Demographics and Career Path Choices Flashcards
Soil Trend
The richer the soil, the greater number of people and pets, and therefore the greater the number of veterinarians
Palliser’s Triangle
Area of dry, poor soil within the Canadian Prairie provinces. This leads to more pastures (because don’t run cows on very fertile soil because it is more economical to grow crops) but overall less people=less need for vets
**Describes invisible hand of economy- supply and demand
Why are their outliers (vet present) in small towns with few people in Canada?
Vets present where there is low need. Goes against the invisible hand of economy.
Many outliers are linked to the government intervention in the 70s where municipalities built cinder block buildings and gave them and subsidies to vets to attract them to the area.
Affects of Government intervention of the economy
Disrupts free market economy. These individuals will eventually retire or abandon the practice earlier due to supply and demand.
Not much work, harder hours, less resources/development, less pay
Vet Profession Trend
Most vets work within the small animal companion field due to higher demand, pay, and more reasonable hours.
Often large animal vets will spend more time at a farm, and end up getting paid a lot less.
Switch from food animal vets to companion animal vets
Switch happened around the time of BSC. Vets saw that there was money to be made in small companion animals.
Now a lot of mixed animal vets spend most of time on companion pets, and food animal practice is quite seasonal
Response Rates
The rate of response for a survey.
A low response rate will likely have a high bias. Individuals who did respond were probably already interested in the topic at hand so will likely respond yes.
Dissonance
Take into account whether or not people decide to actually complete the survey. People who aren’t interested in the survey often won’t answer
Does the Baby boom have an effect on the demographic of the vet profession?
No. There is the same or more vets graduating now. There is a constant supply, but there has not been an increase in the quota in schools and therefore the number of vets is not taking into account the increase in population and need.
Practice Ownership Trend
Graduates start out as associates and within ten yrs approx. 50% are owners of a practice.
Also seeing an increase in women owning businesses due to increase in female distribution.
Practice Size Trend
1-2 person practices are dominant.
Few larger clinics
Why are 1-2 person clinics dominant?
- food animal practitioners can have mobile clinics since you can perform most procedures in the barn
- Rural areas- harder to keep more doctors on as involves large workload for less pay and facilities with less resources
- Cities- easy to build a small clinic in a mall with 1-2 doctors working on companion animals for good pay
Reasons for working at larger clinics
Not as many of them but easier to hire new vets because they have more resources, shared workload, mentorship, and ability to pay more.
Economics of Scale
The discussion of maximizing resources.
Ex. doctors offices- 6 doctors with 1 receptionist and all the equipment needed
Not occurring as much in vet profession.
Job negotiations
negotiate for both money, benefits, mentorship, type of practice, facilities, number of technicians, holidays.
Don’t get caught up in money and forgot about the other stuff
