Corporate Greed (Part 15 of 17): When vet med forgets its past (#493)

Every veterinarian enters a profession they did not build.

They inherit it.

They inherit public trust.

They inherit standards forged through hard cases, sleepless nights, and moral restraint.

They inherit a culture shaped by people who accepted discomfort - financial, emotional, physical - because the work mattered.

And yet, something unsettling is happening in veterinary medicine.

Not because the work has become harder.

But because our tolerance for difficulty has become thinner, just as our rewards have become larger.

This is about attitude, not burnout.

Much of today’s discussion centers on burnout, staffing shortages, client expectations, and financial pressure.

These are real. But they are not the whole story.

What is less discussed, because it is uncomfortable, is professional posture.

Increasingly, when veterinary medicine encounters adversity, the reflex is not resilience but deflection: Blame the client. Blame the schedule. Blame the practice model. Blame how medicine is now.

Rarely do we ask a harder question:

What does this profession actually ask of us?

Inheritance Without Stewardship

Veterinary medicine was built slowly.

It was built by clinicians who:

• Stayed late without overtime.

• Charged less than the work was worth.

• Took personal responsibility for outcomes.

• Accepted that competence took years, not months.

Not because they were saints, but because the profession demanded it.

Today, many veterinarians enter a system that offers:

• Guaranteed salaries.

• Protected schedules.

• Layered management.

• Scripted communication.

• Legal insulation.

None of these are inherently wrong.

But when comfort arrives without historical literacy, something erodes.

Corporate consolidation did not create this problem. But it has amplified it.

As veterinary medicine becomes optimized for:

• Throughput.

• Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA),

• Standardization, and

• Playing your natural game clinically,

  
  

the definition of professionalism subtly shifts.

Medicine becomes content.

Judgment becomes variability.

Endurance becomes inefficiency.

And restraint becomes poor performance.

The craft survives.

But the ethos thins.

One of the most corrosive phrases in modern veterinary culture is:

This is just how I practice.

It sounds like autonomy. Often, it is abdication.

Professionalism has never meant doing what feels easiest or most comfortable.

Professionalism has meant:

• Adjusting technique to conditions.

• Absorbing pressure for the sake of the patient.

• Staying engaged when outcomes are uncertain.

• Putting the profession ahead of ego.

When clinicians refuse to adapt to clients, cases, teams, or context, while still claiming the mantle of professionalism, the title becomes hollow.

In veterinary medicine, we blame:

• Unreasonable clients.

• Broken systems, and

• Corporate realities.

  
  

But systems do not remove agency.

They reveal it.

And a profession that reflexively externalizes responsibility begins to forget what it once stood for.

Corporate greed does not arrive wearing a villain’s cape.

Corporate greed arrives smiling. It arrives optimized. It arrives promising protection from risk, from discomfort, and from accountability.

But when a profession trades stewardship for insulation, it becomes vulnerable not to hardship, but to erosion.

Trust erodes. Judgment erodes. Meaning erodes.

And once lost, these cannot be bought back with wellness webinars or branding campaigns.

Rick’s Commentary

This is not an argument for nostalgia.

Nor is it an argument against fair pay, boundaries, or sustainability.

It is an argument for memory.

Because every profession faces a moment when it must choose:

Will we be beneficiaries of what others built?

Or custodians responsible for carrying it forward?

Veterinary medicine is at that moment now.

And the answer will not be written in mission statements or balance sheets.

It will be written, quietly, in how we respond when the work is hard, the conditions are imperfect, and no one is watching.

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