Patty Khuly, VMD, walked away from her Miami small animal practice for twelve weeks this year, not to rest on a beach, but to study regenerative farming, dairy goat medicine, and soil ecology, and to write a business plan for a Virginia farm she'd just bought. Writing in Veterinary Practice News, she argues that extended time away like this, a real sabbatical rather than a vacation, is one of the most effective tools vet med has for interrupting burnout, and one the profession is strangely reluctant to actually use.
The distinction matters. A vacation is designed to rest a person enough to return to the same routine. A sabbatical is designed to change something. Dr. Khuly's twelve weeks gave her new skills, a new professional direction, and, in her words, room to think past the immediate demands of clinical practice.
What a Sabbatical Does That a Long Weekend Can't
Universities have offered faculty sabbaticals for generations. Clergy take them. Some technology companies now build extended leave into tenure. Veterinary medicine, Dr. Khuly writes, is unusual in how little it discusses this option, even as AVMA survey data she cites in the piece show burnout remaining stubbornly elevated and psychological distress more common among veterinarians than the general working population.
A three-day weekend can blunt exhaustion for a week or two. Stepping fully outside the day-to-day grind of appointments and on-call rotations for months, not days, is what actually resets someone's relationship to the work.
Why Vet Med Keeps Reaching for Vacation Instead
Part of the resistance is structural: a solo or small-group practice can't cover twelve weeks the way a university department covers a professor's leave. But part of it, Dr. Khuly argues, is cultural. The profession still treats uninterrupted availability as a mark of commitment, which makes a multi-month absence feel like abandoning the team rather than investing in staying on it.
Practices can influence that culture directly, even without matching a twelve-week sabbatical dollar for dollar. Built-in flexibility, real PTO that people are expected to use, relief coverage for longer absences, and a culture that treats stepping away as a legitimate part of a career rather than a red flag all move the needle before anyone reaches the point Dr. Khuly describes: choosing between burning out in place or walking away entirely. Hound has written before about what it actually takes to interrupt burnout in vet med, and the throughline is the same: give people real agency over their time before the only remaining option is walking away for a season, or for good.
That kind of agency is easier to protect when leaders can see burnout coming instead of learning about it in an exit interview. Rally by Hound gives practices a clearer view of how their teams are actually doing, through quick pulse surveys, engagement scores, and peer-to-peer recognition that shows who's feeling supported and who's quietly running on empty. With that visibility, managers can spot the warning signs early, they can respond with something real: a schedule adjustment, relief coverage, a conversation, or simply appreciation that lands.