Factors that support retention and drive attrition in the veterinary profession
How to meet the needs of people working in clinical practice
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Veterinary medicine has a problem: It’s losing good people at an unsustainable rate.
- Some 30% of veterinary practice team members are planning on leaving their current role.
- Of that, half plan to leave clinical practice entirely, and once they do, only 10% would consider returning.
- The economic costs of attrition range from $1-5 billion; the emotional toll is even greater.
- The profession cannot graduate our way out of this crisis; retention is the key.
- To improve retention, owners and leaders need to give employees what they need and want. Making changes without that information wastes effort and resources.
There is a solution.
This isn’t a workforce crisis; this is a human-centered issue. To solve it, all of us must focus on addressing the problems that are pushing veterinary professionals—many of whom have dreamed of this work all their lives—away from clinical practice. The Stay, Please survey and analysis, provides critical insight to what veterinary professionals value. And having an understanding what’s driving people to leave, as well as what matters most to those who love where they work is fundamental to addressing the root cause of this issue at its source.
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VIDEO: Exploring insights and strategies outlined In AAHA’s retention study
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Dig into the charts below to better understand what’s driving attrition and inspiring retention amongst veterinary professionals.
The dropdown menus allow you to see how these factors differ amongst those planning to leave (attrition) and those planning to stay (retention).
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- Loyal to practice, which consists of owners, hospital admins, practice managers, and medical directors. These roles were most likely to say they planned to stay where they were.
- The dedicated to vet med persona consists of nonowner DVMs and credentialed techs, who are devoted to vet med but not necessarily their current job.
- Our third persona, consisting of uncredentialed techs and CSRs, is most likely to see their current role as a job rather than a career, and this persona is far more likely than any other persona to leave vet med entirely. This doesn’t mean individuals in these roles aren’t committed to veterinary medicine, but as a group, they’re statistically more than twice as likely to leave the field than the other personas.