On a recent spring weekday at the Midwestern University School of Veterinary Medicine, veterinarians and students scurryed and huddled over examination tables as caged dogs and cats awaited treatment or recovered from treatment. was doing

Jazmin Kim, who will graduate from Midwestern University in 2024, said, “I love making an impact on animals and the people who care for them. I will,” he said. i am forever “

Kim, 32, was a veterinarian before working in the Midwest. She intended to work with wildlife, but found she liked dogs and cats. And because Arizona has made veterinary school tuition so cheap through a new loan repayment program, the transplant doctor from Washington plans to practice veterinary medicine in Grand Canyon for at least four years.

“That was actually a big motivation for me to stay in the state,” Kim said. “A little loan forgiveness or loan assistance was very attractive and probably motivated me to stay in Arizona. I lived in Washington most of my life, so I just liked the change.”

Kim is helping solve the veterinarian shortage in Arizona and the United States. Stephanie Nichols-Young, president of the Arizona Animal Defense Federation, said recently that the number of veterinarians and veterinary technicians nationwide has been declining.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, veterinarian employment is projected to grow 19% from 2021 to 2031, compared to a 5% increase for all occupations. The main reason is the need for new veterinarians to replace those who are retiring or leaving the profession. The American Association of Animal Hospitals estimates that only about 2,600 veterinarians graduate each year in the United States, with approximately 2,000 veterinarians retiring each year, and others leaving the high-demand field.

To bridge this gap, the Arizona Legislature passed SB 1271 in 2022, creating the Arizona Veterinary Financing Assistance Program. This includes up to $100,000 in student loan repayments for veterinarians with degrees after January 1, 2023 and working in Arizona for at least four years.

Two of those years must be in a city, county, non-profit shelter, or farm site designated by the USDA for veteran shortages.

The Arizona Humane Society, which helped push the bill forward, said in a statement that the program was desperately needed, adding: “Arizona has enough animals to provide life-saving services in public shelters and private clinics. The lives of animals are at risk because there are no doctors,” he said. both in urban and rural areas. This is hurting pet owners, ranchers, private veterinary clinics, animal shelters and rescue efforts across the state. “

For decades, the problem was compounded by the fact that Arizona did not have a formal veterinary school. According to the American Association of Veterinary Colleges, there are only about 32 accredited veterinary schools nationwide.

In 2012, the Midwestern University School of Veterinary Medicine began a four-year program in Glendale, west of Deer Valley.

Midwestern states expect 125 veterans to graduate this May. And in 2020, with the shortage of veterinarians becoming more pronounced, the University of Arizona established a veterinary school and launched a three-year program in the Oro Valley north of Tucson, recruiting 110 veterinary students out of approximately 518 applicants. enrolled in

The University of Arizona expects 105 veterans to graduate this August. About 230 veterinarians will graduate from both schools this year, but the number of applications continues to exceed capacity. In the Midwest alone, the veterinary program receives more than 1,400 applicants each year.

At Midwestern University, a private university with a main campus in Downers Grove, Illinois, students learn early on how to neuter animals, said Dr. Rachel Kreisler, associate professor of shelter medicine and epidemiology at the school. , which covers much of the basics of surgery.

“Our students are the lead surgeons on our cases,” said Kreisler, a veterinarian who just finished a conversation with the owner of an infected cat that needed amputation. “We are here to help the community.”

The Midwest is working with nonprofits such as St. Vincent de Paul, humanitarian associations, and some tribal groups, including the Navajo Nation, Chrysler said. His partners schedule patients’ pets to help students learn and practice skills at the university’s mobile surgical clinic, which was introduced in 2015, and a pop-up clinic for non-surgical cases, which was introduced in 2019. are doing.

In addition to mobile and temporary clinics, the university also has a companion animal clinic building that looks like a traditional veterinary hospital, where people can get their pets treated.

The University of Arizona has a three-year course, said Dr. Nellie Goetz, associate professor of practice in the school’s veterinary school. A PhD in Veterinary Medicine usually takes him four years, with summer breaks in between.

“The veterinary school’s three-year design is intended to address the veterinarian shortage, and the shorter duration of the program means more veterinarians will graduate over time,” Goetz said. said Mr. “Since classes end a little earlier, you spend less time at school, and you spend less money on school.”

The University of Arizona veterinary program is decentralized, meaning there is no teaching hospital for students on campus.

“We’re sending students to general practice clinics, where they’ll see what they’ll see every day when they graduate from veterinary school,” Goetz said. added: Students participate in active learning and check their knowledge against a team of classmates.

“They will remain with that team throughout their schooling until they reach clinical grade,” Goetz said. “They answer knowledge checks together as a team, which is very helpful for learning.”

The school also strives to teach students about the general issues of veterinary medicine and clinic operations.

A 2018 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that U.S. veterinarians are at higher risk of suicide, and the CDC found this trend has continued for more than 30 years. Factors cited in the study included long working hours, overwork, difficult job management responsibilities, poor work-life balance, and access to animal euthanasia.

Goetz said the University of Arizona is not ignoring the issue of work-life imbalance.

“Suppose you work Monday through Friday from 8am to 9pm, and you are not working on the weekends, and you receive calls on the weekends, answer calls on the weekends, and respond to emails. I don’t have a lot of time for myself on weekends, etc., and I don’t get paid very well.These are really difficult problems to overcome,” Goetz added.

Both the Midwest and the University of Arizona encourage veterinary students to develop mental health. At the University of Arizona, students get mental health leave, gyms, counselors, learning professionals, and mental health professionals. The Midwest has free counseling and mental health hotlines, and the school works with a chapter of Not One More Vet, a mental wellness organization for veterinarians.

“The school thinks very positively about things like that,” Goetz said. “And they pay close attention to what they are feeling, thinking, and experiencing.”

One of the side effects of the decline in Arizona’s veterinarians is the inability to adequately provide basic community services such as capture, neuter, and return in efforts to reduce stray cats and feral cat numbers. The practice involves the humane capture of free-ranging cats, neutering and ear plucking, and then returning them to their habitat to prevent overpopulation.

The Arizona Animal Defense Federation, which specializes in TNR, says it neuters about 15,000 cats annually in Maricopa County alone. The Humane Society estimates that there are 30 million to 40 million outdoor or community cats in the United States.

Kelsey Dickerson, a media relations expert at the Arizona Humane Society, said that when a microchipped cat is confined, the owner will be contacted and asked for permission to have it neutered.

“We also have a working cat program if someone brought in a cat and we don’t know if it’s a community cat or if it’s not safe to bring it back to the area where it came from,” Dickerson said. The program is used to adopt free-roaming cats that are unfit for indoor living as pest control for warehouses, factories and barns.

Better knowledge of TNR means more cats will be brought in for neutering and more veterinarians will be needed. About 90% of pet owners have their pets spayed or neutered, Kreisler said.

Arizona’s loan repayment program is new, so it’s not yet clear how effective the program will be. Other states, such as North Dakota and Minnesota, have veterinary loan repayment programs that encourage local veterinary practice, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers a national veterinary medical loan repayment program.

Dr. Steven Hansen, president and CEO of the Arizona Humane Society, said veterinarians can apply for Arizona’s loan repayment program after graduating and obtaining their Arizona veterinary license.

Out-of-state graduates can also apply for financial assistance if they obtain their veterinary license in Arizona. Hansen said they would have to practice in the state for four years, after which they would receive loan repayment funds.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, the average veterinary student debt in 2020 was $157,146. The median annual salary for veterinarians in 2021 was $100,370, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Garrett Steinbroner, 39, a University of Arizona student who will graduate in 2024, has decided not to apply for Arizona’s loan assistance program because he has no plans to stay in Arizona.

“It seems like a great option for someone who wants to give back to the community and is heavily indebted and planning to live in Arizona for the long term,” Steinbroner said, adding that after seeing several communities, she decided to enroll in veterinary school. He said he wanted to go. A security guard was feeding a cat in a Hawaiian port where he was serving as co-pilot on a docked ship. After graduation, he hopes to work for an animal welfare society.

“You can’t feed them. You have to fix them or you’ll have more and more problems,” Steinbroner said. “The biggest difference we can make to most animal lives is being able to reach them through TNR.