RANT HERE thread

[EB73674]

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Re: the competition thing, I do actually think it helped a lot this year by tOSU starting a pass/fail curriculum - grades matter even less now than they did before. And honestly I feel like the drama of my previous class was due to a few select people who seemed to want to put others down to make themselves look better, and/or because they had never been in an experience where academic performance wasn’t the most important thing in life. Current class seems much more balanced.

 

[potentialsheltervet]

I'm really tired of being in constant health crises but everything being "normal".

 

[katiemcat]

My school sent out an interest survey about making things pass/fail and I voted yes. I perform very well but I feel like it would decrease competition like you said. I also feel very pressured to keep my class rank because people value it so much. I think it should be more about understanding and applying the concepts rather than who can score the highest on the exam. Hopefully they implement it.

 

[alleycat03]

I'm surprised to hear that more schools are making their core classes P/F. At KSU, only some of our electives (typically the easier ones) and clinical skills are P/F. I wish we had more P/F classes, maybe then we would be less stressed to get as many As as possible.

We also have an issue with competitiveness in my class, but things really aren't too bad. There was some drama last year in our class GroupMe, and every now and then there's a disagreement. But overall I think our class gets along well without too many issues. People are definitely competitive and there are a LOT of people who care about their grades but they aren't ruthless about it.

 

[EB73674]

I'm surprised to hear that more schools are making their core classes P/F. At KSU, only some of our electives (typically the easier ones) and clinical skills are P/F. I wish we had more P/F classes, maybe then we would be less stressed to get as many As as possible.

We also have an issue with competitiveness in my class, but things really aren't too bad. There was some drama last year in our class GroupMe, and every now and then there's a disagreement. But overall I think our class gets along well without too many issues. People are definitely competitive and there are a LOT of people who care about their grades but they aren't ruthless about it.

This does seem to be the way of the future given current research in vet school curricula - I believe all (?) med schools are P/F at minimum now, and some don’t do grades at all (Yale!). Our change to P/F is also combined with a total curriculum overhaul to a structured model with first year healthy animals, second year abnormal, third year diagnostics and beginning clinicals. We also now have non-official “step“ exams like med schools, basically to make sure we retain & have good understanding of the year‘s material. Now how much do you all want to bet that it’ll be scheduled the weekend I’m home for doctor appointments? 🙃🙃🙃🙃

 

[alleycat03]

This does seem to be the way of the future given current research in vet school curricula - I believe all (?) med schools are P/F at minimum now, and some don’t do grades at all (Yale!). Our change to P/F is also combined with a total curriculum overhaul to a structured model with first year healthy animals, second year abnormal, third year diagnostics and beginning clinicals. We also now have non-official “step“ exams like med schools, basically to make sure we retain & have good understanding of the year‘s material. Now how much do you all want to bet that it’ll be scheduled the weekend I’m home for doctor appointments? 🙃🙃🙃🙃

We just did a curriculum overhaul for the class of 2026, and they still have grades. It will be interesting to see if they do another overhaul here in a few years. We do the same thing where 1st year is normal, 2nd year is abnormal, and 3rd year is medicine/surgery-focused. I am definitely not opposed to P/F, I just didn't realize it was becoming so widespread. Seems like KSU is behind the curve.

 

[3.14sces]

My school sent out an interest survey about making things pass/fail and I voted yes. I perform very well but I feel like it would decrease competition like you said. I also feel very pressured to keep my class rank because people value it so much. I think it should be more about understanding and applying the concepts rather than who can score the highest on the exam. Hopefully they implement it.

I applied to UF so this is very interesting! If it did happen, I wonder when they’d implement it ?

 

[potentialsheltervet]

Everything is worse now.

 

[gs38]

Nothing like driving home crying after being rejected from the school you graduated from for the second year in a row! 💕✨

 

[kaydubs]

[redacted]

Very much their loss!!

 

[gs38]

It’s such a shame that there’s a current shortage of veterinarians and such a large pool of competitive applicants but not enough vet schools/ class openings to remedy the issue. Human medicine has the same issue but has been addressing it with the introduction of more OD programs.
What changes do you think we’ll see in vet med/ vet schools in the future? Or do you think this is a short-term problem that will remedy itself?

 

[potentialsheltervet]

What changes do you think we’ll see in vet med/ vet schools in the future? Or do you think this is a short-term problem that will remedy itself?

I don't think this is a short term problem. The biggest problem is burnout within the profession after people have graduated, and fixing that requires massive, sweeping industry wide changes that quite frankly are unlikely to happen, imo. It's great more attention is being brought to mental health and compassion fatigue but that won't prevent clients from being jerks or from having extremely hard, emotionally taxing cases.
Ideally vet school tuition would go down and pay would go up, but then there's the question of where the money would come from.

 

[potentialsheltervet]

Now, there are more vet schools opening to try and help with the shortage (LIU, TTU, etc.) but whether the quality of education will be equal to more established schools is unknown until students take the NAVLE and go into practice. Many of the newer schools are a for-profit model that may technically provide more veterinarians, but at a higher debt amount and that isn't super beneficial for anyone.
There's not really a simple solution. At minimum changes to address what we're seeing will take a decade, in my opinion.

 

[WildZoo]

Several schools are increasing class sizes but without addressing the systemic issues in the field that lead to people burning out, it's kind of like...trying to bail out a sinking ship with a 5 gallon bucket. It's not that we don't have enough people with a DVM, it's that they're leaving clinical practice. So putting more people into the exact same situation that people are running from isn't going to solve anything imo.

 

[katiemcat]

Several schools are increasing class sizes but without addressing the systemic issues in the field that lead to people burning out, it's kind of like...trying to bail out a sinking ship with a 5 gallon bucket. It's not that we don't have enough people with a DVM, it's that they're leaving clinical practice. So putting more people into the exact same situation that people are running from isn't going to solve anything imo.

Also increasing class size without increasing resources/space is not great… (my class can only fit in one auditorium room….. barely).

 

[SkiOtter]

Additionally, we’re almost never going to fix the rural vet shortage with just adding more people with a DVM. Lower pay for far more hours worked and on call all the time but still the exact same hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that they can never pay off on their salary. Adding more people doesn’t fix that. They’re still far underpaid and overworked and burn out so they don’t stay rural or large animal.

 

[potentialsheltervet]

Additionally, we’re almost never going to fix the rural vet shortage with just adding more people with a DVM. Lower pay for far more hours worked and on call all the time but still the exact same hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that they can never pay off on their salary. Adding more people doesn’t fix that. They’re still far underpaid and overworked and burn out so they don’t stay rural or large animal.

Agreed, and even opening schools specifically tailored to that niche but that are still just as or even more expensive than other schools also doesn't help

 

[JaynaAli]

It seems to me like there’s a natural ebb and flow of demand and jobs. I remember back in the 2007-2009ish years when I started working at a vet school as a lab tech the new grads were struggling to find jobs. Most found them but it was very much an employers market. When I graduated 7 years ago it wasn’t too hard to find a job and you had a few options to choose from. Now we’ve swung in the opposite direction and it’s an associates market. I’m sure things will swing back with more time, probably with continued inflation and a recession. Maybe (hopefully) not to how it was in the late 2000s but who knows. It’s not possible to predict. Even if a school did “respond” and increase class sizes dramatically because of a perceived “shortage”, it would take at minimum 5 years before we’d see any impact from that out in the “real world” because of how long it takes to matriculate and graduate someone. Add on a couple more years for things to even out. And who knows what the state of the profession will be in 5-7 years. I’d hate for the economy to continue to drop and then even more vets be upside down with loans and no jobs because we adapted and clinics no longer need/want to hire more vets. And even after they increased class sizes and evened things out, schools aren’t going to suddenly reduce class size back again…they’ll continue to pump out grads and take tuition dollars from unsuspecting students even if there aren’t jobs for them because they’ll say it’s not their issue. We need to keep vets in the profession and not lose them to other roles. If the demand does stay high, more grads without profession overhauls will probably just lead to more burned out vets facing the same problems we have right now.

 

[DVMDream]

It seems to me like there’s a natural ebb and flow of demand and jobs. I remember back in the 2007-2009ish years when I started working at a vet school as a lab tech the new grads were struggling to find jobs. Most found them but it was very much an employers market. When I graduated 7 years ago it wasn’t too hard to find a job and you had a few options to choose from. Now we’ve swung in the opposite direction and it’s an associates market. I’m sure things will swing back with more time, probably with continued inflation and a recession. Maybe (hopefully) not to how it was in the late 2000s but who knows. It’s not possible to predict. Even if a school did “respond” and increase class sizes dramatically because of a perceived “shortage”, it would take at minimum 5 years before we’d see any impact from that out in the “real world” because of how long it takes to matriculate and graduate someone. Add on a couple more years for things to even out. And who knows what the state of the profession will be in 5-7 years. I’d hate for the economy to continue to drop and then even more vets be upside down with loans and no jobs because we adapted and clinics no longer need/want to hire more vets. And even after they increased class sizes and evened things out, schools aren’t going to suddenly reduce class size back again…they’ll continue to pump out grads and take tuition dollars from unsuspecting students even if there aren’t jobs for them because they’ll say it’s not their issue. We need to keep vets in the profession and not lose them to other roles. If the demand does stay high, more grads without profession overhauls will probably just lead to more burned out vets facing the same problems we have right now.

I'm actually fairly concerned about another recession here in the fairly nearish future.

 

[battie]

Agreed. I'm glad I decided to switch jobs when I did. I'm now hourly rather than production, and make substantially more while at 40 hours a week. Could very comfortably go down to 30 hours per week if the hospital needed me to (and I want to anyways). We might be seeing a slow down here soon.

 

[3.14sces]

Everything is worse now.

Why?

 

[3.14sces]

An

Also increasing class size without increasing resources/space is not great… (my class can only fit in one auditorium room….. barely).

Do you know anything about the upcoming class? How many students they are accepting/ how many people are in the interview cycle ?

 

[katiemcat]

An

Do you know anything about the upcoming class? How many students they are accepting/ how many people are in the interview cycle ?

I’m pretty sure it’s staying at around 150. They can’t really go over that as the class would never be able to fit in one room at the same time. Last year they accepted 140 people and had 10 people from the previous class drop into our class making it 150. They have not told us how many interviews were offered this cycle, but last cycle it was around 250.

 

[vetmedhead]

but that won't prevent clients from being jerks or from having extremely hard, emotionally taxing cases

you know honestly the single biggest burnout issue I've run into since getting out has been other vets

I don't know if I'm just running into a lot of toxic personalities in this field or what but some of these people will just eat you alive. for as many people I've met who were absolute angels on earth I've met just as many who just plain made me not want to be alive anymore

I don't think vet med is necessarily unique in that respect but somehow it stings worse when it's people who give incessant lip service to supporting mental health in the profession and then actively bully all their coworkers and single them out for what are very blatantly mental health issues

 

[potentialsheltervet]

I don't think vet med is necessarily unique in that respect but somehow it stings worse when it's people who give incessant lip service to supporting mental health in the profession and then actively bully all their coworkers and single them out for what are very blatantly mental health issues

THISTHISTHISTHIS
Management/coworkers can be even worse than clients. Clients can suck but you have to deal with coworkers every single day.

 

[3.14sces]

I’m pretty sure it’s staying at around 150. They can’t really go over that as the class would never be able to fit in one room at the same time. Last year they accepted 140 people and had 10 people from the previous class drop into our class making it 150. They have not told us how many interviews were offered this cycle, but last cycle it was around 250.

That just seems like so many 😳

 

[that redhead]

you know honestly the single biggest burnout issue I've run into since getting out has been other vets

I don't know if I'm just running into a lot of toxic personalities in this field or what but some of these people will just eat you alive. for as many people I've met who were absolute angels on earth I've met just as many who just plain made me not want to be alive anymore

I don't think vet med is necessarily unique in that respect but somehow it stings worse when it's people who give incessant lip service to supporting mental health in the profession and then actively bully all their coworkers and single them out for what are very blatantly mental health issues

That’s interesting - I feel like I’ve had the opposite experience (minus a few bad apples). I’m sorry that’s been the case for you 🙁

 

[katiemcat]

That just seems like so many 😳

It is a lot tbh. But UF made a deal with the Florida government to accept more students for a larger budget. They’re attempting to renovate the vet school to accommodate but it’s not done yet…

 

[3.14sces]

It is a lot tbh. But UF made a deal with the Florida government to accept more students for a larger budget. They’re attempting to renovate the vet school to accommodate but it’s not done yet…

Ooooooh hahah well FL just needs another vet school😂 have they said when it will it be done??

 

[katiemcat]

Ooooooh hahah well FL just needs another vet school😂 have they said when it will it be done??

That was a possibility but UF offered to take more students so the idea was shut down. Maybe some day. I think it’s supposed to be done before they next class starts.

 

[battie]

Keep in mind that schools also over accept by a certain percentage because they know from historical data that a certain percentage of students will decline their acceptance offer. So they have to over interview to make sure they have a full class.

 

[DVMDream]

you know honestly the single biggest burnout issue I've run into since getting out has been other vets

I don't know if I'm just running into a lot of toxic personalities in this field or what but some of these people will just eat you alive. for as many people I've met who were absolute angels on earth I've met just as many who just plain made me not want to be alive anymore

I don't think vet med is necessarily unique in that respect but somehow it stings worse when it's people who give incessant lip service to supporting mental health in the profession and then actively bully all their coworkers and single them out for what are very blatantly mental health issues

Management and corporate mind think is what has killed my soul in this profession. Fellow colleagues are a close second, I've lost count of the number of times I've been screamed at by colleagues or have been told I'm useless/unhelpful because i didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. Pet owners being somewhat tied with colleagues, but I can usually get them to behave with some stern words.

 

[Jess Monster]

International health certificates….around the holidays…..with clients who are not very serious about the process and who haven’t really looked into the logistics of flying abroad with a large dog ……less than 10 days before departure. That’s the rant.

After this last person, I’m considering not doing international certificates anymore because I don’t need this kind of stress… especially for what comes out as less than $80 production.

 

[WildZoo]

International health certificates….around the holidays…..with clients who are not very serious about the process and who haven’t really looked into the logistics of flying abroad with a large dog ……less than 10 days before departure. That’s the rant.

After this last person, I’m considering not doing international certificates anymore because I don’t need this kind of stress… especially for what comes out as less than $80 production.

We do them rarely (seems we've priced most people out lol) but when we do, the client needs to have their own **** together, or else we just don't do it.

 

[vetmedhead]

International health certificates….around the holidays…..with clients who are not very serious about the process and who haven’t really looked into the logistics of flying abroad with a large dog ……less than 10 days before departure. That’s the rant.

After this last person, I’m considering not doing international certificates anymore because I don’t need this kind of stress… especially for what comes out as less than $80 production.

I avoided getting USDA certified for as long as possible (impressive in the shelter field where we send animals across the country like nobody's business) and then avoided telling people about it for as long as possible until it was absolutely necessary. I think if I were ever in the unfortunate position to be asked to write an international health certificate I would just decline because it's way too much hassle and detail for something that nobody else puts effort into and will blame you for anything going wrong despite them putting zero forethought into any of the process

 

[battie]

I would only do it if it was all I did. Be one of those docs that goes to a few practices a week just to do these. Or I've heard of vets having offices actually at or near the airport.

 

[Trilt]

Yeah I happily let my USDA certification expire and I'm alright never getting it back.

 

[SkiOtter]

International health certificates….around the holidays…..with clients who are not very serious about the process and who haven’t really looked into the logistics of flying abroad with a large dog ……less than 10 days before departure. That’s the rant.

After this last person, I’m considering not doing international certificates anymore because I don’t need this kind of stress… especially for what comes out as less than $80 production.

My clinic straight up will not do international certificates. I don’t think we even will do Hawaii because of the PITA process. We’ll do domestic interstate ones and that’s it.

Sadly can’t just let my USDA cert expire since in Michigan it’s required to be USDA certified to give damn rabies vaccines 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

 

[genny]

I actually like writing health certs. but i also don't bend over backwards for owners who are clearly going to miss their deadlines. we will tell people they're going to have to change their plans. our clinic also doesn't screw around with vehcs; we have the owners ship everything. i send home a lot of printed stuff, and i like going over the steps the owner needs to take to help them make sense of the process.

 

[finnickthedog]

My clinic straight up will not do international certificates. I don’t think we even will do Hawaii because of the PITA process. We’ll do domestic interstate ones and that’s it.

Sadly can’t just let my USDA cert expire since in Michigan it’s required to be USDA certified to give damn rabies vaccines 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

I also find it very annoying that we have to be accredited to give a dog a rabies vaccine.

But my clinic doesn't do international health certs either so at least there's that. I never want to touch one.

 

[SkiOtter]

I also find it very annoying that we have to be accredited to give a dog a rabies vaccine.

It’s SO DUMB.
Are there even other states that have that requirement?

 

[potentialsheltervet]

International health certificates….around the holidays…..with clients who are not very serious about the process and who haven’t really looked into the logistics of flying abroad with a large dog ……less than 10 days before departure. That’s the rant.

After this last person, I’m considering not doing international certificates anymore because I don’t need this kind of stress… especially for what comes out as less than $80 production.

Oof, we had one where the owner neglected to tell us she was getting the cert more than ten days before departure, then she wanted another one + exam for free. Her mom called us to scream that we were trying to extort/take advantage of her daughter (you know, for her daughter's mistake that it isn't our job to prevent).

 

[finnickthedog]

I made like 7 or 8 clients cry today. Can I go home now?

 

[vetmedhead]

Yeah I happily let my USDA certification expire and I'm alright never getting it back.

I'm even stupider and category 2 certified so I could write health certs for pet birds since we get those every so often

do you know how many category 2 people there are listed on the USDA website for the entire city?

less than fifty

We had a case recently with zillions of birds and they almost made me whip that bad boy out until they found a place in state to send them 😭

 

[that redhead]

I’m certified and have to keep it because we ship animals every week but my amazing admin staff put them all together for me and I double check and sign.

At my previous job we had one vet who did them and you needed an hour long appointment, it was definitely more expensive and you had to get your own sht together. When the appointment was first scheduled our one tech who helped the one doc with them would take the call and basically make sure everything would work out. Otherwise nope sorry.

 

[britzen]

I’m certified and have to keep it because we ship animals every week but my amazing admin staff put them all together for me and I double check and sign.

At my previous job we had one vet who did them and you needed an hour long appointment, it was definitely more expensive and you had to get your own sht together. When the appointment was first scheduled our one tech who helped the one doc with them would take the call and basically make sure everything would work out. Otherwise nope sorry.

As someone who sometimes endorses these for the government thank you for actually double checking them before you sign them.

The number of people who don't have anyone double check them (let alone the number of vets who clearly sign without reading) boggles the mind.

We send back SO MANY for stupid mistakes that easily could have been caught by having one person proofread it for typos or missing information.

 

[that redhead]

As someone who sometimes endorses these for the government thank you for actually double checking them before you sign them.

The number of people who don't have anyone double check them (let alone the number of vets who clearly sign without reading) boggles the mind.

We send back SO MANY for stupid mistakes that easily could have been caught by having one person proofread it for typos or missing information.

Due to the niche-ish work that I do, the implications for getting our certificates returned is pretty serious so absolutely! But even in private practice I would at least double-check them, sheesh! You all are pretty kind about giving us a heads up if there’s something weird and letting us correct it. When I send animals into Canada I get out my EXTRA fine tooth comb

 

[britzen]

Due to the niche-ish work that I do, the implications for getting our certificates returned is pretty serious so absolutely! But even in private practice I would at least double-check them, sheesh! You all are pretty kind about giving us a heads up if there’s something weird and letting us correct it. When I send animals into Canada I get out my EXTRA fine tooth comb

I send back probably 25-33% of certificates that I see for corrections... almost all of them for something dumb like a typo in the microchip number that could have easily been caught by a 10 minute proofread. It's incredible.

 

[PlumPoppy]

What changes do you think we’ll see in vet med/ vet schools in the future? Or do you think this is a short-term problem that will remedy itself?

I know LSU is trying to get their c/o 2029 to around 200 people. However, considering the already prevalent lack of teaching faculty and staffing issue, I wonder how they're going to accomplish this...

 

[battie]

I know LSU is trying to get their c/o 2029 to around 200 people. However, considering the already prevalent lack of teaching faculty and staffing issue, I wonder how they're going to accomplish this...

I'm going to call BS on this one (not you; the school). It's a *big deal* to increase class sizes as part of the COE. When Illinois over aceppted the class of 2020 from 130 to 160 students, instant hammer from the COE. Site visit, temporary accreditation status change until facilities were updated, etc. It took 6 years to get approval for Illinois to go from 130-160 after major renovations to both facilities and curricula.