Table of Contents
If you're in crisis right now, call or text 988(the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) for immediate support, or visit Not One More Vet (NOMV) for veterinary-specific peer support. See the Crisis Resources section below for more detail.
Burnout in Veterinary Medicine
Burnout in veterinary medicine has become a well-studied, well-documented issue — not an anecdote. This page pulls only from named, verifiable sources: the Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study series (widely covered by AVMA), a 2025 peer-reviewed JAVMA study on veterinary technician burnout, and CDC/NIOSH data on veterinary suicide risk. Where we couldn't verify a commonly repeated statistic against a real, locatable source, we left it out rather than repeat it.
How Common Is It? The Research
61%
of veterinarians report exhaustion, compared with 32% of the general U.S. population.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗82%
of veterinarians experience low-to-medium burnout — comparable to 84% of the general population on this measure.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗74%
of veterinarians report career satisfaction, but only 43% believe their peers feel the same way.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗53.9%
of veterinarians describe themselves as "flourishing" overall — 44.4% among those age 18-34, versus roughly 60% among those age 55-64.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗17.3%
of veterinarians age 18-34 report serious psychological distress, versus 6% of those age 55-64.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗38%
of clinics now offer an employee assistance program (EAP), up from 27% in 2019.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV, based on a survey of 4,636 veterinarians and 2,271 veterinary team members (Sept-Oct 2023) ↗25%
of veterinarians currently receive counseling, up from 13% in 2017.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023), as reported by AVMA ↗On veterinary suicide risk
A CDC/NIOSH Science Bulletin analysis covering 1979-2015 found that female veterinarians were roughly 3.5 times, and male veterinarians roughly 2.1 times, more likely to die by suicide than the general U.S. population during that period — with about 400 veterinarian suicide deaths recorded across those years, 75% of them in small-animal practice. This is historical data spanning several decades, not a real-time current rate, but it's the documented basis for much of the industry's investment in mental health resources over the past decade. Source: CDC/NIOSH Science Bulletin (2019).
Contributing Factors
Workload and lack of support
A 2025 peer-reviewed study of veterinary technician burnout identified high workload and a lack of organizational support as major workplace contributors to burnout, with several distinct burnout patterns emerging among respondents rather than one uniform profile.
Source: JAVMA, Vol. 263, Issue S2 (2025) ↗Educational debt
Financial strain tracks closely with wellbeing: veterinarians with no educational debt were far more likely to describe themselves as flourishing (60.8%) than those carrying $300,000 or more in debt (37.7%).
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗Early-career stress
Younger veterinarians report meaningfully worse outcomes across several measures — lower rates of flourishing and higher rates of serious psychological distress — than veterinarians later in their careers.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗Perception gap between how you feel and how you think others feel
Nearly three-quarters of veterinarians report being satisfied in their careers, but less than half believe their peers feel the same — a gap that can make individual struggles feel more isolating than the data suggests they need to be.
Source: Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023) ↗The Documentation Burden
Workload and lack of support are documented contributors to veterinary and veterinary-technician burnout. Documentation is a large, recurring piece of that workload — many veterinarians describe finishing clinical work for the day and then facing hours of chart-writing at home, sometimes called "pajama time." We could not find a single authoritative, verifiable statistic quantifying exactly what share of a veterinarian's time goes to documentation specifically, so we're not citing one — but the underlying workload pressure it adds is well supported by the research above.
Reducing manual documentation time won't resolve burnout on its own — the research points to workload, support, debt, and career stage as bigger drivers — but for practices where after-hours charting is a real source of strain, it's a lever worth pulling alongside staffing and scheduling changes. VetVisit AI is built around that specific problem: it turns the exam-room conversation into a structured, signalment-aware note in seconds, so less of that documentation work has to happen after hours.
Individual Coping Strategies
- Build in deliberate recovery time between emotionally difficult cases, rather than moving straight to the next appointment.
- Use the counseling or employee assistance benefits your practice offers, if available — utilization of these resources has been rising, not falling, among veterinarians.
- Talk to peers who understand the specific pressures of the work — isolation tends to make burnout worse, and the wellbeing data suggests many colleagues are carrying similar weight even when it doesn't show.
- Track your own trend over time (energy, sleep, dread going into a shift) rather than comparing yourself to how put-together everyone else appears to be.
- If educational debt is a significant source of stress, look into income-driven repayment or loan-forgiveness options relevant to your situation — financial strain is one of the more consistently documented contributors to poor wellbeing in this field.
Practice-Level Strategies
- Build real slack into the schedule so a single emergency doesn't cascade into a day with no recovery time for the team.
- Make counseling access and an employee assistance program (EAP) visible and easy to use, not just technically available in a handbook somewhere.
- Address workload and staffing gaps directly — research on veterinary technician burnout points to workload and lack of support as major contributors, which are operational problems as much as individual ones.
- Normalize talking about burnout and mental health openly on the team, rather than treating it as something to push through privately.
- Look at where documentation and administrative work are eating into time that could otherwise go toward patient care or recovery — see the section below on the documentation burden.
Crisis Resources & Support
Not One More Vet (NOMV)
A nonprofit founded in 2014 offering peer support (including an anonymous peer-to-peer program called "Lifeboat"), a community helpline, financial assistance grants, and educational resources for veterinary professionals and students. NOMV is not a crisis hotline and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
A general U.S. crisis resource — call or text 988 for immediate, confidential support from a trained crisis counselor, available 24/7. Not veterinary-specific, but widely recommended alongside NOMV in veterinary wellbeing resources.
Frequently Asked Questions
How common is burnout in veterinary medicine?
According to the Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV (2023), 61% of veterinarians report exhaustion, compared with 32% of the general U.S. population, and 82% experience some degree of low-to-medium burnout — though that specific burnout measure is comparable to 84% in the general population, meaning veterinarians are not uniformly worse off on every metric. Younger veterinarians and those carrying heavy educational debt report notably worse outcomes than the profession overall.
Is the veterinary suicide rate really higher than the general population?
A CDC/NIOSH analysis covering 1979-2015 found that female veterinarians were about 3.5 times, and male veterinarians about 2.1 times, more likely to die by suicide than the general U.S. population during that period, with roughly 400 veterinarian suicide deaths recorded across those years. That data is historical — it describes a multi-decade window, not necessarily today's current rate — but it's a documented part of why veterinary mental health has become a focused area of research and industry investment.
What are the biggest contributing factors to veterinary burnout?
Research points to several overlapping factors: high workload combined with a lack of support (identified in a 2025 JAVMA study of veterinary technician burnout), heavy educational debt, and the particular stresses of early career years. Compassion fatigue from euthanasia and difficult client conversations is also widely discussed in veterinary wellbeing literature, alongside administrative and documentation burden — see the section on documentation burden below.
Does documentation and administrative work really contribute to burnout?
It's frequently named as a contributing stressor in veterinary wellbeing discussions and is closely tied to the workload factor identified in burnout research, though we couldn't verify a single authoritative statistic quantifying exactly how many hours veterinarians spend on it — so we won't cite one. Qualitatively, after-hours charting ("pajama time") is a commonly reported experience, and reducing the manual burden of note-writing is one of several practical levers practices can pull alongside staffing and scheduling changes.
What is Not One More Vet (NOMV)?
Not One More Vet (NOMV) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 that provides peer support, a community helpline, financial assistance grants, and educational resources for veterinary professionals and students. It includes "Lifeboat," an anonymous peer-to-peer support program. NOMV is not a crisis hotline or a substitute for professional mental health treatment — for immediate crisis support, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988).
Is burnout data improving or getting worse for veterinarians?
Some measures in the Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study IV point toward gradual improvement: 73% of veterinarians now agree mental health treatment helps veterinarians lead normal lives (up from 68% in 2019), 25% currently receive counseling (up from 13% in 2017), and 38% of clinics offer an employee assistance program (up from 27% in 2019). That said, the underlying exhaustion and burnout levels documented in the same study remain elevated relative to the general population, so "improving" doesn't mean "resolved."
Fewer hours on documentation, more on everything else
VetVisit AI turns the exam-room conversation into a structured note in seconds — one lever for practices where after-hours charting is a real source of strain.
Related Resources
Veterinary Client Communication Guide
Difficult conversations, cost talks, and discharge instructions.
Vet Tech Tips
Practical workflow tips for the clinic floor.
Veterinary Practice Management Guide
Scheduling, documentation, and team communication.
Euthanasia Consent Form Template
Compassionate, clear consent documentation.