AIBU to consider teaching after becoming disillusioned with veterinary work?

@Sadvetatcrossroads - it’s a cliche but teaching really is, or should be, a vocation, (like becoming a vet, I imagine). If you like teaching vet students, you may well enjoy teaching kids.

As other people have said, the school environment can be very tough - not just because of the kids, (many of whom are delightful, others absolutely not), but until you have experienced the insanity that is most SLTs (senior teams) in action, or the horror that is OFSTED, you can’t really understand how challenging it is.

Having said that, I truly believe teaching is the most important job in the world - if it wasn’t for teachers, nobody would learn anything!

Also, going into teaching after another career does help you to take all the SLT/OFSTED nonsense in stride.

It’s also amazing how quickly stuff you thought you’d forgotten from school/uni comes back with some revision.

Depending on where you are in the country, you can sign up for SCITT taster days such as:

https://www.northeastscitt.co.uk/teacher-training-taster-sessions

Or look for something similar via the government website:

https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/events

If interested in FE, there are ways of training alongside your current job:

https://www.teachinfurthereducation.education.gov.uk/teaching/part-time-teaching

And for other FE teacher training information:

https://www.teachinfurthereducation.education.gov.uk/?

Also from the veterinary world, my colleague left to go teaching veterinary nursing and has dealt with vet students as well, she said it’s the best thing she ever did. Your knowledge and expertise will be so valuable to vet students. Can you do a secondment or anything before committing fully if your not sure.

YANBU, but I’m saddened that this is your experience. I cringe a bit at the costs at my (excellent) Vets, but they have extended the premises, including the waiting areas (separate ones for dogs and cats) and purchased new scanning equipment. The only thing I don’t like is a sense that where there is insurance, the charges are higher. This just increases the price of insurance for everyone.

Is you practice corporate? That caused slot of the extortionate price hikes at vets

Pet owners, particularly dog, are amongst the most entitled and delusional breed of person you can find. If you’ve lasted this long as a vet I wager any other working environment will
be a breeze.

LMAO. As a former primary school teacher, I can safely say DO NOT go into teaching.

If you wanted to be trusted and respected by the public, don’t become a teacher! You only have to spend a few minutes on social media to see the bashing we get daily!

Lord no.

You sound an amazing vet. As a very experienced teacher I would not recommend it as a career move. It’s extremely stressful for many different reasons. I’m now enjoying being a supply teacher. Would being a locum vet be a better option.

Teaching is far more demanding that being a vet and the animals answer back!🤣

My friend is a veterinary nurse and she has said very similar, owners have been horrible to her and the cost of treatment is nothing to do with her. She's even had people threatening her!

Vet care is ridiculously expensive but it's not all down to the vets. Our old dog gets prescribed paracetamol as she can't have any other pain relief and even that is expensive in veterinary form but apparently human paracetamol is too risky to give to dogs.

I don't think teaching will be any easier though. I know quite a few people who were teachers, only one still does it and she's trying to think of alternatives. The others all left because of the stress of the job.

I suppose another thing to think about is how easy would it be to go back into vet med if you stepped out and found the change didn't work out?

I think a lot of people that career change into teaching are surprised by how challenging the whole package is (because it certainly isn't easy) but knowing a bit about vet life I honestly think it's one career change where people might not actually find it that much of a leap because of the similarities to your current work. It's relentless, the customers (at all levels) are demanding in different ways, the hours can be long and you never ever get to the end of your to do list. But the good bits make it worthwhile still for me.

I think if the public knew that it would really help with all this amonsity at the moment

The PGCE absolutely does NOT teach the theory you've forgotten! Most people go on to it directly after their science degrees but in any case, apart from theory of education, etc, you're on teaching practice. If you've forgotten most of the science taught in secondary schools you'll need to spend a long time re-learning it on your own (I'm a former teacher, headteacher and tutor of teaching students).

Others have said - and I'd have to echo it - please don't think going into teaching will be better than being a vet. It definitely won't.

I am old so this was 25 years ago! It was a creative subject with all trainees training to teach the same subject. The teacher trainers were OG hippies from the 60s (as in proper hippies who had lived in communes). It was all about as woke as you could possibly ever get - and I mean that in a good way. This method is training teachers could never have happened under a Tory government.

you seem to have lost your compassion by your thread opening post.
i thought you meant teaching veterinary students

can you change practices?

Why teaching OP? There are 1000s of different jobs out there. Marketing, sales, tech, logistics, all the trades etc., and within each of those there are 1000s of different jobs. When I changed career (to get out of teaching!), I decided to just put some keywords into Indeed and see what came up. I love analysing data and I love science, and, that's when I discovered a whole world of jobs with the overarching title "data scientist", and that's what I now do. Another one that cropped up was "Medical Science Liaison". They are employed by pharmaceutical companies to explain the technical details of new drugs to doctors. I'd never heard of it until I started searching Indeed with a very open mind.
And then there's starting your own business - there seems to be lots of self-employed people doing dog-walking, grooming etc. With your vet background you may be able to offer something really niche and interesting relating to animals?

I was guilty of this until corrected but if people thinj vets are getting this and the average joe is struggling to pay for flea trearment and check up etc it can cause resesentment.

People believe what they want to believe it seems.
Google 🤣🤣

It's been a while since I worked with teacher training providers etc but they do subject knowledge enhancements (SKE) courses, sometimes funded sometimes not (depending if it's a condition of course entry or not). I think they evaluate the shortage subject and SKE offer every year so chemistry may or may not be in the next batch.

Saying that, most jobs are advertised (and hard to recruit for) just 'science' so going down the biology route wouldn't be an issue anyway I wouldn't have thought. I teach all three to GCSE as a biologist, had a long stint being the spare physics teacher (not the A level teacher but the backup GCSE teacher!) which was fine too. I'm doing a lot of chemistry this year and it's just been a case of doing a bit of reading and reminding myself. If you were good at it when you were at school it soon comes back when you remind yourself!

There is nothing new about a vets services being very expensive, people love having pets but never think about how expensive they can become, the collapse in affordability of vet insurance is also a factor- also pushed by very high prices. 50 years ago I had a pony his field cost £1.20 a week but a single equine flu jab which took 5 seconds cost £5 so over 4 times the cost of renting a field for a week. Large vets are also cheaper than small animal vets.
You cannot be surprised that people baulk at the kind of bills which are now normal.

You dont need a PHD to lecture at a university. If you want to become an associate professor or professor then yes but not for a lecturer/senior lecturer

RVC are advertising at the moment. No PHD requirement but the salary is crap

From someone who is possibly the most frequent customer at her local vets, I just want to say, we LOVE you. We think we’ve paid £10k in vet bills in the last 18 months or so and we believe it was worth every penny.

When Flynn (male cat) blocked his bladder, the veterinary director jumped out of bed in the middle of the night on a bank holiday to save his life. He ended up with 2 inpatient stays and plenty of backwards and forwards visits over a month to get it all sorted and the vets were completely wonderful with us. All the nurses know who he is and rush out to say hello when we pop back in for a vaccine/check up. He ended up with urine scalds from incontinence and DH always says he remembers the look on our favourite vets face when she saw it and simply said “I’m taking him out the back to sort this out”- they were cleaning and dressing him for about 30 mins. The appointment was charged at the standard £50, plus the antibiotic cream to take home.

Ian has had a complex series of issues this summer with appetite/eating, CKD and dental issues. Again, multiple visits, complex investigation, they referred us to a specialist to get to the bottom of it. The specialist was also completely wonderful, she took every test under the sun and worked through logically and methodically through a huge amount of complicated information to get us answers and 3 months worth of advice and a plan to get him well. She also clearly actually spent time with Ian and at the end of the appointment said “I just need to give him a big cuddle before he goes”, which we adored (Ian loves cuddles!). Well worth the £3k we paid her! Luckily the dental she advised could be performed by our usual vet, who had to anaesthetise a 13 year old cat with FIV, CKD and a heart murmur, make a plan whilst he was under (first time getting a proper look + Xrays) and then remove teeth etc. The bill was £900 including all his nursing care for the day. We thought it was a bargain, given her skill and expertise and were so so grateful!

Both cats have prescription diets and regular check ups and are greeted with absolute joy when we take them in- some vets/nurses even pop out just to say hi to them and their genuine love of animals is so clear. The receptionists know they aren’t insured and work with us to make sure our bills are up to date- they often will “tidy” a few things, knowing that we are paying directly not the insurers. They also say “would you just like the prescription for that one” when they know we could buy a medication cheaper online, which is very helpful. We trust them implicitly and think of the whole practice warmly and with a huge amount of gratitude.

I’m so sorry you feel this way but just wanted to share because it sounds like you don’t have enough customers who appreciate what you do! I would happily pay a bit more too, if I knew that money was paying the staff salaries, rather than into the corporate owners pockets, it is well deserved.

I think the corporate/independant vet debate misses the point a bit. I’ve worked in both independent and ‘corporate’ practice and I wouldn’t say the independents consistently outperformed in quality of care or cost to the owner. Much much more important was the individual staff working in the practice - a vet is a vet first and foremost, and their responsibility is to their patient before their employer.

Corporatisation (but also modernisation) has changed the profession in lots of ways - for instance, it’s now possible for vets to get maternity pay above SMP, and jobs without nights/weekends, and paid sick leave - none of which were really heard of in the profession when I qualified - and also centralises some stuff (advertising, negotiating with drug companies) for economies of scale.

Sadly for vets, there will always be owners who can’t pay for the care their pet needs - sometimes it’s poor planning, sometimes it’s bad luck, sometimes they have other priorities, sometimes it’s just life - and it’s really hard to deal with, especially when that situation is framed as the veterinary industry, or the individual vet’s, fault.

I do wonder if the OP had posted about moving from, for instance, dentistry or a paramedic, to teaching, whether the same discussion about the financial motives of her profession would be prompted online. Vets seem uniquely vilified for earning a living from doing an essential job, and it’s exhausting sometimes.