BY: SAMANTHA BARTLETT, DVM
The Cornell Center for Veterinary Business and Entrepreneurship along with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has produced research showing that the veterinary industry is losing approximately two billion dollars per year with veterinarians and technicians contributing about one billion dollars of loss each. This figure accounts for about 4% of the industry’s revenue. The researchers of this study hope that by putting a dollar figure on the losses caused by individual burnout, veterinary organizations and practices will take further steps to alleviate the burdens that contribute to burnout in individuals within the industry.
To conduct the study, researchers used the meaning of workplace burnout as defined in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization (WHO), which states “burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” The definition goes on to state that burnout has three dimensions that include “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy.” In reality, burnout can contribute to increased medical errors, missed work days, changing jobs or early retirement.
The research showed that over half of veterinarians suffered from some level of burnout. Contributing factors include being a recent graduate, women, higher amounts of educational debt, and practicing mostly on cats and dogs. Practice owners tended to have a lower probability of facing workplace burnout.
The research divided AVMA survey responses into three categories to include no burnout, moderately burned out and severely burned out. To calculate the costs of burnout, the researchers focused on the categories of moderately and severely burned out and considered how much a person brought into the practice and what was lost when they left. While these numbers focus on tangible losses, there are also intangibles that cannot be calculated such as years of experience and unique skill sets brought to the practice along with leadership. Although intangible, these skills are an important component to the success of any individual practice.
The AVMA hopes to work with its partners to create plans to approach burnout at an organizational level. With the right approach, it is thought that managers at the organization level can have more impact on successfully managing workplace burnout than affected individuals alone. Individual actions do not have a wide-scale impact on a problem for which a system-wide measure is needed. The research team suggests taking a lesson from human medicine which focuses on two areas: work-related issues and tools that can help an individuals personal well-being. Importantly, focusing on communication between management and teams and fostering teamwork to create a psychologically safe workplace environment has shown to reduce the impact of stressors that lead to burnout.
The paper, entitled “The Economic Cost of Burnout in Veterinary Medicine”, was published in the journal, Frontiers in Veterinary Science in February 2022 and can be accessed at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2022.814104/full.
