I’ve always been good at spotting some types of systematic connections. Maybe that is why I am good at working with dogs. So, by spending enough time observing animal care circles, I started noticing patterns. Over the past few years, a new one has been appearing with increasing frequency: leadership programs, culture frameworks, resilience models, and management training systems designed specifically for veterinary hospitals.
At first glance, that might seem like a healthy development. Leadership matters. Good teams don’t run themselves, and clinical expertise alone doesn’t automatically prepare someone to manage people, schedules, conflict, or emotional strain. The jump from clinician to leader is a real transition, and it deserves attention. But when an entire profession suddenly starts producing large numbers of leadership frameworks at the same time, it is often a signal that something deeper is happening inside the system. In many industries, leadership training becomes popular not because leadership suddenly became important, but because the underlying system has become strained.
Veterinary medicine appears to be entering that phase.
The Promotion Problem
For decades, veterinary hospitals often followed a simple pattern. The most skilled clinician eventually became the medical director or practice leader. On paper, that makes sense. The person with the most experience and technical competence steps into a role with more responsibility. In practice, however, clinical skill and organizational leadership are different disciplines.
A veterinarian is trained to diagnose, stabilize, and execute decisions in a medical context. Leadership requires a different set of skills entirely: defining accountability, distributing decision authority, setting boundaries, managing team bandwidth, and building durable processes. When those structures are missing, the leader tends to compensate personally. They work longer hours. They absorb problems that should belong to the system. They step in to solve issues that should have been prevented.
At first, this works. Dedicated people can carry an enormous amount of responsibility for a long time. But effort is not a system. Eventually the load catches up.
While this might be a silly example to you, it was my first observation of this in the real world. When I was in high school, I became 1st chair clarinet in my junior year. I was a pretty good player, but I had never been a leader of anything. So I was given the responsibility by the band director to organize a clarinet choir for some annual competition (I don’t remember what it was called). Let’s just say I was a tyrant, everyone hated it, and we didn’t do very well. But I learned from that.
Just because I understood how to play my instrument didn’t mean I knew how to lead a section of clarinet players (or anything else).
Senior year. Same competition. I did things differently.
The way you got your position in the clarinet section in band was based upon merit. The better you were, the higher up you were placed. So the best were first chairs, next best were second chairs, and the least able were third chairs. I reorganized everyone. We had 4 first chair clarinets. I stayed as the leader of my section. The third best I put as head of the second chair group. I put the fourth best as head of the third chair group.
Now, one more thing. Usually the bass clarinet went to the worst player. I put the second place chair on bass clarinet. Now, each section had a strong player leading them, and we had power at the bottom. You can guess what happened. WE. WERE. AWESOME.
We didn’t need to practice a lot more and build up the lower chaired players. We needed a different system.
That is a lesson I never forgot.
Burnout Is Often a Structural Signal
Veterinary medicine has been grappling with rising burnout and psychological stress for several years. Researchers studying the profession have documented elevated levels of distress and mental health challenges among veterinarians compared with many other occupational groups. I have personally witnessed the tears in the eyes of a vet talking about the stresses of the job.
Those findings are often discussed in terms of emotional resilience, compassion fatigue, or the psychological burden of caring for animals and supporting owners during difficult moments. Those factors are real. Anyone who has worked around veterinary care understands the emotional intensity of the work. But there is another layer to the story.
Burnout frequently appears when systems rely too heavily on individual effort rather than stable structure. When the only way for a hospital to function is for a few key people to carry extraordinary responsibility, the organization becomes fragile. The individuals at the center of that structure eventually reach their limits. When that happens, the problem is often interpreted as a leadership challenge. It may be a systems problem.
Maybe the right deck of cards is being played wrong. It isn’t the people, it is the game they are being made to play.
The Shift Toward Leadership Frameworks
When professions experience this kind of pressure, they often respond in predictable ways.
First come conversations about culture and leadership. Then training programs begin to appear. Eventually entire consulting niches emerge around helping organizations “lead better.” There is nothing inherently wrong with that response. Leadership skills are valuable, and structured training can help professionals navigate complex workplaces more effectively. But leadership frameworks tend to operate in the middle layer of a system. They help people function inside the structure that already exists. They do not necessarily change the structure itself. That distinction matters.
If the underlying pressures include things like staffing shortages, workflow bottlenecks, economic strain, or demand exceeding capacity, leadership training alone may not fully resolve the issue. It can make the system run more smoothly, but it may not reduce the forces creating the strain.
Why This Pattern Appears Across Industries
Veterinary medicine is not the first profession to experience this cycle. Human healthcare went through a similar phase years ago. Leadership training programs multiplied as hospitals tried to address burnout among physicians and nurses. Technology companies followed a similar trajectory during periods of rapid growth and intense workload pressure.
In each case, organizations initially tried to solve systemic strain through human-level adaptation. Leaders were trained to communicate better, manage stress more effectively, and support their teams more skillfully. Those changes helped. But they were only part of the solution. Eventually, deeper structural questions began to surface: workflow design, staffing models, decision authority, and operational capacity. Veterinary medicine appears to be approaching a similar moment of reflection. You see the signs all over the place, such as in LinkedIn posts.
What This Means for the Future of Veterinary Leadership
The recent growth in leadership training inside veterinary medicine should not be viewed as a problem. In many ways, it represents a healthy maturation of the profession. Hospitals are recognizing that strong teams require intentional structure, not just clinical expertise. But leadership development alone is unlikely to carry the entire burden.
If veterinary hospitals continue to experience rising demand, staffing challenges, and emotional workload pressures, the conversation will gradually expand beyond leadership training into broader questions about system design: How work flows through hospitals. How responsibility is distributed. How teams recover from intense periods of activity. How decision authority is structured.
Those are organizational questions, not just leadership questions. The most resilient systems tend to address both. They invest in capable leaders while also building structures that reduce the need for heroic effort.
A Final Observation
One of the most interesting things about working around animal behavior, veterinary medicine, and animal care organizations is that many of the same principles show up again and again. Systems that rely entirely on effort eventually struggle. Systems that distribute load more effectively tend to remain stable longer. Leadership matters. Structure matters too.
The veterinary profession is beginning to explore both, and that exploration may ultimately lead to stronger and more sustainable hospitals for the people who work in them and the animals they serve.
Similar problems are happening in the animal rescue and shelter world. They don’t recognize it there, either.
Everyone seems to be playing the same song, but it doesn’t sound right. Maybe it isn’t the musicians, maybe the clarinet section needs to be reorganized.
References
- American Veterinary Medical Association. (2021). Wellbeing and mental health resources for veterinarians. AVMA.
- Nett, R. J., Witte, T. K., Holzbauer, S. M., et al. (2015). Risk factors for suicide among veterinarians in the United States. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 247(8), 945–955.
- Hafen, M., Rush, B. R., Reisbig, A. M. J., McDaniel, K., & White, M. B. (2020). The role of occupational stress in veterinary medicine. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 47(4), 431–440.
- Ádám Miklósi. (2015). Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
- Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20, 410–433.
- Lorenz, K. (1952). King Solomon’s Ring. Methuen.
- Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. Macmillan.
- Basso, S. (Various years). Articles and field observations on canine behavior and structured behavioral assessment. Sam the Dog Trainer and PoochMaster Blog.
- Some parts of this article were made with the assistance of AI.
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