The other veterinary workforce crisis
Everyone talks about the veterinarian crisis. There’s another one that gets far less attention.
The other crisis is licensed veterinary technicians and the shortage of credentialed technicians who keep veterinary practices running has reached critical levels.
Twenty-five years ago, Andrea Collins and one other student from Blue Ridge Community College drove to Blacksburg for a 10-week externship at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. They were the first Blue Ridge students the teaching hospital had ever taken.
Collins rotated through large animal services, the ICU, anesthesia, overnight shifts. She’d worked a little in general practice before vet tech school, but this was different.
“I really wanted to see what the vet school was all about,” Collins said. “It was intriguing to me that it was just so different and maybe a little more advanced. And I wanted to do large animal and small animal because I had no large animal experience. If I came to the vet school, I could get both.”
Both students ended up working at the teaching hospital. Collins never left. She pursued her veterinary technician specialist credential in emergency and critical care, became the ICU manager, and spent over two decades doing the work that keeps the hospital running. She is now the director of multidisciplinary experiences, where she plays a fundamental role in supporting the pre-clinical years of the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine curriculum.
Her story is the pipeline in its simplest form: externship to employment, employment to expertise. It’s also increasingly rare — not because the model doesn’t work, but because there aren’t enough people entering the profession to fill it.
The gap
Ask any veterinary student at the college about their clinical year, and they’ll tell you about the faculty who challenged them, the cases that changed them, the moments that confirmed they’d chosen the right profession.
But ask who quietly took them to one side, steadied a shaking hand, and walked them through their first emergency, and a different set of names comes up: the licensed veterinary technicians.
“They don’t have a teaching FTE, but that’s what they’re doing all day,” said Tanya LeRoith, director of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital. “We always tell stories about the faculty and we always tell stories about the students, but they’re the ones that keep the hospital going.”
And there aren’t enough of them. Not here. Not anywhere. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, veterinary practices nationwide have approximately 14,300 technician openings annually. Only about 7,500 graduates sit for the national licensing exam each year. Virginia has roughly 2,912 licensed veterinary technicians serving alongside 5,247 veterinarians, according to the American Association of Veterinary State Boards - well below industry benchmarks of one to two technicians per veterinarian.
“It’s competitive,” LeRoith said. “There’s fewer LVTs than there are DVMs [veterinarians] working in Virginia.”
What licensed veterinary technicians do
There are only four things in veterinary medicine a licensed technician cannot do: surgery, diagnosis, prognosis, and prescription. Everything else falls within their scope.
At the teaching hospital, that scope expands further. Licensed veterinary technicians work alongside board-certified specialists in neurology, cardiology, oncology, and emergency medicine. They monitor anesthesia across species from hamsters to horses. They staff the ICU around the clock. And they teach every veterinary student who rotates through.
“When you say technician, people don’t quite understand,” said Deanna McCrudden, small animal specialty clinic supervisor at the teaching hospital. “That’s why we’re trying to get the title of veterinary nurse.”
What a teaching hospital offers
Collins remembers what drew her to the vet school over general practice: the range. Neurology, cardiology, dermatology, ophthalmology, large animal were services she couldn’t find at a local clinic and didn’t have the option to travel to Northern Virginia to access.
“As an LVT, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to go into GP [general practice] when I graduated, if I wanted to come to academia. So I was like, oh, if I go to Virginia Tech, I can do all these different things and try to figure out what it is I want to focus on.”
That flexibility isn’t just an advantage for students to explore their options. It’s a retention strategy. Collins has watched technicians arrive in one department and discover a passion for another, then transfer without leaving the college.
“We have plenty of techs that come here, and they start in one area, but they end up in another area,” she said. “Or they love their area so much that they stay with it the whole time. I started in ICU and I stayed in ICU until I decided it was time for a change.”
Bret VanLear '93, DVM '96, director of the veterinary technology program at Blue Ridge Community College and a graduate of the veterinary college, sees the same advantage from the academic side.
“What we do see with the college is in the opportunities that a teaching hospital can provide, the different specialty services and also opportunities in a variety of different species,” he said.
“One of the reasons that people like to be here and they stay is because they want to be able to teach students,” LeRoith said. “And then the quality of work. There are so many different departments and so many specialists. You get exposure to a wide variety of things.”
The specialist track
Only about 5 percent of licensed veterinary technicians go on to earn a veterinary technician specialist credential (VTS). Collins is one of them. She earned hers in emergency and critical care in 2012, and the teaching hospital made it possible.
The veterinary technician specialist credential requires two years of focused work: case logs, case reports, skills documentation, and a comprehensive exam. Many of the required skills — performing thoracocentesis, caring for patients on a ventilator, managing extensive trauma — can only be completed in advanced clinical settings. Each skill must be verified by a specialist: an internist, an anesthesiologist, a criticalist.
“You’re not going to get that at a local practice here, more than likely,” Collins said. “Especially the ventilator cases or extensive trauma, because local practices refer them here. The VTH [Veterinary Teaching Hospital] is very well set up for technicians who want to pursue their VTS. It’s the perfect setting.”
The credential didn’t change what she was legally permitted to do. What it changed was depth — a broader knowledge base for training other technicians, advanced understanding of patient care, and the kind of expertise that elevates an entire department.
So why do so few pursue it?
“I think it doesn’t get talked about enough and pushed to do it,” Collins said. “I think some of it is because they’re not set up in a practice or a setting where they can do it. And I think some of it is because maybe some technicians are like, well, I already have my LVT, and what is the VTS going to do for me?”
The anesthesia department has added several veterinary technician specialist-credentialed technicians in recent years. Collins sees that as proof of what encouragement and infrastructure can do.
“I think it just takes one person being like, hey, you should do this,” she said.
Building a pipeline
In partnership with Blue Ridge Community College, the teaching hospital supports veterinary assistants who want to become credentialed technicians. The college’s distance program of three years of coursework designed for people who can’t leave full-time employment allows students to train where they already work. The hospital provides mentors, clinical experience, and tuition support.
Drew Dunn, a veterinary assistant in neurology, is one of them. There are others. Collins herself is actively encouraging more.
“My encouragement to them is that you’re already doing the work,” Collins said. “If you want to enroll in a program, you’ve got great support. Everybody will help you. It’s a great setting. You can get it paid for through the college. So why not take advantage of that?”
VanLear has learned that the distance model only works when students already have a foundation at their clinical site through trust built over time, skills developed as veterinary assistants, and relationships with mentors willing to guide them through three years of training.
“We have found that it is not a successful model for a student to enter the distance program that does not already have experience as a veterinary assistant with a solid relationship having already been forged,” he said.
The teaching hospital’s approach fits this model naturally. Hire assistants. Invest in their growth. Give them a path forward.
“The ones that we grow require less training once they start in their new positions,” LeRoith said. “They have a sense of loyalty. They know how things work. They’re here because they want to be here. They’ve kind of grown up here.”
Breaking down the barrier
Collins has recruited at community colleges, veterinary technician fairs, even grade schools. She knows the biggest obstacle isn’t pay or geography. It’s perception.
“When people think vet school, they think, 'Oh, that’s the referral, and that’s the golden tier. It’s top level. Maybe I don’t have the training for that,'" Collins said. "So I think they do get a little intimidated by just the fact that it’s an academic institution.”
Her response to prospective applicants is direct: The hospital has positions that suit a range of experience levels and what it does for a living is teach.
“We can train you,” Collins said. “Emergency and critical care, when I came on, I wasn’t trained in anything. I was very, very, very green.”
LeRoith echoed the point. The perception that a teaching hospital is only for advanced practitioners keeps qualified people from applying when the reality is the opposite.
“Working in an academic environment is scary for some people,” LeRoith said. “But this is a place where people come to learn.”
Why retention matters
Recruiting new technicians is only part of the equation. Keeping them matters just as much.
At the teaching hospital, that investment takes several forms: tuition support for assistants pursuing credentials, funding for continuing education, pathways from assistant to licensed veterinary technician to specialist certification. The college covered Collins’s tuition for her veterinary technician specialist credential. It’s doing the same now for employees in the distance program through Blue Ridge.
“We want to support our employees for their own benefit,” LeRoith said. “It does benefit us, but we want them to come in, like it here, stay here, and we’ll support the continuing education.”
Blue Ridge's distance enrollment has more than doubled over the past seven years and is now at capacity. On-campus enrollment has dipped over the same period. With Blue Ridge maintaining a 94 percent pass rate on the national licensing exam and capacity to take on more students, the veterinary college is focused on supporting the program rather than trying to build its own.
The long view
Collins was one of two externs who came to the teaching hospital 25 years ago. Both got hired. She pursued her specialist credential, became the ICU manager, and found her home at the college.
When asked what she tells prospective technicians who are intimidated by the idea of working at a veterinary college, she doesn't talk about benefits or career ladders. She talks about the culture.
"You will never feel safer in an environment asking questions," she said, "because that's what we do for a living."
