There is a quiet crisis playing out in exam rooms across the country. Practices are short-staffed, teams are stretched thin, and the people most often caught in the middle are veterinary technicians. They are credentialed, skilled, and in high demand. And they are leaving, often because they are never used to the top of the license they worked hard to earn.
In a recent interview with dvm360, Megan Chadwick, CVT, academic director at Penn Foster, laid out exactly why vet tech turnover keeps happening and what practices can actually do to stop it. Her answers cut straight to what's actually fixable.
The Shortage Is Not Just a Pipeline Problem
The conversation around vet tech shortages usually focuses on supply, and that part is real enough: not enough people are entering the field. Demand for credentialed technicians is outpacing the number of graduates, and the gap is not closing quickly.
But Chadwick points to something practices can address right now, independent of the pipeline: utilization.
When a credentialed tech spends most of their shift doing tasks that a veterinary assistant could handle, the message lands clearly: the practice doesn't value what they trained for. That reading compounds over time, and eventually it becomes a reason to leave.
The fix is not complicated in concept: audit what your techs are actually doing day to day, and close the gap between their credentials and their responsibilities. In practice, that requires intentional scheduling, trust, and a willingness to let go of old habits about who does what.
Pay and Burnout Are Still the Big Levers
Utilization matters, but Chadwick is clear that pay and mental health remain the core retention issues.
Burnout compounds the pay issue. Long hours, the emotional weight of difficult cases and euthanasia, and the guilt of calling out sick when the team is already short stack up. Chadwick describes technicians who feel they cannot take earned time off because the practice is so understaffed that being absent feels like abandoning their colleagues. That is not a sustainable culture.
What practices can do:
- Invest in mental health resources for the whole team, not just DVMs. Access to counseling, peer support programs, and honest conversations about workload go a long way.
- Protect time off. A team member who feels guilty for using vacation is a team member counting down to burnout.
- Be transparent about pay. If a tech is underpaid relative to their skills and the local market, they will find out and they will leave when they do.
Invest in the People You Already Have
One of Chadwick's most practical suggestions is also one that is easy to overlook: support your current team members in growing their credentials. Practices that partner with programs like Penn Foster to help veterinary assistants become credentialed techs are building loyalty and continuity at the same time.
An employee who moves from assistant to credentialed tech at your practice has been invested in. They have a reason to stay.
Tuition support does not have to be extravagant. Even partial support sends a message: we see where you want to go, and we are going to help you get there.
The vet tech retention problem is solvable, though not by any single action. Techs used to the top of their license, paid competitively and transparently, given real mental health resources instead of wellness perks, and supported in growing their credentials are techs with a reason to stay. Each piece is simple enough on its own, and the underutilization piece in particular has a concrete framework practices can start from now. Taken together, it tells a tech something that matters: you belong here, and this is a place worth staying for.