Why Do Vets Change Jobs So Much?

Over the last twenty five years or so I have seen a number of vets come and go at my practice …

From time to time clients have asked me why vets have left my practice and gone elsewhere, they generally say that they were just getting used to that vet when suddenly they find they have gone. I used to feel guilty and think it was just my clinic but when I spoke to other practice owners I found that they also had quite a high staff turnover. Over the last twenty five years or so I have seen a number of vets come and go at my practice, that seems to be the normal way of things these days. In the not so distant past, say during the James Herriot era a young vet would find a job, aspire to be a partner, and then spend all of his life in that practice, nowadays things are much more dynamic, but what are the reasons behind this mobility?

Part of the reason is the housing market. When I graduated in 1980 we were not paid so very much but almost every other young vet I knew at that time was able to take out a mortgage on a nice little three bedroom semi-detached house and that was our first step on the rungs of the housing market. Nowadays most young graduates seem to rent property, this means that it is easy for them to move, they just have to rent another property in the area where they have found a new job. I guess you will be less inclined to move if you have to go through the hassle of selling your house and then look for a new one and of course arranging a new mortgage and finally the hassle factor of moving house.

The current veterinary job market has a part to play, at the moment there are many more positions than veterinary surgeons to fill them. The young vet can usually pick and choose which job he or she will accept, and so easily move to another practice. This is bad in some ways because references now are rarely asked for or any attention paid to them. It is a good situation for the young vets of course but I am told the situation will not last forever and the tide may soon turn the other way as more and more graduates come from abroad.

Another reason for recent graduates to move is that they have to take their wife or partners veterinary career into account as well as their own. Again taking the James Herriot era as a reference point most wives [ there were few live-in partners in those days ] did not work, and if they did probably not as lady vets or veterinary nurses because in those days they were thin on the ground in the profession. It seems to me that quite a high percentage of young male vets nowadays either end up married to other vets or veterinary nurses who of course also have a career to pursue and they may want to move to do just that. The other side of the coin is that given that the majority of new graduates are now female, when they get married or settle down they will also have to take their husband’s or partner’s career into account when they choose a place to live and in turn this will influence the selection of the practice they will work in.

A very sound reason to move practices would be to further your career. In the James Herriot era as far as I can find out there were almost no further education opportunities outside of the university environment, nowadays there is an extensive range of certificates which can be attained while you are in practice. Veterinary surgeons have quite an onerous and demanding university course with high entrance requirements, it therefor follows that they are by selection class A type personalities who will always be ambitious and want to further their education for reasons of their own self esteem. It would be sensible for a new graduate to be in general practice for the first eighteen months to two years of their profession lives, hone their skills on elective surgery and consultations and then move to a practice where they can start to specialise a bit more in their chosen fields of interest such as opthamology or orthopaedics.

You would think that leaving your practice to set up on your own would be part of the equation but this happens rarely now, in my twenty five years of running my own practice I never knew it occur. I always made a point of asking the vets who worked for me or locums passing through if they would be interested in setting up on their own or buying a practice and the answer was pretty well always much the same, no way! They were concerned about the perceived burden of administrating a practice with relation to taxation, VAT, accounts and general business acumen. Staff matters such as pregnancies, and employment tribunals were also mentioned as an area of concern, to be fair there would be some who would say that the current employment laws in the UK are very much in favour of the employee. Finance or the lack of it is also perceived as a problem, I guess a young graduate who wanted to start a well equipped practice from scratch would have to find quite a sum of money, with no guarantee of income coming in for quite some time, perhaps a better prospect would be to buy a run down practice in a good area, but it is still going to cost money.

Some vets will leave a practice because they are leaving the profession altogether, perhaps retirement beckons, some have just had enough of the day to day stress which of course all of us will admit exists and have a complete change of career. If you find you are not suited to veterinary medicine then that’s the way to go, why be unhappy? Which leads me to a rare but well documented exit strategy, not only leave your practice but shuffle of your mortal coil while you are at it, best avoided!

And last but not least some young vets change jobs because they do not like the practice in some way, they cannot get on with the boss or other staff, or perhaps the boss or other staff cannot get on with them! A phrase I hear bandied about in this situation is ” work life balance ” of course there is a valid place for this concept in practice. This is a phrase which can and does cause friction, the older generation such as myself have no concept of it and the newer generation perhaps have it drummed in to them too much, perhaps a middle course is called for?

Scott Nimmo BVMS

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This entry was posted on August 5, 2008 at 6:51 am and is filed under The Veterinary Profession. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.