Demographic survey of veterinarians employed in western Canada

The objective of this study was to generate demographic data on veterinarians working in western Canada. A sample of 551 veterinarians was randomly selected from a population of 2474 veterinarians employed in western Canada, 425 (77.1%) of whom responded to the survey. The respondents were evenly split between males (53.1%) and females (46.9%). More than half (58.0%) of the private practitioners practised exclusively on companion animals (small animals and horses), while 2.9% devoted 100% of their time to food animals. There were 351 respondents who had had > or = 2 employers since graduation; 80% of those who had begun their careers in companion animal (CA) practice had remained in this type of practice, while 54.3% of those who had begun their careers in mixed animal practice had switched to CA practice. Analyses of wage and workload data from 85 full-time veterinary employees showed that CA practitioners worked the fewest hours/week (47.0), had the least number of evenings on-call/month (3.7), and earned the highest hourly wage (35.79 dollars) as compared with non-CA practitioners.