Okay, didn't show up with my thoughts last night. But I have general thoughts and specific thoughts with quotes.
General thoughts:
1. There's a lot going on politically obviously, and a lot of it was surprising coming out of the election. There's a lot of soul searching that has to happen in both major political parties (federally and locally) over the next few months as things get set up and post-mortems are conducted. I have a great list of political podcasts that I listen to daily to give some wider context to a lot going on, particularly in regards in how demographics have shifted. I'll list them if anyone is interested. Not for nothing, the next set of midterms are in two years and there can be complete change once again. I'm not going to start any political threads. Not sure we would be able to keep a politics thread open in pre-vet without it getting moved to SPF anyways, and there's already a thread for everything there anyways. Suffice it to say, I view things as "what's done is done" and "a lot of people changed their minds compared to the last elections". That's all I got to say about that (I would insert a Forrest Gump gif, but I don't know how....)
2. I firmly believe that if the US could go through the decades from 1855 to 1965 without our representative democracy dissolving, then we as a nation can get through the next 2-4+ years too. In that time we had the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, and the Civil Rights Movement with a lot of other things happening as sub-topics to pretty much all of those big events. During that time, we did a lot of terrible things to innocent people in the name of the greater good; some of those moves were the right thing to do, some were not. During that time, we did a lot of amazing things in the name of the greater good; some of those moves were the right thing to do, some maybe were not.
Even though most of my votes were for naught (I reeeeaaaaaalllllllllllllly wanted ranked choice voting
🙁 ), I still feel that we as a society will get through this. We're just going to have a bad time about it.
3. Not for nothing, there's a lot of positives about living in the US compared to even our peer nations. For anyone considering moving to another nation, I would consider the fact that the world over has had a similar political shift as we have with weaker constitutional mandates, less stable nation-neighbors, and their own idiosyncratic issues with sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc. On a macro-level, the thing we suck most at is healthcare (including public health initiatives). There's a big benefit to having two big oceans on either side of you, a super friendly neighbor to the north, and a militarily weaker semi-friendly neighbor to the south. I personally would only consider moving somewhere like Australia right now; husband already looked into it because (I **** you not) we love Bluey so damn much. Spoiler alert, it's really hard to move to Australia. So here I am in the middle of the US.
Now, specific thoughts:
Super unfortunate. CPR is showing that the proposition passed pretty handily too, unfortunately. 52.3% to 47.6%, which is pretty significant. As a Coloradoan, I will say there was not much of a ground game on either side in my area: I heard 1 radio ad against the prop, no yard signs anywhere, a handful of op-eds for and against. I did have about a dozen friends contact me to see how I felt and they spread the word for me. My grandpa drives uber as a retired dude and spread the word to literally every single person he drove.
I did see ads against it on Instagram with a lot of people stating they were going to vote for it. Obviously hard to take that seriously since, ya know, social media is fake as hell. But it was apparently real enough.
Everywhere else, the state VMAs and AVMA are really going to have to clarify the ballot measure wording and get a solid ground game out there. I strongly encourage everyone from pre-vet to million year old doctors to contact their state VMAs to head this off and volunteer if you can when it comes to your state.
There is only 1 program in the country that currently accepts students (at LMU I believe) and CSU has a tentative program set up. Apparently other schools are considering, but haven't pulled the trigger. So just from a program perspective, this is a ways out (probs a minimum of 2-3 years). From the perspective of setting this up,
@MixedAnimals77 is 100% correct that this will also take a while to set up from a regulatory perspective. And while
@VeggieTrex mentioned that regulatory agencies may be cut on the federal level, states get to have stricter rules than the federal government, and this is absolutely a states issue thing. So even if every federal agency is cratered into a Libertarian waste land, states will not necessarily follow that pattern.
With that in mind, I will be contacting local Congressional leaders of any kind in my state to encourage them to basically regulate the VPA position into a non-functional state. As was mentioned, the VPA cannot prescribe drugs; then why the hell are they there? Even if they're trained to do spays, it's not like they can even legally prescribe/use the propofol, dexmed, hydro, or cefazolin I would use for that surgery. So a vet will have to literally hold their hand every step of the way in that regard. So if we make it that the overseeing veterinarian also has to do their own PE in order to prescribe the drugs the VPA thinks is necessary, then it makes them an expensive redundancy.
If this actually comes to fruition, I will take the following steps:
1. Never, ever write a positive letter of recommendation for someone seeking acceptance to a VPA program. Ever.
2. I will have in my contracts that I will never lead or oversee a VPA.
3. I will leave this job I love (if I can) to go join the private practices in the area that opposed the VPA position or go into academia.
- 3a. If I go into academia, I will actively steer students away from the VPA position.
For general politics stuff, see my points above.
As far as the pending oversaturation and VPA, you got me there to a certain extent. Anyone graduating in the 3-5 years will likely be okay. I would not want to be the class of 2030 onwards though. We won't know a lot until we know:
1. What the AVMA COE is going to do in regards to all these new schools trying to open and all these old schools increasing seats.
2. What the federal government is going to do with the Dept of Education and student loans.
And then a ton of that can change in 2 years with the midterms too. So we're kinda in a hang out and see situation. I'm personally not going to change my basic recommendation to pre-vets of:
1. Go to the cheapest school. There is no such thing as a "dream school" in this profession with the debt-to-income ratio the way it is now and how it will likely worsen. Unfortunately, this also goes for any student that is not a white middle-class suburban female (aka the average pre-vet matriculant); the decision that minorities will have to make will be deeply personal in whether 350k+ in tuition is worth a 90k salary or less to go to what they individually perceive as a safer school to go to. My personal limit was 300k when I started school; now that I'm on the other side 3.5 years out, I'm absolutely lucky I got my sister's life insurance policy, which paid for half my schooling. As it stands, if I had had the 282k I was originally supposed to graduate with, I would be ****ed. Straight up, this profession is not worth 300k from an objective perspective. If I take out all the emotion (how I wanted to be a vet since I was little, how much I like my job, etc.), I cannot encourage students to join this profession with the cost of education as it is now for OOS students.
2. Apply smart. Schools are only going to become more competitive with NAVLE scores as poor as they have been. Don't donate an application fee to a school you have nominal chances of being accepted at.
Great question! Not a single one of my friends who have been recently boarded are joining academia. And poaching will be difficult from private practice when folks are making the money they are there. Academia certainly cannot support the load of 10-13 new schools. Not for nothing, a silver lining of the Dept of Ed being cut will be that universities will be less motivated to add either vet schools or VPA programs cause they won't be able to afford to.
Not so fast. The biggest supporter of the VPA position from within Colorado was the Denver Dumb Friends League, the oldest shelter in the Denver Metro Area. They put forward 1 million dollars towards promoting the proposition (out of their 32 million dollar budget). I have never personally liked the DDFL (family reasons), but now I will actively never promote their adoption programs ever again. The only thing I will do is support the CSU Spur program, where CSU and the DDFL have joined together for community veterinary care.
Close friend at my old clinic was taken to the board 2 years out from graduation because his overnight tech administered 12 hours of lidocaine in about 12 minutes. Dog survived without issues ultimately, but this was before technician title protection in Colorado. So even though she was the one who set up the pump incorrectly, it all fell on him.
People don't understand this until they are a DVM and receive their first board complaint or legal paperwork, and support staff often don't fully realize the gravity of it until they've made a mistake and their doctor gets all the heat for it.
