Many veterinarians in Canada are facing extreme burnout and declining mental health

Veterinarians in Canada say they are experiencing extreme burnout and plummeting mental health due to staff shortages, a booming number of animal patients and the round-the-clock stress of the job.

Neil Pothier, a veterinarian since 1985 who runs an animal hospital in Digby, N.S., said caring for animals has never been easy, but it's a job he's always loved.

"But now, all day long, people are talking about burnout and thinking of quitting," Pothier said following a meeting with veterinarians from across Nova Scotia. "We are struggling to try and make it."

Pothier said the increased workload, which in many rural areas comes with on-call emergency care 24 hours a day, is resulting in severe stress and exhaustion that has worsened over time. "People are just at the point where they don't know what to do. And there is already a high suicide rate in the country in our profession, which is terrifying."

Survey data compiled in 2020 suggests that veterinarians in Canada were far more likely to think about killing themselves when compared with the average person. The study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, found 26.2 per cent of 1,403 veterinarians surveyed had suicidal thoughts within the previous 12 months. Statistics Canada data from 2022 found that 2.5 per cent of Canadians surveyed had thoughts about killing themselves within the last year.

Pothier, who has lost veterinary colleagues to suicide, said the mental health of veterinary workers has been strained by a pandemic boom in pet numbers and a shortage of vet technologists, technicians and vets available to work.

"It really exploded during COVID," Pothier said. "It seemed everybody sitting at home decided, `I should get myself a pet."'

"After that, it was just out of control," he said, adding that his patient roster increased by 40 per cent in the two years after the pandemic began.

Earlier this year, his patient list grew again after two vets shut down an animal hospital in nearby Yarmouth, N.S. "Two of them, who are in my age category, they just burned out.... They could not hire help and they walked away."

The registrar of the New Brunswick Veterinary Medical Association said stress levels among veterinary staff in the province is much higher today than it was 18 years ago when she started as a veterinarian.

"We have had veterinarians and registered veterinary technicians leave the profession entirely or go on medical leave for burnout, fatigue," Nicole Jewett said.

The province's veterinary community was dealt a blow last summer when the sole veterinarian in a northern New Brunswick community died by suicide.

"We are a relatively small province — so it's not just a [vet] licence number. It's a person we all know and we've met," Jewett said. Vets from across the province have volunteered their time to keep the colleague's rural animal hospital open.

Some veterinary staff may feel trapped in their jobs and unable to get help, Jewett said.