An Uphill Climb: “Everesting” for Not One More Vet

Many veterinary professionals experience a phenomenon known as moral distress.
photo: AdobeStock

The veterinary profession is often romanticized as a job that allows people to work with animals and improve their health and well-being. It does that, certainly, but veterinary care can also take a heavy toll on those who provide it. 

With over 30 years of combined experience in the veterinary field, Dr. Timothy Sellmeyer and I are all too familiar with the daily challenges that veterinarians and staff face. These challenges have resulted in an ever-increasing workforce shortage as our friends and colleagues leave the profession due to burnout, financial stress, or sadly, suicide. The reality is veterinary professionals face a unique set of mental and emotional challenges that are not commonly found in other professions.  

That’s why we’re working to raise awareness of the mental health crisis in the veterinary field by hiking 29,029 vertical feet - the equivalent of Mount Everest - in a 36-hour event this July we’re calling “29029 Everesting.” We’ve set up a GoFundMe page for the challenge, with all donations going straight to Not One More Vet (NOMV), a nonprofit group that supports veterinary professionals’ mental health through peer-to-peer support, financial support grants, education presentations, and by collaboration with partner agencies to extend services to the veterinary community. 

Studies have shown that veterinarians and veterinary technicians are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than the general population or other healthcare professionals and that one in six veterinarians have considered suicide.  This staggering statistic highlights the need for support and understanding in the veterinary community.

How Stressful is Veterinary Work?

Many veterinary professionals experience a phenomenon known as moral distress. This occurs when someone is prevented from doing what they know is right and leads to increased stress levels. In the veterinary field, this can happen for a variety of reasons, including if a client is unable to afford the cost of treatment, or if a client wishes to continue treatment despite a poor quality of life for the animal in question. 

One study found veterinarians experience this type of moral distress several times per week. On a scale of 0 (not stressful) to 10 (most stressful), the median rating for moral distress by veterinary professionals was an eye-popping 9. This means that several times each week, veterinary professionals are experiencing some of the most stressful circumstances they can imagine. And this distress continues to impact veterinarians throughout their careers, regardless of the number of years they have been practicing medicine.

No Rest for the Weary

In the internet age, client interactions no longer end when veterinary professionals go home. Most hospitals and practices maintain online presences to spread the word about the great work they do. Unfortunately, this can be co-opted by others who send, post, or share negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. Cyberbullying has been shown to have real and detrimental effects on the well-being of those targeted and veterinary professionals are no exception.

In addition, advances in veterinary medicine are now allowing animals to live longer than ever before. But as animals age, they are more likely to develop complicated health histories that require lots of time and attention. Sometimes these patients might need more time than a typical appointment allows. As they do their best to respect the time of all their patients and clients, many veterinary professionals will compensate by working seven days a week, not taking lunch, skipping bathroom breaks, and otherwise not allowing themselves time to regroup physically or mentally. 

Growing Demand, Shrinking Resources

The U.S. Department of Labor projects that the demand for veterinarians and related staff will grow 19% by 2031. This is more than twice the rate of most professions, and nearly 42% more than human medical practitioners. At the same time, veterinary educational debt is growing 4.5% faster than income. 

Stressors on veterinary professionals are leading to remarkable rates of staff turnover, often resulting in too few staff on site on a given day and increasing the stress on those who are left. As anyone who has worked at an understaffed job knows, this creates a vicious cycle of too much work for the remaining workers, leading them to quit and making it incredibly difficult for a veterinary office to maintain a stable staff.

In any situation where there is a greater demand than resources available, triage processes are used to efficiently determine when, where, and what to address first. This means determining which patients should be seen before others based on the severity of the situation. Veterinary teams, especially in emergency and urgent care settings, need to triage every case to maximize each patient’s outcome. Longer wait times are not because the veterinary teams care for some animals more than others but because some animals need more care. These hard decisions - which often must be made quickly - only add to the stress. 

Drs. Bianca Boudreau and Timothy Sellmeyer will take on the challenge of hiking 29,029 vertical feet, the equivalent of Everest, to raise funds for NOMV.

Why Everesting?

The physical challenge we’ve set for ourselves with the Everesting 29029 event symbolizes the mental health challenges that all veterinary professionals confront each day. The climb represents the uphill battle veterinarians face in managing their mental health, and the summit represents the hope of recovery. Training for the event, although a little extreme, is our way of taking care of our own mental health. Through this fundraiser and challenge, we hope to make a difference and bring hope to the veterinary community.

If you’d like to support our challenge and Not One More Vet, please visit our GoFundMe page.  

And remember the most powerful thing you can do for your vet team today and every day is to simply say, “Thank you. You are making a difference”.