day in her current job, she comes in at 9 a.m. and logs in to the phone lines and takes calls and questions throughout the day. “Sometimes I don’t have the answer and have to do some investigation and call them back. I have to enter all the information into the software program. Once in a while, I have to travel for training or to visit a veterinary school or attend a veterinary conference. When I’m there, I represent the company and tell people about our products. Sometimes I do presentations about the products or the diseases they are used for.”
Sally Perea, who also works for a corporation, says the ability to work as part of a team is an important skill to have. “Working with a large pet-food company, the most important thing that I have found is the importance of working as a team. I am able to offer my expertise in veterinary medicine and nutrition, but must also work with many other people that are knowledgeable in other areas, such as food science, production, and business management. Luckily, we have a great team and a good depth in expertise, so this has been more of an opportunity than a challenge.”
Academia
For veterinarians with an interest in teaching, research, service, and administration, academia beckons. The field of education has many excellent career opportunities in veterinary schools, medical schools, and other colleges and universities. An academic career can permit a veterinarian to combine research, hands-on pet care, and teaching.
Depending on their positions, veterinarians on the faculty of a university may spend 80 percent of their time doing research, with the remaining time available for clinical practice and teaching, or 80 percent of their time in clinical practice and instruction, with the remainder devoted to research or administrative work.
Administrative Attributes
Large private practices are run by medical directors. Administrators, whether they are directors of large veterinary hospitals or deans of veterinary schools, must have demonstrated leadership ability, strong mentoring and team building skills, and excellent communication skills as well as business-management skills. Throughout your education and in practice, look for opportunities to build those skills if you want to take your career in an administrative direction.
Under the direction of associate professor Larry Myers, Auburn University veterinary student Erica Blackman trains a Labrador Retriever to sniff water samples for compounds that produce off-flavors in catfish.
At the administrative level, deans of veterinary schools oversee veterinarians, researchers, faculty members, staff, and students, a challenging task that brings many rewards. A dean spends his or her day attending meetings with associate deans and department chairs, managing programs, and communicating with the local government and other outside agencies. When a busy schedule permits, the dean may teach a class or two, affording him or her another way to stay in touch with students.
Another administrative position in academia is that of department chair. A department chair supervises all of the faculty members in his or her department, helps guide their careers, and is responsible for teaching and research programs. As with any management position, the skills needed include conflict resolution and the ability to handle personnel issues.
Federal, State, and Local Agencies
Many federal agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), hire veterinarians for jobs in public health and research, animal welfare and safety, disease control, epidemiology, and more. Some veterinarians are commissioned officers in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) or various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. The USDA employs more veterinarians than any other single agency. Most of these jobs focus on the prevention and control of infectious and parasitic diseases and food-safety inspections; tasks include writing and enforcing regulations and advising academia, industry, and professional groups on the effectiveness of food-safety controls. The USPHS employs veterinarians in the development and administration of programs concerned with the control of animal diseases transmissible to humans.
In all of these positions, veterinarians are more likely to work with people and paperwork than pets. For veterinarians who are OK with that, government service is a growth field. There’s a critical need for the services of veterinarians. A 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office says there’s a dangerous shortage of veterinarians to fill essential positions in the federal government, a problem that could seriously affect animal and public health.
State governments employ state veterinarians to enforce laws and regulations to protect animal health, as well as to advise the state on animal diseases that may affect human health. State veterinarians also investigate outbreaks of such diseases. (See chapter 10.) Municipal governments also hire veterinarians for their public health departments. Their duties involve the sanitary control of meat and milk production and investigation of food-poisoning epidemics. State veterinarians are also involved in the protection of the public—humans and animals—in the event of a natural disaster or a terror attack. Jacob Casper, DVM, is past coordinator of disaster services for the Maryland Department of Agriculture and past cochair of the Maryland Animal Disaster Planning Advisory Committee. These positions called for him to resolve any agricultural or animal-related problems that developed during disasters. The preparation exercises he took part in involved nuclear power plants, winter storms, hurricanes, and terrorism.
John M. Olin: Hip (and Elbow) Dogman
“Well-known inventor, industrialist, philanthropist, conservationist, and sportsman” is how the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA) describes its founder John M. Olin. Olin’s legacy lives on at such universities as Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, Columbia, and Washington University, whose libraries, programs, or fellowships bear his name. Beyond his business and philanthropy, Olin was a dog man and participated with his Labrador Retrievers in field trials. His most famous Lab was King Buck, the National Championship Stakes winner in 1952 and 1953, whose likeness was immortalized by the U.S. Post Office on a postage stamp. After a number of his dogs were struck with the debilitating disease known as hip dysplasia, Olin set out to rectify the situation and formed the OFA in 1966. Today the OFA maintains databases for purebred dogs for hip dysplasia as well as for at least twenty other diseases. The organization also offers DNA testing for other diseases and databases for cats. Olin’s intentions in creating the OFA are reflected in the organization’s mission statement: “To improve the health and well being of companion animals through a reduction in the incidence of genetic disease.”
In Korea, at a mobile veterinary treatment facility, two veterinarians, Lt. Park Sung-gu and Maj. Michelle Franklin, help load an injured working dog for transport to a recovery area.
Military
Military veterinarians may receive post-DVM training in such areas as public health, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, toxicology, food technology, and laboratory-animal medicine. They help improve animal-care systems in underdeveloped and war-torn countries. Like other government veterinarians, they are more likely to work with policy than pets.
Colonel Donald L. Noah, DVM, who has a specialty in veterinary preventive medicine, is a foreign-animal-disease diagnostician and an international expert on protecting animals
