The Burnout Study That Says Out Loud What Vets Already Know
A new study on veterinary well-being in Southeast Asia has surfaced findings that will feel deeply familiar to practitioners anywhere in the world. Veterinarians are working more than 40 hours per week, they feel undervalued by the public, and most of them are doing it without any formal or informal support system in place to help them manage the weight of it.
The paper, titled "Going Beyond: Charting a Sustainable Future for Veterinary Medicine in Southeast Asia," was published by Boehringer Ingelheim and surveyed 335 veterinarians and veterinary staff across the region. The Philippines findings were highlighted specifically, and while the geographic focus is Southeast Asia, the portrait it draws of a profession under sustained pressure with inadequate institutional support is not a regional story. It is a profession-wide one.
The Numbers
Sixty-four percent of veterinary practices in the study lack any formal or informal well-being initiatives. Not inadequate programs. No programs. Nearly two-thirds of practices are sending their teams into high-stress, emotionally demanding work environments with zero structured mechanism to prevent burnout.
Forty-four percent of respondents said that greater public recognition of their expertise and commitment would meaningfully reduce their stress and improve their well-being. That is not a small ask. It is not a request for a raise or a shorter schedule. It is nearly half of the survey's respondents saying that simply being seen and understood by the public for what they actually do would make the job more sustainable.
And 74 percent said a better work-life balance is essential to attracting new veterinarians and keeping the profession viable long-term. Three out of four practitioners are signaling that the current model is not something the next generation of vets will accept. They are right.
The Visibility Problem
The recognition finding deserves more than a passing mention. Veterinary medicine sits at the intersection of animal welfare, public health, food safety, and disease surveillance. When zoonotic disease threatens a population, veterinarians are in the room. When a food supply chain has a contamination event, veterinarians are part of the response infrastructure. When a family's pet is the thing holding them together through a crisis, a veterinarian is the person making sure that animal is healthy enough to keep doing that job.
Most people do not know any of that. They know their vet is good with animals. The scope of what the profession actually protects, and the cost to the individual practitioner of doing it, is largely invisible to the public and to policymakers.
That invisibility has real consequences. It shapes how the profession is compensated relative to the educational debt required to enter it. It shapes how seriously workplace wellness is taken at the practice and industry level. And it shapes whether the people considering veterinary school look at the lives of working vets and decide it is worth it.
What the Study Calls For
Boehringer Ingelheim released the findings at the 93rd Philippine Veterinary Medical Association Scientific Conference alongside the launch of their Going Beyond campaign, which is framed around making the case for veterinarians' contributions publicly and supporting structural change within the profession. The campaign includes the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program, which provides research training and mentorship for veterinary students.
The report calls for collaboration between government bodies and private institutions to develop well-being programs and run awareness campaigns about what veterinarians actually do. It also makes a point of encouraging pet owners to prioritize preventive care, framing it as a way to build stronger, less crisis-driven relationships between clients and their vets.
These are reasonable starting points. They are also, for anyone working in veterinary medicine in the United States or anywhere else with a mature veterinary sector, extremely familiar recommendations. The profession has been naming these problems and calling for these solutions for years. The fact that a survey of 335 practitioners in Southeast Asia produces the same findings as surveys conducted in North America, Europe, and Australia should tell us something. This is not a Southeast Asia problem. It is a veterinary medicine problem.
What Has to Change
Sixty-four percent of practices with no wellness programs is not a personal failure. It is a structural one. Individual vets cannot resilience their way out of a system that is not designed to sustain them. The 40-plus-hour weeks, the emotional labor of compassion fatigue, the debt loads, the client conflict, the administrative burden layered on top of clinical work — none of that gets solved by telling practitioners to practice better self-care.
What changes it is practices that build wellness into their operational structure rather than treating it as a luxury. Industry partners that invest in programs with real teeth rather than awareness campaigns alone. Professional associations that make workforce sustainability a lobbying priority. And a broader cultural shift in how veterinary medicine is perceived — by pet owners, by policymakers, and by the people deciding whether to enter the profession in the first place.
The study found that 74 percent of veterinarians believe work-life balance is essential for the profession's future. That is not a soft preference. That is the profession telling anyone willing to listen exactly what needs to happen next.
Source: "Veterinarians overworked, at risk of burnout, study finds," The Manila Times. Study: "Going Beyond: Charting a Sustainable Future for Veterinary Medicine in Southeast Asia," Boehringer Ingelheim, 2026.
