Last week, this blog was paid a visit by the erstwhile Josh himself (well, this is the Internet, so you can never be sure, but it seems plausible) thanking me for mentioning his book, and inviting me to read what other vets have had to say about it. He has so far failed to take me up on my offer to read his book if he sends me a review copy, which is sad. But not wanting to be unfair on him or his literary endeavours, I went off and read his reviews. Very depressing reading they make, too.
I'm not going to argue against the assertion that many people in this job are somewhere on the spectrum from unhappy to frankly suicidal, that as a profession we suffer from higher than average rates of alcohol and other substance abuse, and that many vets frankly feel that they were sold a lie, that their work is simply not as satisfying as they were promised when they chose it, that their customers are often ungrateful for their work and resentful of their bills, their patients mostly want to bite or claw them, they spend a lot of their time dealing with pus and blood and shit, and that having got this far, they feel unable to back out, admit that it's not for them, and find something else to do with their lives. Hell, I've had times like that.
The issue of depression and suicide in the profession is one that has been gone over many times by many different people. It seems to me, thinking back over the people who were with me in my years at vet school, that we probably chose people for veterinary training who may not be that suited to the reality of the job after graduation. In the UK, at least, selection for extremely tightly contested places is essentially on academic attainment, plus an interview in many but not all cases. My classmates were, for the main part, very hard-working, driven, obsessive / perfectionist / idealist personalities, with a smattering here and there of brilliant types who appeared never to have to do any work (though, like many things, I suspect this appearance was often deceptive). There really isn't any scope in the selection mechanism to select for people who cope, make do, are practical and enjoy solving gnarly problems without an ideal solution.
Because it doesn't take long to realise that the job isn't about finding 'the answer' or 'the right solution' or deploying 'the gold standard treatment' most of the time. The way I see things, it's about trying to tread the difficult line between the animal's best interests, the owner's desires (reasonable or otherwise), the financial constraints, and your professional responsibilities, while trying to avoid stepping too many of the generously scattered ethical and legal landmines. And as for the actual bread and butter of the job - it's not intellectual, it's practical and it's about interpersonal skills. It's about coming up with an often alarmingly Heath Robinson Plan B when the Plan A you were taught at vet school fails in some exciting way. It's about sensing and responding to owners unspoken, and often unconscious agendas, issues and twitches and somehow producing the best result you can under the circumstances, one that the owner is comfortable with, one that minimally compromises the animal (because, yes, that's often what you're left aiming for), and which meanwhile produces an income for the practice sufficient to keep your boss of your back. And I love it, for all of that. That's the challenge. And I can see why a perfectionist, obsessive, idealistic type would find it completely impossible.
Against a background of all of that, we need to add in the fact that recent graduates are now carrying a mountain of student debt, one which will only get bigger as the 'top-up fees' university generation graduates, and which recent graduate salaries are simply not sufficient to service while providing a reasonable quality of life, not an unreasonable expectation after five or sometimes more years studying on a student income, and galling when you glance sideways and see newly graduated doctors earning upwards of 35k.
As an aside, I'd love to know how the *attempted* suicide statistics for our profession stack up with other occupations. I rather suspect that the ratio of successful to attempted suicides is rather higher for us than for accountants, say. After all, I have the all the necessary means to a relatively painless and pretty much guaranteed-effective death in the boot of my car right now, if I wanted it. I know of vets who have used it.
Are things similar in the US and other places? I would love to know my readers' thoughts. And Josh, I'd love it if you'd send me that review copy...
Recent Comments