Modern veterinary challenges: why today’s vets need more than clinical knowledge

Modern vets face challenges both new and old. Whether recently graduated or in their prime, today’s vets are exposed to a fast-paced and regularly changing environment that causes pressures and challenges such as stress, well-being concerns, and early-career burnout. While most of these challenges aren’t new, it seems they’re affecting more vets and to a greater extent than ever before.

Challenges facing modern vets

Mental health and burnout

Studies have consistently shown that vets are at a high risk of burnout and mental health problems, and it appears that the problem is worsening. The RCVS 2024 Survey of the Profession showed that the average Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) score for the profession has decreased by two points since 2014, suggesting worsening mental well-being. In addition, the same survey found that 91 percent of respondents would agree their job was stressful, and 49 percent think a stressful workplace is one of the main challenges facing the profession.

Staff shortages

Forty-two percent of vets surveyed found staff shortages to be a pressing problem, and ‘dealing with staff shortages’ was the most stressful factor for vets according to a recent study

Instead of “getting on with it”, young vets today are more aware of their mental health and more likely to act earlier if they’re burning out. While this may reduce their risk of suicide, it can drive an early retirement from the profession, with the 2024 Survey of the Veterinary Profession finding that 10 percent of respondents were planning to leave the profession for reasons related to stress, work-life balance and not feeling valued. This retention issue drives staff shortages, putting further stress on remaining professionals. Forty-two percent of vets surveyed found staff shortages to be a pressing problem, and “dealing with staff shortages” was the most stressful factor for vets according to a recent study (Spendelow et al, 2024).

Increasing costs

With the CMA investigation into veterinary services, costs for clients are more at the forefront of people’s thoughts than ever before. In fact, affordability of their services was the third biggest concern for veterinary professionals answering the RCVS’s survey, increasing from 30 percent in 2019 to nearly 50 percent in 2025. Vet stress increases in line with increasing costs, with client bullying, moral distress and even imposter syndrome playing a key role.

Contextualised care

“Contextualised care” is the chosen phraseology for considering the pet’s context and circumstances – like owner and vet values, the ability to commit to treatment options (with the travel, time, and input involved), and what the owners can afford – when determining diagnostics and treatments. While contextualised care should help to relieve pressure on vets (it makes it easier to recommend treatment plans that are not “gold standard” but that best fit the patient’s needs) it can add stress by creating uncertainty and increasing communication challenges.

Emerging disease

Climate change and increased movement of pets is bringing new diseases to the UK. Modern vets need to understand not only the diseases we’re “used” to seeing, but emerging diseases – and learn skills to help identify, research, and treat these diseases as they emerge.

What skills do today’s vets need?

With all the challenges we’ve mentioned above, it’s clear today’s vets need more than just clinical knowledge. In fact, there are several skills that would help vets to thrive, such as:

1. Resilience

With mental well-being a major concern for professionals, and bullying, client expectations, and fear of making a mistake all feeding into this, resilience is essential for all modern vets. Resilience is the capacity to move past stressful situations and return to a mentally positive state – it’s how we “bounce back” or “move on” when something bad happens. And it’s not a trait; it’s a behavioural skill – one that can be practiced and learned. Developing resilience in today’s vets will help to create a happier, more stable workforce, as well as improving the quality of life for vets in the work2. place.

2. Communication skills

You can’t be a great vet with clinical knowledge alone – the ability to communicate that knowledge is also crucial.

Communicating under pressure, both within a team and to clients, is difficult. But, like resilience, communication skills can be learned. With better communication skills, vets can create happier relationships with clients, mitigating one of the most stressful parts of a veterinary career. They can explain diseases, treatments, and get clients onboard and have honest conversations around the financial costs of treatment. You can’t be a great vet with clinical knowledge alone – the ability to communicate that knowledge is also crucial.

3. Critical thinking and evidence-based medicine

With emerging disease threats and radical, fast-paced drug development, modern vets need to be able to critically approach studies and understand evidence-based medicine to help them practice as well tomorrow as they do today. It’s not just about reading the latest research; it’s about critically appraising that research before acting on it.

4. Decision-making under pressure

We all know the phenomenon where we can explain options to a client but can’t make a decision for our own pet. Or the fear everyone feels when the client says, “What would you do if he were yours?” That, added to the time pressure in modern practice, makes decision-making difficult. Developing the skill of making decisions under pressure can help modern vets deal with these stressful situations, helping to reduce workplace stress, improve well-being and maximise retention.

So, what can we do about it?

Universities do their best to prepare young vets for the pressures they’ll face after graduation, but it’s no secret they don’t always get it right. While less than 20 percent of graduates in the RCVS survey felt underprepared for work, most vets disagreed that new graduates were ready for employment. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the universities – there’s a lot of content to squeeze into an already overflowing curriculum, and the fast-changing world can be hard to adapt to over a five-year course.

That’s why Improve Veterinary Education has reimagined postgraduate learning, designing our latest programmes to meet the needs of the modern vet. While the programmes cover all the clinical knowledge you’d expect, they are full to the brim with training for other important skills today’s vets need to thrive. For example:

• Resilience – using error management training to learn from mistakes, and “how would you improve it” to normalise mistake-making, plus reverse engineering of the clinical case to help vets practice working backwards to spot errors, we build resilience in tomorrow’s vets
• Communication skills – with their clinical debates and AI-driven communications simulator, vets can practice colleague and client communication skills in realistic, high-pressure scenarios, helping build communication skills
• Critical evidence-based medicine – as well as access to the RCVS Knowledge Library and HAU’s library, delegates learn to critically assess grey areas and identify research gaps with training in consensus and controversies
• Decision-making under pressure – they’ve borrowed prioritisation tips from air traffic controllers and built them into the new programmes, along with simulated emergency scenarios designed to build situational awareness in high-pressure environments – a technique copied from firefighters. This isn’t just about new knowledge; it’s about how you use your knowledge in the real world

Conclusion

The veterinary world is fast-paced, ever-changing and stressful. Modern vets need to meet challenges that they aren’t adequately prepared for by university, and retention and staff shortages are a pressing problem. By building programmes that develop a vet’s resilience, decision-making, communication skills, and critical thinking, we’re helping vets to future-proof themselves. These aren’t just optional extras; we see them as essential ingredients in preparing vets for the realities of practice today.