re: A female veterinarian in my wife’s family says her company doesn’t give enough time off

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For one, it’s very expensive to go to vet school and the jobs are not high paying

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I looked into vet school when I attended LSU and found the same thing. I would have finished school with a hell of a lot of student loan debt and not made enough money to pay it all off. Now, I didn’t know you only had to work 3 days per week back then!

The company I work for would consider her a part time employee. PTO is awarded to full time employees only. .

Does she also talk about how much she’s underpaid?

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Four days off a week? Four? thats insane.

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Maybe she works three 12’s. If so, that’s nearly a 40 hour week. Nurses do this some.

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Hate to derail, what is the reasoning behind high suicide rate of female vets?

Can’t deal with dog death?

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Partially.

I read a good article years ago about the alarming rate of suicide among veterinarians. They didn’t really differentiate between the sex of the suicide numbers though.

I mostly remember the comments by a female vet that attempted suicide. She said she got into veterinary medicine to save animals and she felt like she was “Dr. Death.” At one point she was euthanizing a couple of animals a day, and many of them were animals she could have saved if the owners would have been willing to pay for the procedures.

If I remember correctly, what sent her over the edge was euthanizing a beautiful young golden retriever that had eaten some rocks and had an obstructed bowel and the owners refused to pay about $1,200 for the relatively simple surgery to save its life.

They feel guilty about euthanizing an animal they could save, but don’t because they won’t get paid. Tough situations.

Yeah I could see that getting old real quick.

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The entitlement is crazy

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Depends on how much she gets paid

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Hate to derail, what is the reasoning behind high suicide rate of female vets?

Can’t deal with dog death?

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Assuming you actually want an answer, here you go. This will be long though. Its a complicated combination of things.

1. its not just a female vet issue. it affect both genders equally, and has been an issue in vet medicine for a long time. It just happens to be that now days, the number of vets that are female are much higher. This is in part by one of the problems, see below

2. The financial strain: It takes 4 years of undergrad. then 4 years of veterinary school. Some people do an internship for a year or 2 after. By the time you are ready to practice you could be in your 30's. That is a lot of debt you are collecting. No or almost no income during any of those times (well the internships will pay a pittance). No you cant work when in vet school, the schedule wouldn't allow it, most programs wont let you.

So depending on your path, you could get 200, 300, hell, up to 500k in debt. Up until VERY recently, starting salary for a vets were not very good by comparison. The debt to income ratio is high. just as little as 10 years ago starting salaries were 70-80 in Louisiana. with 500k in debt, that's half your salary going to paying your loan off. After gov't takes their share, you barely have anything left. Not the lifestyle one would expect from a profession you put so much into. People feel trapped, they put 8-10 years of their life into learning and becoming a vet, what are they going to do? Change work now? How? they still need to pay those loans. So for them, it seems like a decades long path of eating ramen noodles in your car. Never able to afford a home, kids, anything really. This has admittedly been better in the last 10 years. starting salaries are now in the low to mid 100k range. Debt amount has gone up some too, but not as much.

This is all very economic dependent though. With current decisions vet schools are making (LSU doubled their class size recently) and the fall off of the covid pet boom, i think private vets will be seeing some pain in a few years.

THIS is the reason most vets are women. i am not being sexist, this has been well studied. When choosing a career path, young women tend to be less analytical. Most men evaluate these numbers, pay offs, time sunk, etc, and determine this is a losing bet. They go into other professions. Women tend to chose more on ideals and their vision of the future. They always saw themselves being a vet, and damnit nothing will stop them!

3. emotional strain: Well, at least you get to play with puppy and kitties all day right? Sure. Honestly, private practice vet work sucks. I don't know why anyone does it (i am not private practice). Despite the young lady in the OP, most vets work 50-70 hours a week. You are a medical professional, you see sick animals. You are rarely spending time playing with fun animals.

People are looking to you to fix their pets. Often animals are considered beloved members of the family. You cant always do that but you try your best. Those owners still blame you if you cant. My dog is still sick and its your fault! Get angry with you, curse you.

Trying to find answers and treat animals isn't cheap, and you need to make a profit to keep the lights on. People don't understand that. They are constantly calling you a scammer, a con artist, greedy, all you care about is money. People will scream at you, threaten you. When you see people who can afford to help their animals and choose not to, it infuriates you. When you see people who cant afford it, but somehow scrap the last of their money together to try to keep fido going for another week, it breaks your heart.

When a case goes bad, that's not the end of it. You take that home. You wonder what you could of done better. What other treatment or test could you have done to save that person's animal. What did you do wrong? (usually its nothing, but people who become vets tend to be type A perfectionists). This is not unique to us, most medical professionals struggle with thoughts like these.

Years of that kind of shite takes a toll. its hard for some people to ignore that. People who go into medical professions typically are "pleasers". They want to help. it hurt when they cant, it hurts more when they are called things they aren't.

The animal death certainly plays a role. Yeah vets realize that's what they signed up for. What I think some people don't realize though is the volume. So much death. Sometimes double digit days. This isn't hunting, its not *blam*, some random duck dead. Again, this is a beloved family member. Sometimes you have known these animals for years, its almost like killing a friend. Sometimes every day, sometimes multiple times a day. The thing no one realizes they are signing on for is the human part of all this. We arent fricking counselors. No one trained us how to comfort the biker dude that looks like he could whip 3 dudes asses at the same time crumbling into a crying mess. The old man who's wife passed away and this little dog is the only thing he has left? What do you tell him when he asks you what he is suppose to do next. The little kid who wants to know why his best friend has to go away. These aren't exaggerations, these are all examples my wife had to deal with.

Bottom line
Being a vet kind of sucks. I have asked a lot of people in my field the same question. If you could do it all over again, would you still go to vet school? A bunch say no. I'm in my 40's now, and i mostly talk to colleagues my age or older. i think the younger kids now have it better. a little bit at least.

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Would you work Saturdays and Sundays to have the rest of the week off? I'd work 2 14's for that deal.

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Would you work fri-sun. 36hrs for the rest of the week off?

Since that is the likely scenario. 2-12s on a weekend vs 5-8's is a scenario no one gets to choose from.