurse initiative, which ended up being a complete bust (and apparently a very expensive one at that). I have mixed feelings about the telehealth. I did it myself very briefly and would love to hear if anyone else has done it, although I don't want to derail for once.
I think for the next upcoming 2025/2026 cycle there’s like 4-5 new schools planning to accept applications. Off the top of my head I know Rowan and Utah State plan to open applications as soon as this spring, following that Ik Clemson, Arkansas State, and a new LMU in FL are also on the horizon. Seems like a crazy amount to have open at one time
This already happens every year. Maybe not an official position like you describe, per say, but I've seen this exact scenario several times.
I’m not saying NAVLE failees don’t already have some opportunity already. What currently exists is a little different from having a legitimate practice opportunity in a non-trainee role where they can actually make a somewhat decent living. Though tbh that suggestion was mostly in jest.
Yeah. scary stuff indeed. I agree with the bolded statement. NAVLE pass rates, in general, have been very high for all accredited schools for as long as I've been around. Everyone wants to blame the schools and COVID...it's not the schools, and it's not COVID. I can only offer an opinion based on my personal experience, but there does seem to be a shift in what students are willing to do vs. what is expected of them. I've seen this in just the short 5 years I've been out and working with vet students during externships, new grads, and some pre-vets. It's like the pendulum all of a sudden swung the other way. At the risk of getting into 'I had to walk uphill both ways' territory, some of the shift is warranted while other aspects of it are unreasonable/unrealistic, particularly in this field.
I'm not a DVM yet either, but going off of this point, I wonder how much more expensive clinicals are when students have to travel/rent for their clinicals away from their school? I imagine that adds up on top of the higher tuition rates 🙁
From the two programs that exist or semi-exist (LMU/Midwestern (can't remember which) and CSU respectively), these are master's degrees with a pre-requisite of needing a bachelor's or vet tech degree. However, they're both online with one semester of clinical exposure.
I honestly think this is somewhat the root of the problem. I appreciate that undergrad grades aren't everything. But there's a point where a student has to prove they are capable of going through a doctorate program. And I wonder if we are going to start seeing changes in incoming classes because of this. I would also like to know what the attrition rate has been at schools; but that's a soapbox I've had for years at this point.
What kinds of changes are you noticing in current students? Genuinely curious because I'm in school right now, so I don't know how student attitudes were different in the past.
Just adding that CSU’s program requires a bachelors (LMU it’s for RVTs). A vet tech associates does not qualify 🙃 CSU’s is *not* geared towards advancing techs at all since most don’t have a bachelors
www.avma.org
I don't disagree with anything you've said here, just for the sake of conversation, because I'm currently very bored at work (famous last words).
The schools with current accreditation concerns due to low NAVLE pass rates are well established programs.
There already isn't enough room in at least a few teaching hospitals, so this is a great reason to be concerned. Most of these hospitals are several decades old and were not built with growing class sizes in mind. Pair that with the island students, tech students (at some schools), growing number of house officers, etc, and it gets very cramped. Speaking for U of I in particular, lack of physical space for students was a real issue. They've been making some improvements, but stuffing 10 students in what was once a storage closet was downright dangerous (anesthesia for example, before the remodel) I fully expect schools to continue taking in the increasing number of students from schools without teaching hospitals because $$$. Competition for certain rotations is already tough. Aside from physical space, adding in more students also = less opportunity.
There are already well established/accredited programs without teaching hospitals that have to farm out their clinical rotations. It definitely increases cost.
Again, this is based off my experience over the past 5 years, but there is a growing lack of accountability. This doesn't seem to be limited to vet med. That's a generalization, of course. Not everyone fits that bill, but it just seems to be more and more common.
I would agree with this. If someone misses the NAVLE by 1 point, then I can chalk that up to bad luck. Repeated misses by large margins, that's a bit harder for me to blame on a single aspect (student vs curriculum vs test). The test has overwhelmingly not changed over time with the exception of adding in exotics and business questions. So I'm hard pressed to even blame the test at all
Not that being well established is a scapegoat for it, but I was thinking more that I know personally the UAz pass rate for NAVLE was quite low recently (two years ago maybe, last year? Unsure). I guess, for me, if I'm paying 80k+ for tuition I wouldn't want to ALSO worry about that if my other program options are established, have a solid to high pass rate (and have had for years), and are cheaper.
This is interesting to read because we actually have someone who is working as a technician with us in this situation - she was matched to do an internship with the local BP, had a lease signed, etc and then when she didn't pass the spring NAVLE they went "tough cookies" and completely dropped her. She somehow got in contact with my boss and we worked out her working as a tech until the next testing date.
To make sure correct info is here.. Arizona's first class last year only had a 72% pass rate, however this last year, they exceeded the 80% pass rate needed. I really do chalk that up to being a new program AND having it all start during the pandemic. A lot of schools struggled with the pandemic and I don't think Arizona was a exception. I know someone stated that school curriculum doesn't prep you for the exam, but Arizona has been adding in a lot of extras to help with this. We get 4 weeks of dedicated NAVLE prep time, access to learning specialists and lots of NAVLE prep materials. So it's really coming along and I am not mad about attending school here. Is it expensive? Yes it is, but they also have ways to get residency your second and third years if you want, so that decreases the cost burden.
where is this info shared I’ve been looking for the most recent results but were unable to find
It goes beyond the NAVLE, too.
Must be dependent on the market/hospital. It happened every single year I was there, except my intern class. We were also chronically sore for techs, so I’m sure our hospital managers had no issue filling those gaps…except a newly graduated vet does necessarily not make a good tech
Because honestly, it kinda doesn’t. Sure, it gets you a foundation so to speak, but I’d hazard a guess that very few people could study their lecture notes only and then pass the NAVLE, no matter how well they studied/how great their memory is. There are the legends out there of people doing just that, or not studying at all and passing though.
Considering that other schools have had low pass rates in the same time frame, part of it may not have been the school. That’s kind of what some of us are alluding to in this thread.
I wonder how long this will continue to be a thing. What does this consist of? Was it offered for the first class with the 72% pass rate, or added for the next classes in a panic? I think LMU has a required NAVLE course as well. Any other schools? We sure didn’t at Illinois
I agree that someone who graduates from Ross generally comes out a good doctor. However, the admissions process IS subpar. It is a survival of the fittest model. They readily accept students who could not get accepted elsewhere, and are ready to cull the ones that cannot power through and prove themselves. I would never recommend a student attend unless they absolutely could not avoid it.
I would be super interested to see the composition of faculty and their compensation at these newer schools. Many schools cannot retain boarded docs and I would imagine it would be extra hard for schools with a distributive model to recruit full time boarded specialist faculty. So there has been an increase in non-boarded primary care educators (which is not necessarily a bad thing for a lot of the hands-on non-specialty skills) to do a lot of the clinical year student babysitting. It makes sense because they can concentrate on teaching, unlike specialists who must spend a lot of their attention to clinical service and house officer training. However, where are these people coming from? They are typically way underpaid compared to private practice. The people who are burnt out of practice and want to claw their way out? Early career clinicians who really need more time to establish themselves before they can actually teach what it is to be a doc in the trenches? I was shocked when CSU was offering a position that was $80k salary… which was increased from something in the $60k range when admin was told no one in their right mind would apply. I made over $130k just out of vet school about 10 years ago as a good producer. I’m not sure if things may have changed recently, but that was in the range of starting salary of a boarded specialist in academia.
I'm not saying the program can't develop from here and keep improving, it definitely can and sounds like they have/are working on it. I just am speaking from my own personal perspective of where I'm applying and why. 🙂
Come on, we won’t tell anyone else what you say on this public forum 😜
I feel this in my bones every time I see an ad for starting GP positions with a shorter commute to my house paying more than I make as a boarded specialist. 3 more years until PSLF...
As the first class at UF with 150 students I can say the increase has absolutely been detrimental to our education and opportunity to learn.
When U of I 'accidentally' over-accepted (they usually do a class of 120ish, and c/o 2020 I think was 150? or 160?) I'm pretty sure they got a visit from the AVMA over it for this exact reason. Maybe @battie can add more.
Gotcha, this is what I was assuming you'd say. Multiple schools are already at this point without the bigger class sizes, so it's a no brainer that a bigger class just makes all of this much worse. New grads, at least from certain schools, have been going into the workforce without having gone through dentistry, ophtho, derm, etc rotations for years at this point. Not saying that's okay/ideal, but just know that you won't be the first person whose first dental is on the job...although the dental formula should have been learned in lecture, lol.
Yeah, 2020 was over-accepted originally at 180, so they allowed a ton of people to defer for more lenient reasons than normal. Started the year at 164. An emergency site visit was done and they met with some students from the class
If I wanted to see only sick cases I would go into urgent care or ER. If I wanted to only see difficult internal medicine cases I would have become an internist. I didn’t for a reason.
Right. The profession as a whole is 'unable' to pay techs appropriately, and we're supposed to come up with 6 figures for a mid-level? 100k for a GP mid-level is way off base. Given the salary structures in this field, I can't foresee a mid level realistically being offered more than 65k, and that would probably be in a bigger corporate hospital, which are not typically located in areas that I would consider underserved or in a shortage of vets...which is what this position is supposed to fix.
It is a multifaceted issue.
Problems with this:
