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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Humanities and Social Sciences
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1433891
This article is part of the Research Topic Animal wellbeing, conservation, research, and education: Supporting people in caring professions View all articles

Career Transition Plans of Veterinarians in Clinical Practice

Provisionally accepted
Lori R. Kogan Lori R. Kogan 1*Mark Rishniw Mark Rishniw 2
  • 1 Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States
  • 2 Veterinary Information Network (VIN), Davis, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: Gain an understanding of the career transition plans of veterinarians in clinical practice.Sample: Veterinary members of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) working as small animal clinicians.Procedures: An electronic survey distributed via the VIN data collection portal.Results: A total of 1256 responses from veterinarians in clinical practice were analyzed, with 61% indicating they plan to decrease their clinical work, and 31% to stop entirely within the next five years. The most common reasons for these choices were to have more free time for oneself and/or family/friends (76%), to maintain good health (59%), and feeling burned out (50%). Factors that might entice them to retain their current number of clinical hours included reduced workload or shorter hours (42%), financial incentivization (38%), and improved working conditions (26%). Concerns related to retirement were common with 47% of participants in our study reported feeling concerned about the loss of professional identity, 34% reported concern about reduced social connections, and 28% reported concern as to how they would fill their time.Conclusions and Clinical Relevance: The reported desire to reduce/stop one's clinical work within the next five years by 42% of veterinarians ≤ 44 years of age, with burnout a primary predictor, offers insights into the necessity of change at the organizational, systemic (versus individual) level. The fact that many participants reported concerns related to retirement and 32% reported that they did not have adequate retirement information suggests a need for supportive services to help ensure a successful transition.

    Keywords: Retirement, burnout, Job fulfillment, Workplace stressors, Career

    Received: 04 Jun 2024; Accepted: 15 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kogan and Rishniw. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lori R. Kogan, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.