how much is a vet worth?

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fatpony

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How much do you think a vet gets paid? The average vet? - after 5 years of university, 10 years of working, working weekends, on call, 10 hour day when not on call. How much do you think they get and how much do you think they are worth?
 
I know how much my daughter gets paid, 2 years after graduating, so will wait the answers with interest. ;)

Ets. And I agree with Paulineh, there are other, cheaper vets than mine in this area, but I am happy to pay more to stay with someone I trust and respect.
 
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I think that is a fair wage. That is only an average salery so what you get not when very experienced, a specialist or practice partner. Or a newly qualified either.
I am a physio, i work on calls doing 36 hour shift when on call and work weekends and do 9 hour days, i get an average salary much less than the vets.
So i think its certainly fair.
 
Are you a vet physio or human physio? I would have loved to do vet physio but think I am to old to retrain now. I didnt realise you got emergancy physio callouts - what kind of things do you get?
I personally think a vets wage is fair, just slightly annoyed at people on other forums commenting how much vets get paid. Its fair but they arent overpaid in my opinion.
 
After reading the best Job list I do think it is a fair wage. It takes a number of years to be a vet and along with long hours etc they are well worth the money they get.


As for what they charge, some of the prices are inflated, but again if you get on well with your vet and pay up promtly then you are a valid customer to them and they will look after you.
 
For the amount of training and the professional development they do - and the amount that costs - they are paid less on average than many similarly trained professions. And less than some that require considerably less schooling! Yes, there are some that charge and make above the odds but it is, after all, a business. I think it's harder for people to remember that in countries with socialised medicine as people are not as aware of what doctors charge and make and they forget what they pay for meds etc is not actually the real cost, but a subsidised version.

Also, I do think some people feel vets should operate as charities. After all, they love animals, right? ;)
 
I doubt that reflects Vets accross the board. I mean a leading specialist in something is going to be paid a damn sight more, a very recent graduate a bit less.

I thought they would earn more than that but then i dont think most vets do 10 hour days either.
 
I think that wage is shockingly low. I think for an extremely stressful and demanding job with the level of training required I expected that to be £20k higher.
 
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I think a good vet is priceless, the years of training and some of their working conditions and hours are not good. Compared to some of the other higher earners in that table train drivers for example I think they are earning peanuts. It all comes down to who is paying your salary and how big their practice is because a higher wage would be passed on to customers and they would go elsewhere.
 
I think they deserve the salary, and more. I thought that a lot of non-skilled jobs further up the list didn't. I can't believe how much more a doctor earns, but I guess that takes into account surgeons etc.
 
Sounds low to me. If you consider all the training they go through and the hours they will be working early in their career.
 
Just to add to this and whether a vet is worth the salary, couple of weekends ago (when we had all the snow) my daughter was on call and her car got stuck in snow at 11 pm Friday night on her way back from a colic. Had to be rescued by one of the senior partners, abandoning car, and sleep at his house, then pick up works van, more calls meant she didn't get back to her own home till late on the Saturday. Luckily she had her dog with her otherwise he might have been a bit desperate!
 
Are the people who say the wage is low arguing with the table? Vets' wages have always been relatively in that bracket so I suspect that's quite accurate. And yes, it is an average . . . which means for every vet who makes more there is likely one who makes less!

There is also the question of equipment. I was speaking to a vet the other day whose practice has just bought a new but not top of the line x-ray to the tune of £20k. And that's only one piece of equipment, doesn't include maintenance etc. There there are cars - vets log huge miles and need a minimum of a station wagon or 4x4. The profession has a very high overhead!
 
Human physio planning to qualify to vet in couple years once paid for and had wedding!
I get called to emergencies in hospital when patients need chest physio so aspirations or similar and sometimes just chesty patients.
Yas and crystal Im not sure an average vet should get 50k plus a year.
tarsteps- i imagine that for overheads unless you own the practice or are a partner so that wage doesn't need to cover that kind of things. So that annual wage wouldn't be that wage shown in table.
 
?? U don't think vets work 10 hour days Lexie? Our vets start at 8.30 and finish at 7!! With an hour lunch. Long hours and not it's not a well paid profession unless u are the owner/boss or a specialist. Xxxx considering the debt they come out of uni with I'm suprised we have so many people still going into it! X
 
Well, my flat wage puts me at around number 300 on that list, with my package (house and car) I'm at around 200. I am 2 years out of uni, doing mainly equine work. A previous colleague worked out that we earn around £2.90 / hour after tax if you include our out of hours work.

Twiglet - your vets are lucky to have a lunch break, that's a luxury. At my interview, my now boss told me I was technically entitled to an hour but they preferred us not to take that, in general I eat in the car! At least once a week I won't get any lunch at all, and it is rare that I manage to have any dinner the nights I am on call.

If I want to specialise I am looking at at least another 4 years of training at about this level of pay, working even longer hours.
 
I do wonder in a funny sort of way, if so many people are of the opinion that vets don't earn enough, how many people would be willing to pay more for their veterinary care to bring the vets overall wages up? I work in a large mixed practice on the equine side and so many people query their bill and aren't willing to pay, also reading threads on here, people again are not willing to pay and are shocked at the costs.
I do think people forget that practices are not the NHS and if they were presented with the costs of care say for a surgery on the NHS how reasonable the vets bills would be?
 
I am a new graduate vet and I make approx 29,000 pounds a year before tax. I do not get the benefits of a house or practice car either...I provide my own car,insurance registration to practice etc...the only allowance I get is towards petrol. I was delighted to get a job as the market is tough for a new graduate at the moment. However for a new graduate I am very well paid. There is a reason for my current wage however.

My hours are 9.30 to 6.30 Monday to Friday. I am on call every second night and every second weekend.Nights are from 6.30 in the evening to 9.30 the next morning Weekend means Saturday is a normal working day and,sunday is emergencies only and call finishes on monday morning.

I also work alone in mixed practice with no back up from 2 to 6.30 every day as well as my boss has a factory shift. Our client base would be 70 percent large animal, 10 percent equine and 20 percent small animal.
So on a normal week with normal on call I work 75 hours. On my weekends on call it works out at a 123 hour week. Per hour after tax I get less than 5 euro..around 4 pounds.

For example my last 2 days....Due to switching nights in the last 2 days I was on call both nights.
On Wednesday I started at half nine and I finished normal calls at 8 that evening as we are busy this time of year..I then had 2 emergencies at half 11 so got home at 2 and then had another call out at 3.30 in the night. Slept from 5 to 9 then worked the next day and night on call....For thursday this ment back in work for 9.30 and I finished my normal "routine" calls at 11 that evening as I had an emergency C section and a calving come in at around seven. I also was called out at half 3 at night to another emergency...got home at around 5 slept til 9 and back to work again.
Tonight I will hopefully be finished up at half 6 providing no emergencies comes in after 6. I am a wee bit tired at this stage. I have tonight off and but then I am working the weekend.

Most of the time we do not have a hugh amount of out of hour emergency calls however until the end of spring, the above will be a normal night on call for me.
 
Grey_Arab said:
I do wonder in a funny sort of way, if so many people are of the opinion that vets don't earn enough, how many people would be willing to pay more for their veterinary care to bring the vets overall wages up? I work in a large mixed practice on the equine side and so many people query their bill and aren't willing to pay, also reading threads on here, people again are not willing to pay and are shocked at the costs.
I do think people forget that practices are not the NHS and if they were presented with the costs of care say for a surgery on the NHS how reasonable the vets bills would be?
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*LIKE*

Was just speaking to one of the younger/newer vets in the practice I work for the other day about something similar - pet owmers don't want to pay for veterinary care, and in part I think it's because they're so used to getting medical care for free on the NHS. People don't seem to recognise that veterinary surgeons do so much training before they even get hired, and then undertake so many hours of CPD per year.

I know the vets in my practice work long hard days, are thoroughly knowlegeable and caring. I don't know what they earn, but I'm sure whatever it is, every single penny is earned...
 
^^^I think this is very true. Daughter spent some time in America and found people over there were far more willing to pay for expensive treatment for their animals, because they were used to having to pay for medical care for themselves.
 
^^^ agree with both the above! People think vets fees are expensive but we have the NHS so have nothing to compare prices with when we pay for our animals. Our boss is really fair with rota, pay, CPD allowances, registrations. Even paid for 2 staff to go to the American vet congress this year! It's a tough job physically and emotionally. They deserve higher wages but like someone else said, a vet practice overheads are massive! Xxx
 
Dizzydancer said:
Human physio planning to qualify to vet in couple years once paid for and had wedding!
I get called to emergencies in hospital when patients need chest physio so aspirations or similar and sometimes just chesty patients.
Yas and crystal Im not sure an average vet should get 50k plus a year.
tarsteps- i imagine that for overheads unless you own the practice or are a partner so that wage doesn't need to cover that kind of things. So that annual wage wouldn't be that wage shown in table.
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True, in that the expenses of the clinic come out of income, not wages, but the underlying theme of these discussions is almost always not that vets get paid too much, it's that (horse owners feel) they charge too much. Wages is only one of the costs involved in running a practice. So the price you pay for the vet to come to your door is not just the cost of that trip, it also includes a percentage of those other costs and, the more people want, the higher those costs will be. Of course many owners want a "basic" vet . . .right up until they don't! So a practice has to balance off the need for outlay against not only the literal cost, as in what it adds to your bill, but the knock on effect of potentially losing clients because the practice is not keeping up technologically or in other areas. This is one of the reasons there are such great regional differences, too - the overheads in an expensive part of the world are going to be higher, regardless of what is being offered.
 
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Not only are there regional differences but as TarrSteps has indicated that the more expensive vets will perhaps charge more because they offer more. So okay, routine stuff like jabs/spays/neutering might be more expensive at Vet A, but Vet B doesn't perhaps offer nearly as many services and /or lifesaving or diagnostic equipment. If the lifesaving/diagnostic equipment isn't used for the routine stuff (jabs/spaying) then why should it be more? Perhaps because the vets themselves are more highly qualified, more nursing staff on hand to administer the anaesthetic, admin staff to do the front of office so the nurses don't have to be called away from the nursing....

Years ago I worked in a small animal practice in Massachusetts - (going back about 20 years) and we used to OFFER as an "extra" but not just routinely do things like pre-op bloods for dogs over 5, heating pad and fluids during surgery and so on. The vet only started opting to do this as an extra for those who wanted to pay for it because it wasn't the normal thing to do then (for him) and the clients didn't always want to pay the extra $50 (or whatever it was) for keeping their animal comfortable during surgery. If you're a potential client you don't bother to ask the difference - you just go where it's cheaper.

However, now in the practice I work at it's not optional, it's just the done thing. Yes, we are definitely the more expensive vet in the area. But do you know what the first question people ask is when ringing round? How much? Another vet might charge say £180 for what we charge £230. But how do you compare without knowing and understanding exactly what you're getting and why it's more expensive???
 
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