14 reasons why I donât always love my job
Iâve been a veterinarian for over 6 years now, and I canât seriously imagine myself in any other career. The job has its frequent downsides though, and itâs no wonder so many of us leave the profession within five years of graduating. Some go into research or parallel industries, some just wave goodbye and never look back. The important point from my point of view is that these people are still living, and didnât choose the path that so many of us do, resulting in the highest suicide rate of any profession in Australia.
I think part of the reason we have such a high rate of vets leaving the profession is that it didnât turn out to be what they were expecting when they signed up to the career. There are times when Iâve been feeling low for a while when I do seem to harp on about the negative aspects of veterinary medicine, but if I can deter one person who truly would have been miserable in veterinary medicine, then that might be one life saved and many years that werenât wasted.
So here are some of the reasons why I simply donât always love my job.
1. You have to talk to people. A veterinarian doesnât just get to work with animals all day, there are people that always come attached to them.
2. Canât save everything. The limitations of medical science, ethics and money often simply get in the way.
3. Some of your patients are intended to be eaten. Sure, you can save that calf today, but how does your brain cope knowing that heâs going to be burgers in 18 months time?
4. 8am starts, 8pm finishes, overnight shifts, after hours call outs and generally unsociable hours.
5. Everything dies. You will outlive all your patients, unless you happen to work exclusively with parrots and giant tortoises.
6. People will thank you when you put their pet to sleep, not when youâve saved its life.
7. You must be the bearer of bad news. Many parents donât want to be the bad guy, so you get to tell the 6 year old why their dog has to die today. You have to tell an old man that his dog has prostate cancer. You have to say those words down the phone when something doesnât wake up from anesthesia.
8. You will get accused of being in it only for the money, because the petâs medicine or surgery is deemed too expensive, while youâre waiting desperately for your own paycheck because youâre already $200 overdrawn this week.
9. Aggressive and fearful animals. You still have to treat them, but theyâre either terrified of you or want to kill you. Some owners even think this is funny.
10. The kittens and puppies you do get to spend time with are mostly sick or injured, not cuddly and playful.
11. The combination of owning animals and being expected to pay money for them brings out some of the worst in humanity.
12. You canât be wrong. Youâre always compared to Dr Google and the threat on bad online reviews hang over your head constantly, which can tarnish your reputation for decades.
13. Physical exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. Compassion fatigue.
14. The expectation that you will sacrifice so much of yourself and your personal life to graduate and work as a veterinarian. And they fact that we do it.
Itâs not all puppies and kittens, cuddles and happy fun times. We donât just hug the pain away. This is medicine. This is the line between life and death and asking people for money.
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