I’m so tired and need to vent

Simply from a foreigner’s perspective who’s going through ECFVG. So exhausted of accepting the fact that there is nothing I can do about the unknown waiting time for CPE.

Passed the BCSE, passed the NAVLE, and making $21/h to save up for a $12,000 exam that I don’t how many years I need to wait for. Apart from the cost, the most frustrating part is the fear of failing the exam and wait for probably another 2-3yrs, because there is no legal access to for us to learn ‘U.S. vet skills’ to meet their freaking ‘U.S. vet standards’. So hilarious if something is designed to make ppl give up and still scratching money from them (the fact that most foreigners came as students can only legally work here for 3yrs before they can get a spot for the exam)

Genuine question: Does the industry actually gained more respect or benefits from AVMA’s gatekeeping?

I was wondering why so many vets deal with mental health problems or burnout. What causes all this. Is it the animals themselves or the schedule, or something else

I haven’t wanted to be a vet my entire life and only decided around october time last year, so a full year now. the profession sounds intriguing to me, i enjoy sciences and find medicine interesting too as i used to watch medicine programs as a kid. i do have aspirations of working in a zoo with really cool animals in the future (curious about the progression after vet school to this if anyone could tell me) but i just dont know if my passions are as strong as others or as strong as it should be. the difficulty of it all doesnt put me off at all though as life is hard and im not gonna stop myself from doing something great just because its difficult.

i get massive mood swings too where sometimes ill be really motivated and think like yeah this is what i want to do and i want to do this for the rest of my life but then there’ll be times like now where i just keep doubting myself and i’m not sure. i can’t really see myself doing anything else in life though. not in the, ‘this is what im so passionate about and this is what i want to do’ way but more in the ‘i dont want to leave uni with a degree, struggle to find a job and then end up in an office’ way if i do a different degree.

i guess the imposter syndrome comes into play as unfortunately i wasnt able to get any work experience, which i do scold myself for. i was looking though. i went into places in person, emailed vet practices, emailed charities and emailed sanctuaries. just wasnt able to get anything. thankfully wasn’t needed for any of the vet science/med unis im applying too. not getting work experience was a combination of a few things, not making excuses just giving real reasons.
- a lot of my energy was going into job hunting. i really wanted a job to get money for uni so most of my energy, that i even had left after a levels was going to that
-lack of energy after a levels. i put so much effort into my a levels, doing like 6-7 hours a day every day so i could get the grades i needed and as soon as they ended i just completely switched off.
-didnt actually NEED the work experience and got complacent because of it.

i know the work experience would’ve helped immensely with these doubts if i got it. i know if i tried hard enough, harder than i did, i wouldve found some.

i know its hard to pick the thing you want to do for the rest of your entire life. thanks for reading and i hope you can help me with my thoughts by giving some of your own experiences .

Long time reader, first time poster. I’m struggling and feel lost right now so I’m hoping by posting here I can pick other people’s brains to see if there’s an option I haven’t considered yet.

The backstory: I graduated from vet school in 2018. After graduating, my husband and I continued to live in the city where I went to school due to my husband starting his own business here while I was in school that thrives in a college town, has minimal competition here, and at this point my husband has made a very good name for himself and his business here. Therefore moving to a different city is not an option for us. Initially I was working in GP one hour away from home but the 5 day a week grind got to be too much so I transitioned to a very advanced ER/CC practice (we have a scope, HBOT, HFNO2, CT machine, etc.) in a major city 2 hours away and have been doing that for the past 6 years. ECC is truly my passion and ultimately what I would like to do for the rest of my career. Initially when it was just my husband and I, I would travel up to work, work three 12’s while sleeping at the clinic between shifts and then travel home. However, we now have 2 kids (3y & 8m) so that logistically is no longer a feasible option. After maternity leave I went back to working there but only part time doing one shift a week (either Saturday or Sunday when my husband is off) and just driving up and back in the same day. Occasionally when my boss has openings in the schedule, l’ll work 2 shifts back to back (Sat & Sun). But for the most part I stay home with my kids while my husband works. This had been working well for us for a few years but within the last year or so it’s been getting more difficult to sustain our bills with just my husband‘s income and the small amount I make from one shift per week.

Bottom line is I need to work more hours/go back to full time but I am struggling with how to go about doing that from a logistics standpoint. I have actively looked for any GP job in the city we live in and have had zero success. I’ve emailed my CV to every local practice owner and had zero responses. Two years ago I met one clinic owner through a friend who was interested in having me relief for him but when I told him my relief rate ($70/hr which I thought was reasonable given my experience) he never reached back out. Last year I did one working interview at another clinic in town but when I realized they lied to me about their capabilities during my initial interview and saw the absolute substandard level of care they practiced (ex: hanging a dogs head down in the sink to do dental cleanings with just an ET tube in and no oxygen or gas anesthesia) I knew it wasn’t going to be a good fit. When there were 2 separate occasions of job postings for positions I qualified for in the city I live in, one at the university and one at a startup clinic, I interviewed for both but was rejected.

Looking outside of the city I live in, there are many GP positions available but they are all at least an hour drive away, 5 days a week, and typically are 8-6 work days. This would force me to be out of the house by 6am (because even though it’s only an hour away, morning traffic always adds an extra 30-45 minutes to the commute) and not get me back home until 7-730pm at the earliest so I would not be able to be home for dinner with my kids or bedtime for my youngest. And with my husband’s work schedule, he works 12 hour days so he is gone from 730/8am until 8-9pm so we would have to hire a nanny to do both the morning routine of getting our kids ready for school and evening routine of feeding, bathing and putting our kids to bed. Honestly the thought of paying someone to completely take care of our kids 5 days a week doesn’t sit well with either of us. I’ve looked at ER options to try and find the three 12 hr schedule that would be more ideal, but of the 2 other ER’s that are only an hour away, one told me they couldn’t afford to hire another doctor and the other is corporate and I’ve heard nothing but horror stories from both DVMs and LVTs that have worked there.

I’m honestly at a loss on what to do next. I’ve even considered pursuing a nursing degree so I can work at the hospital down the street but I realized I can’t afford to go back to school right now. If you were in my shoes would you:

-try to reach out to local GP practices again? Maybe if I just show up and hand hard copies of my CV to the receptionists I’ll get more responses?
-suck it up and apply to the horror story corporate ER and just grin and bear it? My biggest fear is getting locked into a contract somewhere I hate
-look into other side hustle options I can do when I’m with my kids like Instacart shopping and try and supplement my income with that?

I’m extremely disheartened at this point. I appreciate if you’ve read this far and look forward to hearing any advice you may have.

Hey all, I am a relief tech. I have been going to the same clinics for a while. I’ve established good rapport with the doctors and techs. I’m pretty honest with what I don’t know and what I’m not comfortable with.

Recently, we had a table case. I was a doctor tech and basically had a frenchie in respiratory distress. Had to be intubated. This was a pretty complex situation because of owners, financial constraints, etc as we all know in this field. They tried to leave AMA, dog went blue as soon as it came out of oxygen kennel. Had to rush it back inside. Vet said we need to intubate and figure this out.

So here’s where my part came in. I was monitoring this intubated patient. I’ve monitored for anesthesia before, sure. It’s been a while since most of my shifts involve triage and floating. I had never monitored an intubated patient under these circumstances before. So this was a situation where I was familiar with anesthesia monitoring, but I didn’t know what table case monitoring was supposed to be. And I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

Something I think about a lot in this field, when we have licensed and unlicensed people. An LVT can be really inexperienced next to a grand fathered in VA that’s been doing this for 20 years. A big thing to note is recognizing that you know you don’t know versus fake it til you make it (dangerous) versus not knowing what you don’t know (really dangerous too).

And I’ve been pretty comfortable with recognizing “oh no I can’t place a central line because I’ve never and I definitely do not understand the process” or “no, I don’t relief for surgery because I have a very knowledge of what they do”.

Here, I just didn’t realize that there was so much more I could have been doing.

The doctor was busy. Only able to check in with me and pt a few times while she addressed other pt and talked to the frenchies owners.

Oncoming night tech arrives, probably one of the smartest technicians I have ever met.

He watched over what I was doing, how the patient was doing, and he waited before proceeding to intervene. The patient was not very stable. Breathing fast. ISO was being used. The doc didn’t want to do a prop CRI. This hospital didn’t have a ventilator and typically won’t see cases like this. But the options were basically zero so here we are.

Within about 20 minutes, the tech gets the patient’s CO2 levels down, gets RR down, stabilizes temperature, and all around knocks my socks off. I asked a lot of questions. And I learned so much. He got approval to start the dog on the prop CRI which helped. He explained the ideal things to do for a table case.

But eventually the frenchies CO2 went right back up and no interventions were working. He postulated that the dog probably had a lot of CO2 stored somewhere (like in the tissues).

Owners elected to euthanize. They didn’t have the funds to push this past what we had already done.

That case was a big lesson for me. And I got a big taste of learning how much more I still didn’t know. I don’t play pretend. I’m honest. I say when I’m not comfortable. But that was so humbling because I had been with that patient for 2 hours and had no idea.

I just wanted to share this experience. I am a happy learner. I am enthusiastic about this field and expanding my knowledge. This definitely felt like a harsh lesson. And I am trying my best to put away the what ifs.

If anyone can share insight for a situation like this, and a lesson such as this one, I am all ears.