Veterinarian · Treats patients from goldfish to horses that cannot describe a symptom, and carries the legal power to end their suffering by euthanasia.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Most countries require roughly eight years: three to four years of undergraduate prerequisite study, plus a four-year professional degree (DVM, BVSc or BVetMed), before licensing. Some countries — the UK and Australia among them — compress this into a single five- to six-year integrated degree straight after secondary school, so the total time is similar even though the structure looks different.
It varies by country and career stage. The median pay for a US veterinarian was $125,510 a year in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ranging from around $70,000 for the newest graduates to over $212,000 for the most experienced. Board-certified specialists in fields like surgery or ophthalmology can earn considerably more; pay elsewhere in the world is typically lower in dollar terms.
By acceptance rate, often yes. Many veterinary programmes admit under 10–15% of applicants, a tighter ratio than most human medical schools face, partly because far fewer veterinary schools exist worldwide relative to demand. Applicants typically also need several hundred hours of hands-on animal experience before applying, a requirement medical schools don't impose the same way.
US federal researchers found male veterinarians are about twice, and female veterinarians roughly 3.5 times, more likely to die by suicide than the general population. Contributing factors include long hours, student-debt strain, the emotional toll of performing euthanasia, and easy access to the drugs used to carry it out. The 2014 suicide of veterinary behaviorist Sophia Yin helped launch the profession's now-active mental-health movement.
A veterinarian holds a professional doctoral-equivalent degree, diagnoses disease, prescribes medication, performs surgery and is legally responsible for patient care — closer to a physician's role. A veterinary technician or nurse holds a shorter degree, typically two to four years, and carries out supportive clinical work such as anesthesia monitoring, lab work and nursing care under a veterinarian's supervision, similar to a registered nurse.
Unlikely for the core job, though it is already changing parts of it. Software can flag abnormalities on an X-ray or draft clinical notes from a recorded consultation, but it cannot physically restrain a frightened animal, perform surgery, read pain in a species that cannot describe it, or take legal responsibility for a euthanasia decision — tasks that remain squarely human.
Surveys in several countries routinely rank veterinarians among the most trusted professions in society, a remarkable outcome for a job that spent most of its history classed alongside blacksmiths and horse traders rather than physicians. The gap between that trust and the profession's actual working conditions — long hours, thin margins, an outsized mental-health toll — is one of the widest of any profession this site covers.
This page traces how the profession's social standing has actually moved across history, how it has been portrayed on page and screen around the world, and the sayings, oaths and rituals veterinarians use among themselves.
How much status the profession carried in each era, on a 0–100 scale.
Army horse doctors like Absyrtus held real military value and served emperors directly, but ranked well below physicians in formal status — skilled specialists, not learned men.
The horse-leech and farrier were respected craftsmen but tradesmen all the same, socially grouped with blacksmiths rather than the university-trained physicians who treated the nobility.
Bourgelat's graduates brought real science to the job, but competed for decades against unlicensed farriers and were still widely seen as 'horse doctors' for the wealthy or hired hands for farmers.
Royal charters, licensing acts and the profession's decisive victories over rinderpest and other livestock plagues gave veterinarians real institutional standing as protectors of national food supply.
A pet-owning public now routinely ranks vets among its most trusted professionals, even as pay, debt and burnout leave many working veterinarians feeling the status hasn't reached their bank balance.
Yorkshire vet Alf Wight's semi-autobiographical stories, written under a pseudonym required by professional advertising rules, sold over 80 million copies in 36 languages and remain the profession's single most beloved public portrait.
Lofting's physician-turned-animal-doctor, who learns to speak with animals after growing disgusted at how wounded war animals were treated and discarded, became one of the best-selling children's books of the early 20th century.
A Dutch-American mixed-practice vet in rural Michigan treats everything from house cats to draft horses across 24 seasons, giving American audiences an unusually unpolished look at real large-animal practice.
Sasaki's shōjo manga, serialized 1988–1993 and adapted for television in 2003, follows a Hokkaido veterinary student and remains a touchstone portrayal of the profession in Japan.
Following a busy Sydney veterinary practice, the show became an Australian ratings hit and a Logie nominee, exporting a beachside, camera-ready image of the profession to international audiences.
Told from a horse's point of view, Sewell's novel dramatizes the difference between an owner who calls a knowledgeable vet promptly and one who doesn't, and is credited with galvanizing the animal-welfare movement that helped legitimize veterinary care as a public good.
Adopted by the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1954 and last revised in 2010, the oath is recited by graduating classes across North America, promising to protect animal health and welfare, relieve suffering and advance public health — the profession's equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath.
Borrowed from medical schools, many veterinary colleges now hold a formal white-coat ceremony marking the transition from classroom study into clinical rotations, a symbolic induction into direct patient care that didn't exist a generation ago.
Founded in 1943 by Maria Dickin, who had opened Britain's first free animal clinic in 1917, the Dickin Medal is bronze, inscribed 'For Gallantry' and 'We Also Serve', and is still awarded to animals for wartime and service courage — animal welfare's most enduring ceremonial tradition.
Few professions carry a public image this warm alongside a private reality this hard: the cozy Yorkshire-dale version of the job that Herriot's books created sits uneasily beside a profession now grappling openly with debt, burnout and one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation.
That gap is itself increasingly part of the culture — veterinary schools, employers and professional bodies now talk about mental health as openly as they once avoided it, a shift that owes a great deal to practitioners willing to say, in public, that the job costs more than the public image lets on.
Closest neighbours on the six-score profile — not the same field only.
Designs buildings that must stand, meet code, please a client and cost the right amount — then carries legal responsibility if they don't.
AI-resistant 78 🧬Helps people understand inherited conditions, testing choices and results, combining genomic science with non-directive, compassionate counseling.
AI-resistant 72 ⚛️Derives and tests the mathematical laws governing matter, energy, space and time, from a lone chalkboard to a 3,000-author particle-collider paper.
AI-resistant 65 🧩The scientist of mind and behavior, from Wundt's 1879 Leipzig laboratory to the therapy room — trained to hear what a person cannot yet say themselves.
AI-resistant 82 🧬The scientist who studies life itself, from Linnaeus naming species by hand to editing genomes with CRISPR, still testing every idea against a living organism.
AI-resistant 64 💊The medicines expert behind every prescription — from Baghdad's first drug shops and the apothecary's mortar to morphine, artemisinin and the modern dispensary.
AI-resistant 58The physician who operates to cure, from Sushruta's ancient rhinoplasty to today's robotic operating rooms, still alone with the decision at the table.
AI-resistant 92 🩺Diagnoses illness and manages health for years afterward through examination and evidence, not a single operation — medicine's generalist and long-term guide.
AI-resistant 67 💉Healthcare's largest profession: from Scutari's lamp to the ICU monitor, the person who is still at the bedside when everyone else has gone home.
AI-resistant 91 💊The medicines expert behind every prescription — from Baghdad's first drug shops and the apothecary's mortar to morphine, artemisinin and the modern dispensary.
AI-resistant 58 🧠Diagnoses and treats mental illness through medication and therapy, one of medicine's only specialties with legal authority to detain a patient in crisis.
AI-resistant 73 🧬Helps people understand inherited conditions, testing choices and results, combining genomic science with non-directive, compassionate counseling.
AI-resistant 72