Working in vet med, you’re likely being pulled in many different directions daily. While life can get overwhelming, the good news is that you can take many resources and actions to help tackle some of the more demanding aspects of your work. We’ve put together a few tips to help prevent burnout in veterinary medicine and lessen your workload moving forward.

Use your veterinary website to take care of the things you usually have to process by hand

Think about digitalizing your processes and making them available to clients. Items like new patient forms, surgery waivers, and answering questions about payment options offered can all live online and allow you to collect data and educate clients when needed effortlessly. You can even have your booking process handled right through your custom veterinary website! Plus, you can smoothly integrate 24/7 direct booking into your PetDesk website, which will drastically reduce the time spent on back and forth phone calls with clients and give you and your team precious time back. Time is money, and it’s important.

The average customer call lasts just over 6 minutes as of 2025, meaning every time a pet owner calls you, it takes more than five minutes of your time.¹ If you receive just a dozen calls a day, you lose one full hour of work time daily. If dozens of customers are calling you per day, it’s hard to get anything else done.

We can help. Our team creates custom digital veterinary forms that live on your site, and recommend veterinary scheduling services (we’ve worked with them all!) to allow pet parents to book appointments online.

Build a careers page on your veterinary website

Staff turnover is a major source of stress for many working in the vet med industry, and it’s harder than ever to find good staff members (so we’re told). Stay ahead of the curve by building out a careers page on your site.

On your custom careers page, you can add a description of the role and provide a space for applicants to submit their cover letter, resume, and any other information you’re looking to gather. Digitalizing the process will save you significant time and energy throughout the recruiting process. There are SEO benefits to having a careers page on your website, too. How much are you spending on job postings at your veterinary hospital? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could be the top spot on Google for “veterinary careers” or “veterinary jobs” in your city? We can make it happen. PetDesk Marketing customers enjoy website and/or agency services, helping them get more applicants than ever with custom career pages, strong SEO, and a focus on showcasing their brand.

Wrangle your reviews and manage your reputation online

In a DVM360 survey, 21% of polled veterinarians cited difficult clients as the source of their stress.² Getting a negative review can be a huge blow to an otherwise great day. Develop a plan to handle reviews and stick to it. This could mean dedicating a few hours a week or 30 minutes to viewing and responding to reviews every morning. Delegate review management to one person on your staff to ensure a consistent voice in all of your responses which will help prevent concerns from being lost in the shuffle. Hiring an outside company to manage your reviews for you is another great idea.

The key is to prevent online comments from taking up your life and deterring you from all of the positive services you provide to your patients every day. One negative review will not make or break your business, so it is important not to let a negative review make or break you.

PetDesk Marketing includes comprehensive veterinary reputation management! This means we’ll keep an eye out for reviews and create, or help you create, the perfect response. With our services being custom to how you want to run your business, our team will only be as involved as you would like us to be. We can respond to every review for you or give you a heads up when a concerning review comes in. It’s completely up to you!

These are just a few things you can do to avoid burnout in veterinary medicine

Once you take the time to optimize your processes online and offline, you’ll immediately realize the rewards. Take the time to implement processes that will manage your most tedious tasks and save you time and energy. While it may seem like a lot of work to research and execute new procedures, your staff, your clients, and your mental health will thank you in the long run. If you need help, PetDesk will be there to do all of the heavy lifting for you.

If you are a mom looking for more resources, we recommend joining the DVMoms group. DVMoms was created in 2016 when two exhausted veterinarian moms came together in pursuit of survival. We decided to make a Facebook group to unite some of our vet school classmates who were in the same stage of life. It turned out the support was needed far more than we realized. What began as a few friends grew into a group of over 14,000 veterinarian moms looking for much-needed support. Click here to learn more.

References

¹ CMS Wire: 21 Important Call Center Statistics to Know About

² The Veterinary Idealist: Burnout in Veterinary Medicine – Let’s Talk Action

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