The Personal Approach to Veterinary Practice Ownership
As a veterinarian, there are a number of options to consider for your professional path. One essential aspect that may be easy to overlook in any veterinary job search is the ownership team for the practice you’re considering. Working for a mismanaged practice can create additional stress and decrease work-life balance. Whether your dream is to open your own practice or work for an established one, veterinary practice ownership should factor into any career decision you make.
First, you’ll need to understand the different types of veterinary practice owners, one of which being veterinarians who own their practice. While allowing for optimal freedom and decision-making control, veterinary practice ownership can make balancing high-quality medicine and the business side of a practice complicated for veterinarians, stunting a practice’s growth. That’s why many veterinarians explore options for practice acquisition, allowing a separate entity to manage personnel, administration, and business activities while they focus on animal care.
One ownership solution is working with a corporate consolidator, but problems may arise due to these entities implementing one-size-fits-all solutions and strategies. This leads to potentially ineffective operations and difficulties gaining the time, focus, and attention needed from owners to help solve unique issues. It may also foster frustration among employees and a negative or stressful working environment.
Alternatively, working with a smaller, more people-focused team of external veterinary practice owners can help build a better working environment and promote ethical practice growth. Balancing the personalized nature of a veterinarian-owned practice with the expertise of a corporate consolidator, this ownership option allows for more customizable solutions and strategies. These types of owners are also more likely to be focused on helping individual veterinarians grow, advance their careers, and make job decisions.
Now that we’ve overviewed the different types of veterinary practice owners, here are the qualities to look for in an ownership team during your job search.
Active Listening
The willingness of owners to listen about important issues and help find a solution that uniquely works for the specific practice you’re at is invaluable. This helps to make sure that business runs smoothly consistently and prevents tensions from rising within a practice.
Working with an ownership team that cares about your personal and professional growth will also open up opportunities for your career. This means being able to express your specific wants, interests, and ideas for your future and trust your practice owners to help connect you to the right contacts, learning experiences, and opportunities to keep you moving in the right direction.
Extensive Experience
Of course, you’ll want to work with owners who are experienced, and who you can trust to take care of the business side of the practice so you can focus on providing high-quality medical treatment and best-in-class customer service. Working with an inexperienced practice owner can lead to mistakes that make your work more difficult.
However, when you work with owners that are established in the industry and have worked with an extensive network of other veterinary practices, they’ll know how to manage your practice in a way that avoids common issues and promotes growth. Again, experience also likely means that an ownership team has great contacts and new experiences they can connect you with.
Flexibility
Flexibility ultimately means that you’ll be able to transition your work to match your life as changes arise over time without uncertainty. Options to work in different environments depending on your interests and customize your work schedule to your lifestyle make it unnecessary to have to go through the lengthy and often intimidating process of making a significant job change down the line to a practice where you don’t have any connections or knowledge of their processes.
For example, connections to veterinarians with specialized expertise or options to gain emergency experience can help you explore areas of interest so you know what you do (and don’t) want to pursue in the next step of your career. Additionally, options to take leave or move over to veterinary relief services when you need additional work-life flexibility will help you tackle transitional periods of your life more seamlessly and with more support.
Masterful Mentorship
If you’re a veterinary student or just starting out in your career, you’ll want multiple options of different places to mentor at to gain experience, discover the areas you’re passionate about, and become more well-rounded. The connections of your veterinary practice owners will again come into play here.
Veterinary students or new veterinarians need a safe environment to test assumptions, learn more about their interests, and grow their practical expertise. When owners care not only about overall practice growth but also about the professional fulfillment and development of every current and future veterinarian involved, you can lean on their support and experience to help you in advancing your career.
VetEvolve Provides Fulfilling Veterinarian Jobs at Top Practices
VetEvolve’s extensive veterinary network across the Mid-Atlantic region allows us to leverage our connections and industry know-how to help veterinarians and practices reach their goals. We work closely with practice teams to listen to and address their pain points, promote personal growth and development, and help them lead stable and fulfilling careers. We empower vets to become confident in their skills and serve animals and pet owners exceptionally.
If you’re looking for veterinary opportunities in a positive work environment with superior, compassionate mentorship and extensive learning and career opportunities, consider working at a VetEvolve practice. We care about our veterinarians and partner practices on an individual level and are deeply invested in each one’s personal development and professional success.