Some people have made the argument that vets have it harder because they need to be able to diagnose/ treat a wide variety of animals, while MDs only treat humans. Is this true?? I sorta always thought MDs have the hardest job. What do you guys think?
While I echo what the other posters said--just a couple of thoughts.
One, why do you care? Most people who are interested in human medicine aren't interested in veterinary medicine and vice versa. I have never heard one of my classmates mention that they were thinking about vet school at one time or another.
Two, one of my good friends is a vet student and it's just plain old different than what MDs/DOs do. The vast majority of their work is outpatient. There is some inpatient stuff even with animal ICUs in some places, but purely on volume, vets do way more outpatient stuff.
Three, doctors have a patient-doctor relationship. Vets have a patient-vet and a client-vet relationship. When I go to the vet with my dog (I've been three times this WEEK--what a money pit), she has to be able to calm him down and examine him thoroughly AND explain things to me and get a good history from me. It's a different dynamic.
Four, we can euthanize animals. We can't do that with people (Oregon aside and even that's not quite euthanasia but that's another issue). When someone can't afford to treat their dog's cancer, they can ethically euthanize them. Happens all the time. Not so with someone's 98 year old demented grandfather riddled with COPD and lung cancer.
Five, as far as vets having to manage a wider breadth of animals and diseases--I would say that's true but with some caveats. First, there's no doubt MDs/DOs have more depth in their understanding but vets have more breadth. Which is harder? I don't know. I don't care. It's the difference between being a family practioner and a pediatric neuroradiologist. The first deals with bread and butter but there's a hell of a lot of bread and butter out there. The second needs to know a million rare diseases but really only needs to know one system of one patient population.
Six, this is coming from my vet friend so I don't know how true it is but he says that most vets don't practice medicine on every animal out there. I know my vet only does cats and dogs and it's a huge practice of 8 DVMs. Anyone doing reptiles, birds, insects, exotic fish, amphibians apparently does an exotics residency or fellowship and then only deals with exotics. Same is true for vets who focus on zoo animals or farm animals. I don't think any vet truly takes care of the entire range of animals from aadvarks to zebras.
Finally, general veterinarians who basically take care of dogs and cats don't do residencies in order to practice like medical students have to do, so on the whole their training is going to be shorter. I don't think it makes veterinary practice easier though. It's comparing apples and oranges ultimately.
