Preventing Veterinary Burnout: Finding Balance, Practicing Self-Care & Delegating Your Workload

The veterinary profession is fueled by a deep passion for animal health and well-being. While caring for pets brings purpose and joy, the high demands of veterinary work can take a toll. Long hours, heartbreaking decisions and the pressure to provide top-tier care can lead to veterinary burnout. Recognizing and addressing burnout is crucial for maintaining both your personal well-being and the high standard of care you provide your animal patients.

Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to pause and check in with yourself. It’s a chance to reflect on your work-life balance and explore actionable strategies to support your mental health. Not One More Vet (NOMV) offers vital resources to uplift veterinarians like you, and Mixlab is proud to support its important mission.

What is Veterinary Burnout?

Veterinary burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental depletion caused by ongoing work-related stress that hasn't been effectively managed. It’s more than just being tired—burnout can erode your sense of purpose and leave you feeling disconnected from the work you once loved.

You may be experiencing burnout if you notice:

• Lack of Energy: You may feel mentally and physically worn down, especially after prolonged periods of deep emotional involvement in patient care or shouldering the concerns of pet owners.
• Negativity or Cynicism: Feelings of frustration, detachment from your work or becoming short with colleagues and pet parents.
• Poor Self-Perceptions: Tasks that once felt rewarding might now feel overwhelming or futile, leading to a reduced sense of achievement.
• Emotional Stress: Stress and worry might cloud your thinking and leave you feeling emotionally drained.
• Diminished Capacity: Getting through your day might feel like a struggle, both mentally and physically.
• Compassion Fatigue: Confronting animal suffering and tough moments like euthanasia can deplete your emotional reserves, leading to reduced empathy or mental fog.

How to Spot Common Veterinary Burnout Signs

Veterinarian burnout doesn’t look the same for everyone. And while it often overlaps with compassion fatigue, it’s important to note that the two are different. Burnout stems from the environment in which you work—long hours, overwhelming responsibilities, toxic cultures—while compassion fatigue is linked to the emotional weight of the work itself.

Common burnout risk factors include having a perfectionist or “Type A” personality, working in highly competitive environments, feeling constant pressure to perform at a high level and even cultural expectations that normalize overworking. Regardless of whether you experience these risk factors, telltale veterinary burnout signs may include:

• Physical Symptoms: Irregular sleep, appetite changes, fatigue or unexplained aches and stomach issues.
• Emotional Symptoms: Irritability, hopelessness or feeling stuck and overwhelmed by the demands of your role.
• Behavioral Symptoms: Withdrawing from others, avoiding responsibilities or reduced productivity.
• Cognitive Symptoms: Trouble concentrating, difficulty making decisions or feeling anxious about the next work day.

Keep in mind that veterinary burnout and depression can look similar. While burnout may improve with rest or changes in routine, depression is a medical condition that typically requires professional intervention. If you're feeling persistently down or overwhelmed, you are not alone. Reach out to a mental health professional for guidance and support.

Tips for Finding and Maintaining Work-Life Balance

Veterinarians often juggle intense schedules filled with client consultations, emergency cases or on-call shifts, complex surgeries, administrative tasks and more. Add to that the emotional load that lingers after hours, and it’s no surprise balance can be hard to achieve. However, protecting your time and energy is essential for your long-term career success and well-being.

Here are some ways to find a healthier balance:

1. Giving non-essential tasks to your skilled technicians and support staff.
2. Talk openly with colleagues about your workload and ask for help when needed.
3. Build a practice culture that values collaboration and shared responsibility.
4. Let clients know your availability for after-hours contact and emergencies.
5. Whenever possible, protect your time by keeping consistent hours.
6. Schedule regular personal days and vacations, and encourage your team to do the same.
7. Create a workplace environment where it’s safe to talk about stress and mental health.

Self-Care and Mindfulness Tactics for Veterinarians

Along with establishing work-life balance, incorporating even the smallest self-care habits into your daily routine can make a big impact on your well-being. It’s more than bubble baths or time off (though those help!)—it’s about consistently supporting your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellness. Mindfulness, the practice of staying present in the moment, is an aspect of self-care that can also help reduce stress.

How to Show Self-Care

Explore known stress-busters to discover what works for you, such as specific grounding exercises, physical activities, distractions or ways of expressing yourself. Other ways to show self-care include:

• Prioritizing 7-9 hours of sleep
• Fueling your body with three nourishing meals daily
• Setting realistic and healthy boundaries
• Spending time with loved ones and leaning on your support system
• Find time to regularly do exercises you enjoy
• Practicing self-compassion
• Saying “no” and setting boundaries when needed
• Taking breaks and checking in with your emotions
• Engaging in hobbies and creative outlets

How to Practice Mindfulness

Incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine with small, focused practices, such as:

• Try square breathing, alternate nostril breathing or diaphragmatic breathing
• Move your body by taking a walk, stretching or practicing yoga
• Sit in meditation or use everyday moments (like brushing your teeth or walking your dog) to pause, be present and focus on your senses

Resources on Your Journey

Veterinary burnout, compassion fatigue, and emotional stress are common in the veterinary field—but that doesn’t mean you have to navigate them by yourself. There are resources created specifically for veterinary professionals.

• NOMV’s Resource Library: Peer-submitted resources for grief support, mental health counseling or other veterinary-specific needs.
• NOMV Peer Support: Individual and group sessions and monthly webinars to help veterinarians, support staff and students find community.
• 24/7 Help: Call or text the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 for immediate support in the U.S. and Canada.
• The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Assessment: A 30-question test that helps measure how work is impacting your quality of life, privately and confidentially.

Strategies for Lightening the Veterinary Workload

Another key to better balance? Delegating where you can. After all, practicing self-care includes setting healthy boundaries for yourself. Prescription fulfillment is an area where you can lean on a reliable pharmacy solutions provider, lightening your team’s workload while ensuring patients still receive seamless care.

#1. Delegate the Rx and Refill Process

The right pharmacy partner can handle online veterinary prescriptions with ease, including refills, requests, and follow-ups from start to finish—giving your team valuable time back. As an example, here’s a look into how the process works at Mixlab:

1. Submit a prescription through eMix (our easy-to-use prescriber platform), or simply reach us via text, email, phone or fax. Then we take it from there!
2. We confirm the prescription and send the pet parent a link to check out and choose a delivery window.
3. Pet parents receive tracking updates for their online veterinary prescriptions via our self-service portal. You can also track prescription status real-time within eMix.
4. Each order arrives with everything they need to administer the medication—and a little surprise and delight!

Many pet pharmacies will even take care of refill reminders and offer convenient auto-refill programs. With Mixlab, we proactively check in with pet parents to make sure they stay compliant with their refills and at home care. Plus, pet parents can get 5% off by enrolling in our auto-refill program. While you stay focused on care, your pharmacy solutions provider handles the logistics.

#2. Outsource Medication Delivery

Managing pick-ups, inventory, and storage is no small task. Fortunately, there are pharmacy solutions providers that can ship medications directly to pet parents on behalf of your practice. These services not only make life easier for you and your staff, but also your patients. Make sure to look for partners that offer dependable delivery times. At Mixlab, we provide fast and free delivery right to pet parents’ doorsteps.

Plus, carrying inventory comes with hidden costs for your practice. This includes staff time spent ordering, organizing and storing meds, the physical space taken up by medication storage, waste from expired products and added billing complexities and compliance hurdles. Outsourcing to a pharmacy solutions provider eliminates these pain points. At Mixlab, we not only want to help solve for these pain points and give you and your staff time back, but also provide an added benefit on top of that. By enrolling in Mixlab Plus, prescribers can earn revenue on every order while Mixlab takes care of everything else! 

#3. Leverage Pharmacy Customer Service

An experienced pet pharmacy team can field medication questions and support pet parents with everything from order status to refill reminders. That means fewer calls to your front desk—and more time for what matters most. You remain at the center of care, but your bandwidth expands with the help of expert pharmacy support.

We’re Here to Help Prevent Veterinary Burnout

If you’re noticing signs of veterinarian burnout, know that you’re not alone. Embracing work-life balance, prioritizing self-care, and outsourcing non-clinical responsibilities like pharmacy fulfillment can reduce stress and help you reconnect with the parts of veterinary medicine you love most.

NOMV continues to provide education, resources, and support to help you thrive in your personal and professional life. Alongside NOMV, the Mixlab team is here to help by handling your online prescriptions with care, delivering medications directly to pet parents, and lightening your administrative load—so you can focus on your patients and yourself. Contact us today to get started.