How to improve chances that your first job will be a positive experience

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern highlighting the difficulties and strains of becoming a doctor and practicing veterinary medicine. Tuition and other costs increasing astronomically, lingering educational debts, long working hours, modest compensation, and often insensitive employers have all been cited as factors making veterinary medicine a less attractive career than in the past. A survery conducted by John Lofflin in 1991 of Associate Veterinarians, the author of the article, "Unhappy Associates," in the June 1993 issue cited that 66.7% of 216 respondents are no longer with the hospital they initially joined and 72.4% left within two years. Inspired by Dr. Lofflin, I decided to do a study of my own, using the 1992 veterinary medicine graduates of Cornell University as subjects. The goal of this study was to identify factors associated with the apparently increasing level of associate unhappiness.