Technician staffing gaps keep pressure on veterinary teams
Bottom line
Veterinary practices still have a technician staffing problem, and the latest dvm360 coverage puts the issue in practical terms: when technician roles go unfilled, veterinarians absorb more tasks, stress rises across the team, and practices lose efficiency. In an April 30, 2026, dvm360 interview, Megan Chadwick, CVT, said filling technician roles is essential because it lets veterinarians focus on work only they can perform. Her comments follow related April 2026 dvm360 reporting on retention, which emphasized compensation, career development, and tailoring roles to technicians’ skills and experience. The broader industry conversation has also shifted toward better use of credentialed technicians, rather than simply adding new job categories. (dvm360.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this is a staffing story, but also a utilization story. AVMA has argued that practices can improve efficiency by fully using credentialed veterinary technicians’ existing skills, freeing veterinarians for diagnosing, prescribing, and surgery. Other industry sources point to the same pressure points: low pay, inconsistent role standardization across states, burnout, and turnover that can shorten technician careers, while newer payroll benchmarking suggests practices are trying to protect technician utilization even as labor costs rise. (mvma.memberclicks.net)
What to watch: Expect more focus on technician retention, compensation benchmarks, and scope-of-practice utilization as practices look for workforce fixes they can implement now. (dvm360.com)
Veterinary technician staffing remains a central workforce pressure point for practices, and dvm360’s April 30, 2026, report sharpened the message: empty technician roles don’t just create scheduling headaches, they shift clinical and operational burden back onto veterinarians. In the interview, Megan Chadwick, CVT, said filling technician positions helps relieve stress on veterinarians and allows them to concentrate on tasks only they’re licensed to perform. That framing matters because it treats technician staffing as a care-delivery issue, not just an HR problem. (dvm360.com)
The story also fits into a broader drumbeat from dvm360 and other veterinary organizations over the past several years. On April 27, 2026, dvm360 published related reporting on retaining veterinary technicians, highlighting compensation, career development, and individualized workplace support. Chadwick’s background as academic director of Penn Foster Group’s Veterinary Academy adds an education-workforce lens to that message, connecting staffing shortages with training pipelines and career durability. (dvm360.com)
Outside dvm360, the profession has been debating whether the bigger problem is absolute shortage, poor retention, underutilization, or all three. AVMA has publicly argued that before creating new categories of team members, practices should make better use of credentialed veterinary technicians and veterinary technician specialists already in the field. In a 2021 JAVMA workforce discussion, AVMA said fuller technician utilization could improve efficiency while reserving diagnosing, prognosing, prescribing, and surgery for veterinarians. That position still echoes in current workforce discussions, including debate over mid-level practitioner models and alternative care-delivery structures. (mvma.memberclicks.net)
The economics behind that argument are well established in the profession’s literature. A 2025 Journal of the Association of Veterinary Technician Educators article, citing AVMA data, noted that average gross revenue per veterinarian rises with each additional veterinary technician per veterinarian, but only if technicians are used to their full skill set. The same article described how credentialed technicians in many states can handle drug calculations, IV fluid therapy calculations, and constant rate infusion calculations under veterinary direction, underscoring that many practices may still be leaving trained capacity on the table. (avte.net)
Industry commentary suggests the barriers are as much structural as numerical. An AAEP document on ethical and professional utilization points to comparatively low pay, lack of title and responsibility standardization across states, and a pattern of technicians leaving the field after an average of about five years. Meanwhile, iVET360’s 2026 Veterinary Payroll Report says hospitals are facing rising payroll pressure even as productivity improves, and specifically recommends protecting technician utilization as part of staffing and financial strategy. Taken together, that suggests many practices are trying to solve two problems at once: keeping labor costs sustainable while making sure credentialed staff are doing work that matches their training. (aaep.org)
There’s also an industry strategy question underneath the staffing discussion. A recent Today’s Veterinary Business editorial argued that the mid-level practitioner debate has stalled because it focuses too narrowly on scope expansion, and that a more practical path may be community-based models staffed by credentialed technicians with public health training under veterinary supervision. That’s an opinion piece, not a consensus position, but it reflects a wider shift in thinking: technician staffing is increasingly being discussed not only as an internal hospital issue, but as part of access to care, rural service gaps, and public health infrastructure. (pathlms.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the immediate takeaway is that technician staffing affects case flow, veterinarian burnout, revenue capacity, and retention all at once. If technicians are hard to hire, underpaid, or underused once hired, practices can end up with a bottleneck that no amount of veterinarian overtime really fixes. The practical response is likely to be less about a single recruiting push and more about redesigning roles: clearer delegation, competitive compensation, career ladders, better onboarding, and making sure credentialed technicians are consistently working at the top of their legal and clinical capabilities. (dvm360.com)
What to watch: Watch for more 2026 data on technician pay and turnover, continued debate over mid-level models versus better technician utilization, and whether practices translate the staffing conversation into concrete workflow redesign rather than treating it as a simple hiring shortage. (dvm360.com)