Imagining veterinary medicine and education in 2040

Introduction

Veterinary medicine is undergoing increasingly rapid and profound changes. Although it’s not possible to predict with certainty what lies ahead (apart from saying that it will inevitably change), the following is the author’s view of how our profession may evolve in the future. The purpose of this article is to challenge the status quo and to stimulate critical thought and discussion to influence future changes in veterinary medical education. As members of the veterinary profession, we have an opportunity (arguably a responsibility) to shape our future.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

— Albert Einstein

The evolution of veterinary medical education

In 2026, the Veterinary Educational, Accreditation, and Licensing (VEAL) framework in Canada and the USA underwent a paradigm change led by veterinary professional organizations collaborating with veterinary academia. While still completing a 4-year program, DVM students now had the option of choosing one of several defined and designated career fields, in addition to a more general program that had been the norm for decades. All students had to complete a 2-year comprehensive core curriculum in comparative medicine. Some universities granted a Bachelor of Comparative Medicine (BCM) degree at this point. This was followed by 2 y of elective courses and clinical externship training commensurate with their chosen career field. Licensing requirements and procedures, and faculty accreditation policies, were adjusted accordingly.

This change was made to reap the numerous societal, financial, and educational benefits of specialization and mentoring; the latter has been called the cornerstone of civilization as it enables specialization! Following adoption of designated career fields, mentoring addressed serious and often long-standing problems that had plagued the profession (including workforce shortages, practice-ready competence of new graduates, student debt, and mental health). It also responded to the expanding intertwined threats to the health of animals, people, and ecosystems (i.e., the One Health triad) caused by unrelenting growth in global interconnectedness. The changes included i) a greater emphasis on preclinical mentoring of students from the time they committed to a veterinary career, ii) facilitating summer employment in veterinary clinics and veterinary-related enterprises, iii) the option of clinical mentoring in private veterinary practices or agencies accredited by academia, and iv) the use of information and artificial intelligence technologies.

Veterinary professional organizations collaborated to create a national agency, the Office of Co-op Education (OCE). The OCE works with academia and employers to help students find mentored employment in their chosen career field, and to develop financial support for students, including scholarships and bursaries. It engages with potential students from the time they aspire to any career involving animal health through to completion of their professional education. Preclinical mentored employment allows them to gain firsthand insights into the life of a veterinary health professional in their chosen field — an experience that will be expanded and enhanced by experiences acquired through more comprehensive and focused mentoring received as externs, interns, and residents. The McEachran Institute (https://www.mceachraninstitute.ca), a policy think tank, was established in 2022 to help make animal health professionals “future ready” with programs that explore policy needs and objectives, including mentoring to enhance education of animal health professionals. For example, the Institute convenes a “Dialogues” series involving diverse panels of educators and others with expertise to address current issues in veterinary education.

The profession’s adoption of a designated licensing policy also allowed for accreditation of Colleges of Veterinary Medicine (CVMs) that did not offer the full range of designated fields for the DVM degree. As a consequence, some existing colleges chose to focus on fields of particular interest to them in order to attain higher standards of excellence therein, and universities without a veterinary college were now in a position to consider such an option. The overall effect has been lower tuition fees and more human resources in underserved fields. The new VEAL framework enhanced professional competence in general and reduced the average number of years of university education taken to earn the DVM degree, thus reducing student indebtedness and producing graduates that are more “practice ready.” It has also fostered integration of educational mentorship with other animal health professionals, including Animal Health Technology (AHT), thereby reducing the shortfall in human resources in those fields.

The new paradigm, with its emphasis on comparative medicine, has allowed the pedagogy of this domain to flourish while substantially increasing the contributions of veterinary researchers to medical progress.

Example scenarios: DVM graduates in 2040 enter fields of their own choosing

One Health

It’s after midnight as John steps out onto the balcony of his room at the Bessborough Hotel overlooking the river. He simply can’t sleep, as the excitement of DVM convocation and the ensuing celebration has not abated. The cool darkness, the soft chatter of rustling leaves, the reflection of moonlight on the river, and the events of the day all combine to give him a sense of well-being and accomplishment. He has realized his goal of becoming a veterinarian with the knowledge and skills needed to promote ecosystem health, arguably one of the most complex fields in veterinary medicine. This became possible with designated licensure for DVM students who choose to focus on a specific field within veterinary medicine and thereby attain greater competence in that field at graduation.

John’s passion for natural history developed while growing up in Yorkton, a community with many naturalists who shared his love of nature. He was particularly inspired by Stuart Hueston, a renowned physician and ornithologist in Saskatchewan and beyond. As a teenager, he had honed his observational skills by keeping a diary to record his interactions with wildlife and nature. He already had > 150 species on his lifetime bird list.

Like many young people, he became alarmed at the harmful effects of environmental degradation on Earth’s flora and fauna; this led to a compelling desire to devote his career to addressing this problem. Fortuitously, at a WCVM Vetavision weekend, he learned about a One Health track, encompassing ecosystem health in the Western College of Veterinary Medicine’s DVM degree program, that was instituted in 2026. It seemed perfectly matched to his aspirations and, what’s more, the veterinary profession’s OCE program would help make it reality. So it proved to be.

John’s 2-year pre-veterinary course program had laid the foundation for a One Health-focused DVM program, which included a rigorous comparative medical curriculum in its first 2 y that was required of all DVM students. The final 2 y focused on clinical subjects and externships in population medicine, conservation biology, medical ecology, and social science related to policy and wildlife diseases, with the latter in the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative (CWHC).

Throughout his university years, he had the benefit of experiential learning through mentored summer and externship employment. With the assistance of the OCE, John secured employment in Boreal Ecosystem Management Inc., a transdisciplinary consulting firm assisting ecoregional governance bodies in Saskatchewan and Alberta. This proved to be a mutually rewarding relationship over the past 5 y, and now he will join the firm in a full-time position as a graduate veterinarian.

Earlier generations of veterinarians only became interested in policy later in their professional lives. However, most of John’s classmates in the One Health program had acquired a strong interest in policy in view of its essential role in enabling the One Health concept to have impact. Many envisioned careers in civil service, the corporate sector, or private consulting. Most, like himself, work for an agency that had employed them as summer students or externs. John is particularly pleased that he managed, with the help of his employer, to keep his educational debt to a minimum.

John is confident that his education has given him the skills and transdisciplinary perspective and knowledge critical in developing teams to address challenges of maintaining health at the ecosystem scale, where management is extraordinarily complex due to the number and range of vested interests. To add to John’s contentment, he looks forward to marrying an engineer who was also a summer student employed by Boreal. She shares with him a commitment to applying her discipline to promoting ecosystem health. She will also be joining the firm.

Small animal practice

It’s the day after convocation and Ruth is heading back to Red Deer with her husband Carlos. As the prairie landscape rolls by, she has a sense of deep satisfaction. The next patients she attends will be as a fully-fledged veterinarian. She can’t wait. The past almost 6 y, culminating in becoming a veterinarian, have fulfilled a childhood goal, motivated in part by a wonderful family dog. As a teenager she was fortunate to secure a part-time job with a thriving local corporate veterinary practice. Because it was a qualified “teaching practice,” she remained engaged with them throughout her university years, including for a mandatory externship. She will now become a permanent Associate. It has been reassuring to be mentored as an integral part of the practice team during this period and she is eager to mentor future externship students.

Externship students have had key roles in policies adopted by the profession. They provide assurance that animals belonging to owners with limited means can still access an acceptable level of medical care provided by mentored externs. In turn, the externs have the opportunity to gain practical experience. This has allowed many families to afford pets that promote their own mental health. It has also provided relief to veterinarians who once were put in the invidious position of denying care to owners without adequate means.

With the financial support of the practice through the years, a little help from her parents, and the benefit of OCE scholarships, Ruth is free of debt. She reminds herself how fortunate she is. She knows that, in previous years, many veterinary students graduated feeling insecure in their competence, bearing a crushing debt, and having less earning power than is now the norm. No wonder mental health became an issue at the time. Fortunately, the introduction of more focused career fields in veterinary curriculum some years ago have substantially decreased these problems.

Before graduating, Ruth contemplated becoming a diplomate in a discipline specialty but decided it would be less personally rewarding for a people-person such as herself. She feels perfectly competent to deal with the more common veterinary problems and expects that her commitment to continuing education, which is easily available, will enhance her skills and keep pace with medical progress. She was also aware that the profession had an oversupply of diplomates in several disciplines.

Ruth and her husband Carlos are joyfully expecting their first child in 5 mo. Fortunately, the practice she works with has a policy of employing veterinarians for life and adjusting work schedules to permit a satisfactory, if not enviable, quality of life.

Food animal practice

Martin loves cows! He grew up on a dairy farm. Now that he has just become a food animal veterinarian, he can rest assured they will remain a big part of his world. At one time, it looked like it would be extremely difficult for him to gain admission to a DVM program without excellent academic grades and in the face of stiff competition from gifted and motivated women who had once constituted > 80% of student admissions. However, with the introduction of DVM designated licensing, most universities established a quota for each major career field and, coupled with more opportunities in the food animal field in new university DVM programs at the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Ottawa, and Laval, more men entered the profession. These programs were enabled by a policy permitting accreditation of colleges that offer at least 3 career field programs in addition to meeting mandatory requirements for the DVM comparative medical curriculum. Martin was admitted on his first application.

Martin was a student employee in a corporate dairy practice from the time he was admitted to the DVM program, and he committed to join this practice at graduation. His externships, combined with his experience on his family’s farm, had him brimming with confidence as he looked forward to his first day as Dr. Martin de Haan.

Martin was active in student politics and took advantage of leadership training opportunities. He was Class President for 1 y and oversaw the Bovine Club for 1 term. Under his leadership, the latter increased involvement in food security and ecosystem health — topics close to Martin’s heart as he has engaged in many animated conversations regarding food production and farm politics at the family dinner table. Martin has been assured that his practice colleagues are comfortable with his intention to become active in veterinary association affairs.

Biomedical research

After 6 y of study, Zahra Nazralla has received DVM and MSc degrees. She is on a flight to New York where she has been accepted by Rockefeller University into a doctoral program under Professor George Blatz, a world-renowned microbiologist working on viral carcinogenesis. He was turning his attention to other types of microbial carcinogenesis and was looking for animal models. This comparative medical approach has served him well in the past and he was very impressed with Zahra’s qualifications and background.

Zahra’s grandparents emigrated to Canada from Uganda during the Idi Amin regime. She was a brilliant student who was attracted to science in her early teen years. This interest evolved more specifically to medical science and research by the time she contemplated university education. One of her friends had mentioned that the medical science career track in Canada’s DVM programs had received accolades in Macleans Magazine. She investigated this option and became convinced it was the path for her.

After 2 y of pre-veterinary university course work and summer employment in the microbiology laboratory at the University of Alberta, Zahra was admitted to its DVM program. Following the first 2 y of that program, which were devoted to mandatory comparative medical subjects, she received a BCM degree and was admitted to an MSc program. There followed 2 additional years of study that complemented her interest in veterinary medical science and supported her thesis topic, a study of the pathogenesis of a proliferative enteropathy in pigs caused by Lawsonia intracellularis. At graduation, she received DVM and MSc degrees, both with distinction.

From the time Zahra declared her interest in the DVM biomedical science research track, the OCE assisted her to secure employment during her university years that supported her career aspirations. In Zahra’s case, she also received a research fellowship grant associated with her MSc.

She is humming, “New York, New York, what a wonderful town,” as the plane lands and taxis toward the terminal.