Message from the President

Dear PVMA Members,

The function of a community is not to fix your weaknesses but to amplify everyone’s strengths.

— Simon Sinek

The veterinary community continues to evolve and flex to meet every changing demand of our world. With a pet population that continues to grow, veterinarians, credentialed veterinary technicians, and other team members are in short supply. Socioeconomic forces, focus on work-life balance, geographic location, and other influences have unfortunately moved many veterinarians from large animal and food animal sectors. This has left producers, small farms, and equine owners to struggling to find veterinary care. Statistics and projections by experts paint a dismal picture that these issues will be remedied quickly.

Great attention is being given to how we can matriculate more veterinarians and how we can recruit more credentialed veterinary technicians and other support staff. While these endeavors are key for volume, it is also vital that we take every effort to retain these individuals within the field of veterinary medicine. It is particularly vital to retain practitioners and trained team members in areas of greatest need. In some cases, veterinarians, credentialed veterinary technicians (CVTs, RVTs, LVTs) and other members of the team are transitioning to other jobs or sectors of veterinary medicine from which they were initially trained.

PVMA is addressing one of the veterinary community’s concerns by investigating and nurturing the need for credentialed veterinary technicians (CVTs). The entire veterinary team, through all sectors of our profession, varies in size, duties and responsibilities. While veterinarians dictate the medicine and care of the animals, CVTs, veterinary assistants, and other support staff members are often the glue that holds much of our community together. They make sure the processes happen. With the ever-increasing deficits of veterinarians, credentialed veterinary technicians are needed more than ever to support our community.

Empowering our CVTs and support staff to utilize their skills, grow, and continue to learn is vital for them to prosper. Supporting them so that they can enjoy their work and feel fulfilled in what they do will have a positive outcome on the overall team and the ability for veterinarians to continue to care for our evergrowing patient and client numbers. While some states are exploring advanced degrees and revisiting the verbiage of their practice acts for their certified and non-certified veterinary technicians, PVMA has also been involved in looking into these things as well as focus groups on exploring the possibilities of a mid-level practitioner role for credentialed veterinary technicians.

The saying “work smarter, not harder” is a term that I share quite frequently. This comes to mind with this topic because many veterinarians cannot possibly work more hours. We will not be able to meet the needs of our pets, herds, pharmaceutical needs, food supplies, public health, etc., without thinking outside the box and exploring different options to meet the needs we are faced with.