How we can cool burnout before it reaches boiling point
The honest conversations behind closed doors
If I asked you how many of your colleagues are running on empty right now, what number would you land on?
I don’t have a spreadsheet but I have something just as valuable: lived experience and the honest conversations that happen between vets when the consult room door closes.
Almost half (48 per cent) of UK vets have considered leaving the sector. Three-quarters have taken time off in the past year due to work-related issues. These aren’t just statistics. They represent skilled, compassionate professionals questioning whether the career they worked so hard to build is sustainable.
Two different kinds of pressure
For clinical staff, the pressure is relentless: demanding hours, emotional weight from clients, and a growing perception that vets are profiting (the CMA investigation hasn’t helped).
For practice owners, it’s a different trap. Many start a practice because they were fed up with their job – only to become slaves to their own creation. No systems. No delegation. Just work on top of work.
Add clinical pressure to management pressure, and you have a recipe for implosion.
Why so many are going locum
After Covid, work ethic shifted. At my first UK hospital job, around 15 vets were permanent. Now only three remain in permanent roles. Everyone else became a locum.
But the traditional locum system has been fundamentally broken: rates renegotiated at the door, arrivals nobody knew about, and spreadsheets — always spreadsheets.
A better way is emerging
That frustration led me to co-found Ronda. Since summer 2025, more than 1,700 veterinary professionals and over 100 UK practices have joined. Not because we say so, because the old way finally has an alternative.
The question every practice owner should ask
What are you doing to turn down the heat? How are you creating environments where people belong, where systems support rather than hinder?
The old model is cracking. From those cracks, something better is emerging.
Join the professionals choosing transparency and balance.
