The dream of a job in clinical practice - a comparative study of veterinary students' expectations to a job in clinical practice and postgraduate veterinarians' experiences from the real world

Master student: Vibeke Løvgreen Lassen
Specialisation: Internal Medicine

Background

Clinical veterinary practice has been struggling with retaining veterinarians in the job. It is often younger veterinarians, who leave clinical practice within the first 2-4 years. Aim: The aim of the study is to investigate, whether the job in clinical practice meet the expectations of the postgraduate veterinarians in the transition between graduate school and their first job and try to identify focus points to work with to enhance retention in the future.

Method

The study is a comparative, quantitative and descriptive cross-sectional study, based on a survey of 2 groups: Last year veterinary students and postgraduate veterinarians with less than 12 months of experience from clinical practice.

Data analysis

The biostatistics analysis was performed using the programme GraphPad Prism version 9.5.1., and the answers from the two groups compared using the Mann-Whitney unpaired two-tailed U test with confidence interval 95% and a P-value of <0,05, and a descriptive analysis.

Results

51 students and 43 veterinarians participated. The results showed a good correlation between the expectations of the veterinary students and the experiences of the postgraduate veterinarians. There was a significant statistical difference in 8 out of 76 questions, these were in the categories of earnings in practice, management, continuing education, and work life balance.

Conclusion

Even though there was a good correlation between expectations and experiences, there is room for improvement in clinical practice. Future focus points were found to be work life balance, regards to being a newly graduate and general onboarding.