National veterinarian shortage affects central Illinois clinics and shelters
ABC NewsChannel 20 reports on how the national veterinarian shortage is impacting central Illinois clinics and shelters. Some local animal shelters say they have been without a veterinarian for years. "The increased ownership of pets. I mean, that's been going on for decades," says Dr. Greg Hurst, a veterinarian at the Animal Emergency Clinic of Springfield. "People were getting by, and then it's just all of a sudden you reach an inflection point where it's just too much and there's just not enough people available.” Dr. Hurst says the number of local veterinarians hasn’t kept up with the increasing number of adoptions. "Year after year, there's just more pet ownership. So, there's more demand at the clinics for services and it's hard to staff the clinic enough to have appointments available for everybody," he said, adding that emergency clinics have also had a harder time hiring veterinarians because the demanding nature of the job takes away from personal time. "In a place like an emergency clinic or shelter medicine, you're gonna have a lot more stress at times and you know, it gets hard to take. And then sometimes you're doing hours like reworking nights and things like that."
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