Throughout my career in vet med, I have had some really tough conversations with team members; these are those difficult, heart-to-heart talks that happen in veterinary practices everywhere. A good technician, assistant, CSR, or veterinarian asks to speak privately; they close the door, sit down, and say some version of, “I don’t think I can keep doing this.” Sometimes tears start falling as the emotion of the moment overwhelms. Sometimes these moments are calm, which can be even more concerning because they have already worked through the emotion and made the decision. By the time that conversation happens, they usually have not been thinking about leaving for a week. They have been considering and wrestling about it for months.
Veterinary professionals rarely leave practice because of one difficult client, one euthanasia, one missed lunch, or one chaotic Saturday. They leave because those more challenging moments begin stacking on top of each other without enough recovery time, thoughtful support, or honest conversation. The workload stays heavy; the schedule stays super packed; the team keeps being asked to stretch a little farther. Eventually, what once felt like meaningful work starts feeling like survival. Maybe this person was thriving, and then over time they shift to surviving mode. And survival can pretty quickly become suffering if there is no cultural infrastructure in the practice to recognize and intervene.
We talk a lot about veterinary burnout, compassion fatigue, and work-life balance, but the reasons people leave veterinary medicine are often more complicated. Burnout may be part of it, but so are moral distress, poor leadership, inadequate staffing, financial pressure, workplace conflict, and the feeling that no one is really listening. People can tolerate a hard season when they believe the team sees it, understands it, and is working to improve it. It is much harder to tolerate when the hardship becomes the actual thing that defines where we spend our time.
I have watched talented people slowly disconnect from work they once loved. At first, they stop offering ideas. Then they stop volunteering for projects. They become quieter in meetings, less playful with teammates, and more guarded when problems come up. We often call that disengagement, but sometimes it is self-protection. They have learned that speaking up does not change much, so they conserve their energy and begin imagining a life somewhere else.
Veterinary workforce retention is not solved with pizza, wellness posters, or another reminder to practice self-care. Don't get me wrong, those things are not bad and should happen, but they cannot exist as the only strategy to support our teams; they cannot repair a workplace where people feel disposable. Retention improves when leaders pay attention to workload, compensation, psychological safety, scheduling, professional growth, and the basic human need to feel respected. People also need some control over how they do their work; constant chaos with no voice in the process wears people down quickly.
And sometimes leaving practice is the healthiest choice. We should not shame someone for deciding they need a different role, a different hospital, or a different life. But we definitely should be curious about the pattern. When good people keep leaving, the question cannot always be, “Why couldn’t they handle it?” A better question is, “What were we asking them to handle, and how long did we expect them to carry it?”
Veterinary medicine depends on skilled, compassionate people who are willing to do emotionally demanding work. Keeping those people in practice requires more than simply asking them to be resilient; it requires creating workplaces that do not consume the very qualities we depend on.
At GRIT + LOVE, every purchase supports veterinary mental health awareness and veterinary ethics education. Our goal is simple: build a profession where people can do extraordinary work without sacrificing themselves in the process.