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Today's VeTerinary PracTice | september/october 2015 | tvpjournal.com naVc PersPecTiVes 8 Evolution of a Career in Veterinary Medicine Hands on, Hands off K. Leann Kuebelbeck, DVM, Diplomate ACVS Brandon Equine Medical Center Brandon, Florida Why can't a veterinary career be just about helping animals? Isn't that why the majority of us were drawn into the feld—because we "loved animals" and wanted to help them? If memory serves me correctly, that is why I endured three years of undergraduate classes and then four years of veterinary school. Some of us continued with additional training, such as master's degrees, doctorates, internships, residencies, or fellowships. Regardless of the path that led us to become the veterinarians we are today, I truly believe most of us would agree that the motivating force that propelled our educational journey was our love for animals and our desire to work with them. Horses versus Humans So, if our love for animals is what led us to our chosen feld, why are we spending less and less time with our patients and more and more time with humans, such as clients, employees, vendors, students, colleagues, and volunteers? When I refect on my personal journey, the early years were the greatest. I was young, enthusiastic, energetic, and thought I could rule the equine world! I worked on horses day and night throughout my internship, surgical residency, and the early years of establishing my own business. My technical and practical skills were at their highest when I was hands on with my patients all day every day. However, as the practice grew and we hired more veterinarians, technical staff, and clerical staff, I began spending more time dealing with all the people but less time with the horses. How can it be that I joined this profession to work with horses and instead, as my career is peaking, I'm "working" with humans? This was not what I expected or intended when I began my journey to become a veterinarian. THe Dark ages sTill exisT As I wrestle with these thoughts, I pause to think about our profession and how it has changed. The veterinary profession was once dominated by men who worked on "all creatures great and small," with a strong focus on farm animals. They were available to their clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now the profession is well on its way to being dominated by women, and most of us specialize in a specifc species. There is rarely a 24/7 work schedule; rather, each doctor designs a schedule that balances his or her work life with family life. However, there is still one group of veterinarians that toil in the dark ages: equine practitioners. We continue to primarily travel to our clients' farms, and are available to them at any time. We rarely have a local emergency clinic to send our patients to after hours; therefore, we have the dreaded "on call" schedule. And if equine practitioners work in a solo practice, they frequently have to partner with another practitioner in order to provide this level of care. It is only the large equine group practices that have enough veterinarians under one roof to share the load, allowing for reasonable "on-call" schedules. FinDing a soluTion: Possible? Why do equine practitioners continue working in these conditions? Is it our egos that make us feel that we need to be available to our clients 24/7? Is it fear that we will lose a client if we aren't available but another colleague is? How did our companion animal colleagues fgure this out successfully? Surely, with technology, telemedicine, and the "dual centric" attitude of later generations, we can fgure this out sooner or later. If not, the equine practitioner will likely fade away. The equine veterinary workforce is becoming primarily female and, as women, we want more from life than just to work. Fortunately, at our practice we have adequate demand for services to support a team of veterinarians who share the emergency calls, allowing us the balance we desire. But, what about the rural regions where there is simply not enough work to support more than one veterinarian? What then? e mbracing W H ere You a re n o W Bringing this back to the horse/human balance in practice, a small comfort I derive from the shift from "horse centric" to "human centric" is the fact that I originally joined this profession to help horses, and now I am doing that daily—in a much grander way than what I could accomplish on my own. I am teamed up with fve other female equine veterinarians (plus four interns) and together we help a signifcant number of horses every day.