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Comment by snapetom | Hacker News Reader

My wife is a vet for a corporate owned hospital and our circle of friends are naturally very vet centric. They run the gamut from PE vets, corp vets, and private owners. We know GPS, specialists, dogs and cats only, large animal, exotics. What you are describing is not PE specific.

Staffing issues, primarily technicians, have hit everyone across the board. It’s a combination of wages, training, quality of life. Moreover, COVID caused a dramatic demand in vet services but protocols decreased the amount of patients seen. Only now is there starting to be some relief on that. Maybe PE reacted in a way that was not the wisest in your friend’s opinion, but everyone scrambled and few succeeded.

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I dated a vet tech several years before COVID and it sounded like a horrendous job. $20/hr was considered good pay, you're constantly bending over, pickup up things (sometimes things that definitively do not to get picked up), and you're literally dealing with some of the shittiest parts of animal care.

Better than doing the same work with heavier patients in nursing homes for $12/hr.

The level of mental trauma endured by vets I doubt is matched by elderly care nurses.

My wife worked in aged care. There are plenty of nasty or racist old people in aged care that make their job awful

My dad spent his last 3 years in a nursing home. When he passed, the nurses cried. I was surprised, I thought they were just doing a job and didn't actually care.

I was wrong, and was very grateful to them.

He was probably one of the really nice people they took care of, unlike the nasty old men that constantly sexually harassed and assaulted them, so he made their day a lot brighter and was one of the reasons they stayed with the job.

You've spent a fair bit of time in a number of nursing homes?

It definitely is, source - my sister managed an elderly care facility during the pandemic

I would say they are definitely in the same range that any difference is negligible.

Working in either shatters the soul in record breaking speed. The terrible things you have to witness. Humanity at its rawest and at times lowest. Both groups, no matter how many times you have to deal with the certain situations they do, you never get used to it (which is kind of important, as soon as you do get used to it, you've lost what makes you such a good nurse/vet - empathy).

One of my first jobs was in a nursing home, and lemme tell you it's a pretty shit job. Not because of the specific working conditions, or because it's not fulfilling in many ways, but because you have to deal with a lot of gross filthy stuff and a significant fraction of your patients have dementia and are terrified, violent, or both. Being a vet tech is no picnic either but on balance I'd rather deal with animals than people.

Stupid you're getting downvoted. Veterinarians have some of the highest suicide rates. They go into the field wanting to help animals but instead end up dealing with the worst in human owners.

And what makes you think that?

I don't think elderly care nurses need to euthanise their patients just because the family can no longer afford the treatment.

There's a TED talk on just how shitty being a veterinarian is. https://www.ted.com/talks/melanie_bowden_dvm_what_being_a_ve...

And vets don't have to sit there day after day watching a husband or wife sit lovingly next to their partner who can't remember them, or worse hurls abuse at them, or can't speak, etc. Or a dying person that their family can't be bothered visiting, etc.

They can both be immensely horrible and also immensely rewarding jobs, it's not a competition.

How high are elderly care nurses on the suicide statistics?

You keep using the word nurse. We're not talking about nurses, but the aides that do all the dirty work - bathing patients, changing diapers, etc.

Is it a competition?

I would add that vet techs in many states (most maybe?) are licensed and require training in associate degree programs. Most these days have bachelor's and I've even known someone with a master's who volunteered in ecological research projects in her spare time. So yeah, with $20/hour imagine having a college degree and making $42k/year.

Veterinary care up and down, including for veterinarians, is a field that is really not as lucrative as other fields that require a similar level of education.

That may be at the hourly wage level, but from office manager to above, including specialists, they are making money.

Much more so in states where regulation is strict for said jobs

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