[Animals] Today's veterinarian shortage: How it could affect your dog or cat

[FazzNoth]

Veterinarians across the country are feeling burned out today potentially affecting you and your pet as you face longer-than-usual wait times for vet appointments, plus other issues.

Even before today's pet adoption boom (which was brought about by the coronavirus pandemic), animal health care providers had been facing workplace stress.

"There has been a large influx of pets, even prior to the pandemic, while class sizes to create veterinarians and vet nurses have stayed the same," Oregon-based Dr. Cherice Roth, chief veterinary officer at Fuzzy, The Pet Parent Company, revealed to Fox News Digital in an interview this week.

"We have also seen more [pet] patients to treat, all while having more people than ever leave the industry without the ability to replace them," she continued.

Reasons that veterinarians are fleeing the profession "range from high debt-to-income ratio to student loan burden to emotional blackmail," she said.

Here's why this matters: Seventy percent of U.S. households, or about 90.5 million families, own a pet today, according to the 2021-2022 National Pet Owners Survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association (APPA).

This is up from 56 percent of U.S. households in 1988 — the first year the survey was conducted — and 67 percent back in 2019.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) estimates that "close to one in five households" welcomed a dog or cat at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That accounted for "approximately 23 million American households," according to 2019 U.S. Census data the ASPCA sourced.

 

"This pet boom across the U.S. led to significantly higher demand for veterinary care while the number of veterinarians and technicians didn't grow to absorb that demand," Rakesh Tondon, co-founder and CEO of Dr. Treat, a San Francisco-based pet health and wellness startup, told Fox News Digital.

"As a result of this increased demand, the teams at clinics are significantly overworked," Tondon added.

He also said the pandemic put "emotional and physical pressure" on veterinarian teams. Many working vets with children had to stay home while their kids' remote learning was in effect, resulting in a "smaller workforce in clinics."

The veterinary worker shortage has persisted so long that some animal clinics have had to close their doors, according to Thomas Dock, director of communications and public information officer at Noah's Animal Hospitals, an Indiana-based vet clinic network.

 

"This has pushed care onto other veterinary hospitals and even to animal emergency clinics," Dock told Fox News Digital.

Wait times of two to three months for appointments at general practices were not uncommon, he said.

"And most veterinary emergency hospitals routinely have a two- to four-hour wait time to be seen," he added.

Roth — of Fuzzy, The Pet Parent Company — said that new pet owners make up a good number of veterinary visits, often because they’re making errors in pet care.

"Common pet parent mistakes" include "inappropriate feeding, toxicity from common human medications into the pet, or preventable illness like flea allergy dermatitis or pyometras," Roth said. (The latter is a reproductive infection common among older, unspayed female dogs.)

Dr. Felicity Moffatt, lead veterinarian at Dr. Treat in San Francisco, told Fox News Digital that veterinarians and technicians are feeling pressure from the rising costs associated with veterinary care.

"Veterinarians and their teams hear the anxiety and stress from clients who have been waiting for an extended period due to overwhelmed practices," she said. "Or [clients] do not understand the cost of veterinary services and the subsequent need for veterinary insurance."

She added, "Many clinics have had to cut [their] hours due to a lack of technicians or veterinarians."

 

"This creates a situation where veterinary staff have to turn away sick pets," she said, "which goes against everything we believe in, and results in pets not having access to the care they need."

As helpful as it is to know what’s causing burnout today among veterinarians, animal clinics want pet owners to be aware of several considerations before they make the trip to the office.

"Pet owners are asked to be patient and understand that, like many business types, veterinarians are facing staffing shortages and may not be able to see your pet as quickly as they have in the past," said Dock of Noah's Animal Hospitals.

 

"Understand that emergency animal hospitals run like human ERs and that the most critical cases are seen first, regardless of who got to the hospital first."

Dr. Roth recommends that before making an appointment, pet owners check the resources that animal care providers feature on their websites to see if there are answers to common questions.

"Often, there is an over-the-counter option to help take care of the issue," she also said.

"If a vet visit is required, we’re able to steer you in the right direction as to what that appointment should look like, as far as diagnostics and even potential therapies to ask for," Roth added.

Pete Wedderburn AKA Pete the Vet, a veterinary columnist at The Telegraph (U.K.) shared three key tips for pet owners who wish to have a smoother-sailing pet appointment.

https://news.yahoo.com/today-apos-veterinarian-shortage-could-060044847.html