Once the hairy child at home looks in poor spirits, take it to the hospital for an examination, the person's blood routine test is 20 yuan, the pet hospital will charge 120, and there are other urine tests, infectious disease tests, etc., and the examination fee has spent 900 yuan.
In the end, a few pills and a few prescription cans were prescribed to the small animal, but they could collect four or five hundred.
This pet doctor should be too easy to make money.
The small soles of the feet, the soft body, and the fluffy fur can splash and roll, jump up and down, and sniff around with their little tails raised high. At a time when others are still living and dying in 996, this profession of being able to have close contact with furry children every day and pay for cats and dogs stands out, which is particularly enviable.
Is the veterinarian really that good?I was the first to change careers!
Veterinarian, getting hotter
When old and powerful professions, such as law and education, were warned by red cards and became more and more declining, no one expected that the veterinarian who treats cats and dogs would become one of the popular professions nowadays [1].
One of the main reasons is that there are more and more pet owners, and today, "cats and dogs" have become the ideal state of "happy family" for many young people. According to an industry report** released by an authoritative organization in the pet industry, the number of pets in China will reach the level of nearly 200 million in 2023[2].
Have you noticed that the pet store has unknowingly become the same community infrastructure as the neighborhood store and the shampoo shop. Observe the neighborhood where you live, is there a pet store just around the corner?
In this context, the pet medical industry is accelerating its expansion.
According to the PwC industry report, the size of China's pet market reached more than 130 billion yuan in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 18 from 2019 to 2021 [3].
According to the 2022 China Pet Medical Industry***, jointly produced by the China Veterinary Medical Association and Eastern and Western Veterinary Departments, as of October 2022, the number of pet diagnosis and treatment institutions in the country reached 19,930, an increase of more than 4,000 compared with 2019 [4].
At a time when it is becoming more and more difficult to find a job and the depreciation of academic qualifications is becoming more and more serious, this profession that deals with small animals is attracting the younger generation.
In the voluntary reporting platform, animal medicine occupies the top spot in the popularity list of agricultural majors. In recent years, the undergraduate admission score of this type of major has been rising year after year, taking Huazhong Agricultural University as an example, the admission score of its veterinary medicine major in Zhejiang Province in 2018 was still 626, and in 2023, it will increase to 644 points, and the admission score has moved forward by more than 4,000 points.
In many agricultural colleges, such as China Agricultural University and Jiangxi Agricultural University, veterinary medicine is often one of the majors that the most students transfer every year.
Between 2019 and 2022, the educational composition of pet hospital staff increased by 11 percentage points for those with graduate education or above, and more and more people studied for two or three years, or even seven years in order to become pet doctors [4][5].
However, when you ask an industry insider, the answer you get is very likely to dissuade you.
Becoming a veterinarian may not be what we think.
Animal medical students, head is going to learn baldness
In China's discipline system, the veterinarian's background is in animal medicine, which belongs to agronomy, not medicine.
However, a large part of the knowledge system Xi overlaps with medicine.
The curriculum system of veterinary medicine is highly similar to that of human medicine, and the basic courses of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, and clinical diagnosis are required to be studied in human medicine [6][7].
But the difference is that the discipline system of veterinary medicine is more extensive.
The professional system of animal medicine is not perfect, unlike human medicine, which has sub-specialties such as clinical medicine, public health and epidemic prevention medicine, and stomatology.
The three main disciplines of veterinary medicine are specified in the training program of China Agricultural University, namely basic veterinary medicine, preventive veterinary medicine, and clinical veterinary medicine [7].
That is to say, the undergraduate education of veterinary medicine serves three goals at the same time, and medical students must not only master basic medical knowledge, but also learn Xi veterinary clinical skills, and be competent in epidemic prevention and quarantine work to ensure the safety of the people's table. The study of animal medicine is equivalent to the study of human medicine, clinical medicine, and preventive medicine [7].
At the same time, the knowledge to be learned in veterinary medicine may be more complex.
People who enter the veterinary medicine profession with the vision of treating kittens and puppies may sink their hearts the moment they open the anatomy textbook and find that pigs, cows, horses, poultry, and dogs have everything.
In fact, the pet doctor is only one of the narrow paths for veterinary medicine graduates. In China, the undergraduate education of veterinary medicine majors is mostly oriented to animal husbandry, and there is rarely a division between large animals (economic animals such as pigs, cattle and sheep, and poultry) and small animals (companion animals such as cats and dogs), and the proportion of small animal courses is often small [8].
This means that even if you aspire to become a veterinarian who treats cats and dogs in the future, you may be dealing with pigs, cattle and sheep the most in the courses you Xi in college.
One student described her first "crit" after she began studying Xi veterinary medicine, the first class of her freshman anatomy lab class, where they were tasked with dissecting a pig by themselves. Sometimes due to the operator's nervousness, unskillfulness or other factors, the scene can also be quite miserable.
Taking the syllabus of animal anatomy and pet anatomy at Nanjing Agricultural University as an example, veterinary medical students should not only be able to read the skeleton and trunk of pigs, but also learn the gastrointestinal hepatopancreas of cats, and not only grasp the organ position of chickens, but also understand the differences in the structural characteristics of mature cats and dogs [9][10].
To put it simply, it means that you have to know everything. Before you can become a doctor, you must first become a zoologist.
If you become a veterinarian after graduation, you may also have to learn Xi to treat lizards, minks, snakes, turtles and other exotic pets, so there is a joke in the industry that a human doctor is a veterinarian who only sees one animal [8].
At the same time, in recent years, the veterinary medicine major in domestic universities is undergoing a shift from a four-year system to a five-year system, and in 2020, 14 universities, including Henan Agricultural University, submitted applications to change the veterinary medicine major to a five-year program [11].
In 2018, the National Standards for the Teaching Quality of Undergraduate Majors in Colleges and Universities issued by the Ministry of Education also stipulate that the total credit of veterinary medicine majors should not be less than 200 points, which is gradually approaching the credit requirements of other medical majors such as clinical medicine and stomatology [6][12].
The academic pressure of veterinary medicine is no less than that of human medicine.
If a person who aspires to become a veterinarian successfully obtains the relevant qualifications, then he must begin to prepare for the next step on the road to becoming a professional veterinarian – the annual pass rate is only about 17 [13].
This qualification examination has four subjects: basic, preventive, clinical, and comprehensive application, which is as all-encompassing as what they learned during college, and is almost a general test of what they have learned in four or five years of college, and they must pass all four subjects to pass [14].
In the National Veterinary Qualification Examination Syllabus, from the legal system of epidemic prevention and quarantine, to infectious diseases and parasites of pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, cats and dogs, from animal cholecystitis, peritonitis, pancreatitis, to Chinese veterinary heat-clearing medicines, from pig diseases and poultry diseases to silkworm diseases, everything is available, the scope is quite wide, and it is quite a headache to Xi [14].
The veterinarian's suffering,
Only they know
After finally surviving to graduate and stepping into the door of the pet hospital, he may slowly begin to discover that the reality is as tragic as the dissection table in front of him in college.
A series of extensive international studies have found that the risk of suicide among veterinarians is three to four times higher than that of the general population and twice that of those working in other health care professions [15].
There is a lack of relevant research in China, but the situation is not optimistic. An industry insider mentioned: "We are particularly prone to depression in this industry, and many doctors I know have already changed careers. According to an industry report jointly produced by industry authorities, in 2022, the total turnover rate of assistant doctors and doctors in pet diagnosis and treatment institutions in China was as high as 77, and more than half of the personnel in the industry have been in the industry for less than five years [4][16].
Why is this happening?
First of all, it is not possible to diagnose cats and dogs and perform surgeries as soon as you graduate, and it takes a long period to become a pet doctor who can see independently, just like a human doctor.
To become a veterinarian, you usually need to start as a physician assistant, and to become a physician assistant, you need to go from beginner to intermediate and then to senior [17].
In June this year, the Chinese Veterinary Medical Association released the "Specifications for the Evaluation of Professional Skills in Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment of Pets", which clarified the requirements for different levels of physician assistants, in addition to obtaining the relevant level of certificates, there are also corresponding years of service, from primary, intermediate, to senior, to work in the corresponding positions for more than 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years respectively [17].
During this time, they had to live in the city on a meager salary. According to an industry report released by Ping An ** in 21 years, nearly 40% of practitioners have a salary of less than 6,000 yuan, and more than 26 of them have a salary of between 3,000 and 4,500 yuan [18].
After accumulating enough experience and qualifications, you can become a veterinarian, usually a general practitioner at first, if you want to go to the next level, you need to continue to learn and Xi, and become a specialist in a certain field. Correspondingly, less than one-third of the employees in the industry earn more than 10,000 per month [18].
Not to mention the constant high-pressure work.
Although more people are entering the industry, the pet medical industry is still facing a huge talent gap. Since the pilot of the veterinary qualification examination began in 2009, as of 2022, there are 16 practicing veterinarians in China50,000 people. However, according to the proportion of demand for veterinary services per 1,000 people in developed countries, there is still a shortage of about 300,000 practicing veterinarians in China [4].
Maintaining the lives of non-talking animals requires a lot of time and energy to observe, and pet hospitals need to be operated, but there is a shortage of manpower, and pet doctors are overloaded.
In the early years, the situation of pet doctors in Taiwan was similar to that of the mainland today, and a survey released by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health of the Ministry of Labor in 2015 showed that the average daily working hours of pet doctors reached 118 hours [19].
Working overtime is the norm for veterinarians, and if they are still undergoing a difficult operation near the end of work, or if they suddenly receive an emergency department, or if they have a small animal whose life is dying after surgery, they are not at ease to hand it over to others, and in many cases, they cannot leave [20].
It was also previously reported that doctors at a pet hospital in Shanghai were also prepared to be on call 24 hours a day even during the Spring Festival, "Chinese New Year's Eve is always unstable", and they have to rush back to the hospital for treatment as soon as there is an emergency [21].
In addition to their hard work, veterinarians often face an "ethical dilemma" when there is a conflict between the interests of their clients and the welfare of their animals
Ethical dilemmas are a common situation that healthcare professionals may face in their work, in which a person knows what is right to do, but institutional constraints make it difficult for him to take the right action [22].
When it comes to veterinarians, the ethical dilemma may be due to the client's budget cost or technical reasons to provide the best solution for small animalsor being asked by the customer to take harmful medical measures on the animal, such as ear cutting, tail cutting, etc.;or a request for euthanasia if not necessary [23].
It is necessary to maintain the well-being of animal patients, but also to respect the autonomy of customers, and pet doctors need to meet the needs of both subjects at the same time, but the final decision is still in the hands of customers.
According to a survey of veterinarians in North America, 32 percent of respondents often disagree with their customers about how to do it** for sick pets. Nearly 30 veterinarians sometimes or often receive requests for euthanasia that they consider inappropriate, a large percentage of which are due to the owner's financial situation that cannot support the pet's expenses, and a very small percentage who are simply unwilling to choose to give up [23][24].
Veterinarians can get great satisfaction and happiness in the process of getting along with pets and watching their pets' health improve step by step, and when they fight with death, but at the same time, they also have to take risks, a sense of powerlessness, or just a mistake can easily break people. Always switching between a sense of accomplishment and a sense of powerlessness, switching endlessly, repeatedly, smiling to welcome life, silent death.
So, is the job good?This is not an easy true/false question. If you want to see a pet doctor, you can't just look at their paid cats and dogs, but also look at the randomly distributed blood bars on their arms and hands.