Programs encourage rural veterinarians

CROOKSTON, Minn. — Growing concern over shortages of food animal veterinarians has led to a number of new programs, public and private, to encourage veterinary students to consider hanging their shingles in rural areas.

THE PROBLEM

In the United States, about 500 counties have no veterinarians to service the large populations of food animals there, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

“We’re in a crisis situation,” Gregory Hammer, president of the association, says in a prepared statement. “We don’t have enough rural veterinarians to be a first line of defense against animal diseases.”

Livestock producers around the country are experiencing the backlash from the shortages. In Minnesota, a state with one of the premier veterinarian colleges in the country, there are 20 counties without a food animal veterinarian. Montana has 12 such counties, and North Dakota and South Dakota each have 18 counties without food animal veterinarians.

Charlotte Klose is a large animal veterinarian with the Golden Valley Veterinary Service near Park River in northeastern North Dakota. She says she has seen the problem develop in her area to the point where they’ve had to try to cut back on farm calls.

“There is a huge area to cover up here,” she says. “We’ve actually had to try to get people to bring their animals up to us because we can’t take that extra time to drive 50 miles and then drive 50 miles back when we could be seeing patients.”

She says the problem has been growing for years and because of it, her veterinarian service has had to expand its coverage area to now include Grand Forks, N.D., more than 60 miles to the southeast.

“As of right now in Grand Forks, there is nobody there that is willing to do horses or large animals,” she says.

She and her colleagues cover the region around Langdon, N.D., 76 miles to the northwest, and Devils Lake, N.D., 82 miles to the west.

One of the reasons this is becoming such a serious problem is that large animal veterinarians do provide that first line of defense against the spread of costly and sometimes deadly animal diseases.

“It is a concern that if there’s not enough of us to get out there to look at something, then yes, we could be at risk. It seems like it’s been building for the last 10 or 15 years at least. In the last two or three years, it hasn’t changed. But there definitely is a risk,” she says.

ACTING ON IT

In 2004, President Bush signed the National Veterinary Medicine Service Act, designed to offer loan forgiveness to veterinary students who take up food animal practices in underserved rural areas.

Unfortunately, the less than $2 million set aside for this loan forgiveness will make only a small dent in the nationwide problem. The average veterinarian is graduating with about $120,000 in debt, meaning the program can handle only 10 or 20 veterinarian graduates for the entire country.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., recently introduced the Veterinary Services Investment Act to address the veterinary service shortages.

VSIA would create new grant programs to help individual states address their veterinary shortages. Grant monies could be used to recruit veterinarians to work in underserved counties, bolstering food safety and conducting surveillance of animal disease.

H.R. 3519, the companion bill in the House, was introduced in July. Since then, 28 representatives have signed on as co-sponsors for the bill. According to one report, support for the legislation among stakeholder groups is very high. Currently, 89 veterinary and agricultural groups have signed an AVMA letter endorsing the bill.

SCHOOL INCENTIVES

Several programs at the state level are gaining in popularity. Trevor Ames, dean of the veterinary college at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, says that state funds now are being made available to offer loan forgiveness to more veterinary students if they choose to enter food animal practice in rural areas.

“It could pay up to three students loan forgiveness of up to $15,000 a year for five years,” he says. “They have to go through an application process, and they have to show, either through their employer or through some other method, that they are spending 50 percent of their time on food animals.”

Since there is only enough state money to support three veterinarian graduates, the students will have to compete for it. The students also will have to demonstrate an existing interest in food animals, most likely by the elective courses they take. Those students focusing more on small animals would be less competitive for the program than those taking large animal courses.

Tony Dank, a senior at the University of Minnesota-Crookston, plans to apply to the College of Veterinary Medicine in St. Paul.

“It makes it a lot more feasible, when, if I go to the right area, I can get that (debt) taken care of,” he says.

He saw the consequence of the shortages firsthand when he served as an intern with a large animal veterinarian in rural Minnesota.

“I rode with the vet out of Red Lake Falls, and . . . he probably covers at least 50 miles in all directions. There were times when we spent an hour and a half going north and an hour and a half going south. It makes for a long day.”

LIMITED RESOURCES

If the loan forgiveness plan works, Minnesota soon will be able to field three more veterinarians where they are needed.

“The feeling is that was probably a reasonable amount of money to change students’ behavior,” Ames says. “Obviously, there is a trade-off, but if the amount gets too small, it may not be enough of an incentive because students may be weighing a number of factors including the type of job their spouse can get.”

Ames says that, according to a study by the Food Supply Veterinarian Coalition, veterinarians that stay in an area for more than five years, working on food animals, are very likely, statistically, to continue to do so for the rest of their careers.

“So that’s what the five-year payout was aimed at,” he says.

The College of Veterinary Medicine also is changing its admission process to benefit the students who are interested in large animal veterinary service.

“We’ve developed this early recruitment process, called “vetFAST,” in conjunction with the college of agriculture,” Ames says.

Under vetFAST, undergraduate students who commit to large animal work will be able to complete their doctorate programs in seven years, instead of the standard eight years, saving time and money.

The University of Minnesota has created some quality training facilities in the state, especially in Crookston and New Sweden, where programs are designed to give them much-needed hands-on experience with large food animals.

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