Veterinary Notes

Veterinarian salaries and debts April 26, 2009

Following on from the last post. I’ve decided to post an article on veterinarian’s salaries. A lot of people often naturally assume that vets earn excellent salaries. I suppose this is understandable when a client sees the cost of a 10-15 minute consultation or the price of an expensive surgery. For farmers or large animal clients, they will often see the vets drive relatively new, big and expensive cars (which are necessary for the amount of driving and abuse the cars take!).

Unfortunately, clients don’t factor in how expensive drugs (and their transport costs), medical and surgical equipment, rent for the premises and all the salaries (vets, nurses, receptionists and others) can be. The actual profit margins for veterinary clinics aren’t anywhere near as high as people assume.

It has been reported that average educational loan debt of a graduating veterinary student in the US, is greater than a staggering $100,000 (http://is.gd/uCDU). In the UK, the actual figure is probably lower (although rapidly rising), considering students can do a veterinary degree immediately (without needing to do another one first) and due to the fact that part of the university education is funded by the government.

Often during the university holidays, it is compulsory for veterinary students to work (normally for free) on farms, at stables and in veterinary clinics, to gain experience of working and handling animals. This is a valuable part of our training but unfortunately, it often denies us the opportunity to get paid work over our holidays.

The veterinary course is also very intensive – normally 5 full study days a week, in additional to extra personal studying in the evenings and over the weekends. Once again, a part-time job can be hard to cope with, on top of the intense veterinary course. So for these reasons, often vets can end up with huge debts once they qualify with very little opportunity to pay some of it off before graduating.

So obviously, once we qualify, everything is great because we earn huge salaries and can pay off the debt very quickly. WRONG. The actual veterinary salary is lower than those earned by many other professionals. We on average earn about 31,000 pounds/yr in the UK and $80,000/yr in the US. On average, we earn less than dentists, accountants, scientists, engineers, secondary school teachers, surveyors, doctors amongst others (http://is.gd/uCDy).

Vets can be paid by a variety of means. In the UK, a vet may just simply receive a fixed salary or alternatively, a lower salary but with free accommodation and/or a car. On top of this, some practices pay a commission-based wage. This normally means a fixed salary, in addition to a bonus related to either individual or the whole practice’s productivity.

There are good and bad aspects to a commission-based salary. The benefits of a bonus system, are that it provides great motivation for vets to generate work (as opposed to being lazy), provide a better service and to stimulate vets to take an interest in the financial success of the practice. Obviously, both vets and the practice partners can be rewarded handsomely by such a system.

On a more negative note, an individual bonus system can create greed and selfishness. Vets may push expensive tests and treatments; not for the interest of the animal, but to boost their own bonuses. In addition to this, practice vets may stop working as a team but more as competitors. Vets may prefer to do more vaccines and desexing operations (which are quick, easy and profitable) than spend time on a complicated case or on hospital in-patients, which can be time-consuming and not generate as much income. Also experienced vets may be more reluctant to supervise younger vets during surgeries unless the work is recorded under their name.

Obviously, the ideal is a balance. My personal experience when I first qualified involved emergency calls after hours. I never received any percentage of the money I generated. We would often work a full day and then be “on call” at night and then have a full workload the following day. Naturally, I would always offer the option to see a patient at any time but if I felt it wasn’t a true emergency, I would try to convince the owner to wait till the following day by telling them how much cheaper it would be during the day.

In hindsight, if I had been offered some bonus for seeing a client during the night, I may have actually had an incentive to do more “non-emergency” consultations, if that is what the owners desired. Personally, I feel that would have been a win-win situation for everyone. Both myself and the clinic would have earned extra money and the owner would have been able to have their pet seen whenever they desired. My experience tells me that people can work unusual hours and sometimes 3am is the only time when they can get to visit a vet.

Fortunately, nowadays, we have a 24 hour clinic and so I no longer am required to be on call out of hours. I personally get paid a practice (as opposed to individual) bonus which seems to work quite well. We all work together as a team, with no-one being lazy or pushing un-necessary treatments and tests. I personally will give recommendations that I would happily use on my own pet. I feel in the long run, a good and honest service will pay great dividends as opposed to aiming for short term gains. I hate when someone tries to rip me off and so I refuse to treat others that way.

I was lucky when I went to university as I didn’t need to pay tuition fees. I also managed to earn good money from holiday and Saturday jobs. In addition to this, I had very supportive parents who paid for my accommodation and food costs. I now do a job that I throughly enjoy and although, I could earn far more in another job, I earn more than enough to allow me to have a comfortable life.