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When Ben Schuster was a practising vet it wasn’t unusual for him to euthanise a pet, then stroll into the following room to vaccinate a brand new pet with out even taking a second to regroup.
Growing up in Brisbane in a household with loads of pets – canines, rats, guinea pigs and birds – Schuster knew from the age of 10 that he needed to be a veterinarian. So, he labored laborious to make his dream come true, together with 5 years of full-time examine at James Cook University.
“It kind of has to be the key focus of your life for those years,” says the 31-year-old. “I didn’t have a job while I was studying. Everything revolved around becoming a vet.”
While finishing a month-long scientific placement, a requisite to finish his diploma, Schuster lived in a pub in rural Queensland. His room was $20 an evening – a stretch to his price range on the time.
Today, Schuster misses the relationships he may kind with shoppers and their pets whereas practising. He beloved the impression he was making and the way satisfying it was to enhance an animal’s high quality of life. Still, in 2020, after 4 and a half years as a working vet, Schuster felt fully burnt out and was going via a “mental crisis” about his profession.
“It was a combination of things that led to me eventually leaving the veterinary industry,” he says. “The hardest thing of all is the emotional strain that you face as a vet.”
“You’re not just a medical professional, you are a counsellor. You’re guiding people through that process, you’re helping them grieve, you’re helping them accept when is the right time to say goodbye.”
While his choice to go away the profession he labored so laborious to achieve was troublesome, Schuster’s struggles are hardly distinctive. The Australian vet trade is going through a rising psychological well being disaster and workforce scarcity.
According to analysis from trade physique the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), greater than 66 per cent of survey respondents mentioned they skilled a psychological well being situation.
Carly Wilson, a psychosocial threat guide who consults the AVA, says the trade has at all times tackled excessive charges of psychological well being challenges. However, the problem has been exacerbated for the reason that COVID pandemic, which noticed pet possession enhance from 69 per cent in 2022 to 73 per cent in 2025.
There might be numerous emotional manipulation , like any person saying, ‘If you loved animals as much as you say you do, you would treat my dog for free’.
Carly Wilson
“We’re dealing with a job that is a high-pressure work environment that involves long hours, unpaid hours, on-call demands,” says Wilson. “It is also cognitively heavy and emotionally charged.”
“They way the veterinary profession is treated by the general public is really poor. You get high incidence in terms of aggression and unreasonable expectations – there can be a lot of emotional blackmail and manipulation that happens, like somebody saying, ‘If you loved animals as much as you say you do, you would treat my dog for free’.”
As a working vet, Schuster would euthanise two or three pets per week, which took a psychological toll. If he arrived at work to see there was a euthanasia appointment booked on the finish of the day, which they usually had been, it might dwell on his thoughts.
End-of-life care is a big a part of the job and an instance of the morally and emotionally difficult duties that may enhance psychological pressure on vets, based on Andrew Arena, a postdoctoral analysis fellow within the office psychological well being workforce at Black Dog Institute. And sure working environments can enhance the danger of psychological well being points.
“Exposure to potentially traumatic events is another really important factor impacting mental health among workers, with certain jobs having a much higher rate of these exposures,” Arena says.
For vets particularly, there may be additionally a threat of being uncovered to secondary trauma, also called vicarious trauma. “It refers to situations where someone learns about or witnesses the first-hand traumatic experiences of others. This is often seen in frontline professions … where repeated or extreme exposure to such events can result in PTSD,” Arena says.
In 2011, analysis discovered that veterinarians in Australia are four times more likely to die by suicide than the overall inhabitants, and two instances extra possible than every other healthcare professionals.
The Sophie’s Legacy charity was launched in 2023 after 33-year-old Sophie Putland died by suicide in 2021 whereas working as a vet in Melbourne after the strain of her job turned an excessive amount of.
In 2024, the charity lobbied for presidency coverage and trade change to supply extra psychological well being help for professionals and contributed to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the vet scarcity established in June 2023.
Beyond these psychological well being challenges, Wilson says one other part within the vet scarcity is monetary. “Everyone thinks vets are loaded, and they’re all driving around in their BMWs and Mercedes [but] you go into the job with a really high debt and most of the time you’ll probably be paid about $65,000.”
This was true for Schuster who, as a brand new graduate, earned round $63,000 a yr, which was much less cash than his spouse was making working in retail with out a tertiary training. Still, he says his motivation to pursue the job was by no means monetary.
Sam Haynes, proprietor and director of Sydney Animal Hospitals, has positions open – together with one first marketed in 2024 – however doesn’t count on many candidates. “The number of people being produced for vet practice aren’t meeting the needs of the country,” he says. “There’s a lot of vet courses out there, but it goes to the attrition rate.”
The AVA says forecasting suggests there are at the moment solely sufficient vets nationwide to fulfill round 60 per cent of demand.
In 2021, the number of students enrolled in Australian vet science applications totalled simply 1890 – a major lower from the 2440 college students enrolled in 2010. Haynes argues college consumption might be higher developed, so universities are selecting the right candidates for the job and never simply those who get the fitting marks.
He additionally believes parental depart has a huge impact on staffing numbers, with ladies constituting about 67 per cent of the industry: “In my experience, the family commitments are high. It reduces the number of people that are available for the number of hours.”
Schuster, who now works for a online game developer and has a three-month-old child, says he doesn’t consider he may have juggled being a vet and his household. “When I am at home, it actually allows me to spend time with my wife and baby.”
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Abby Seaman is a digital producer and life-style author at The Sydney Morning HeraldConnect by way of e-mail.From our companions
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