Profile of currently practising veterinary assistants

Numbers of currently practising veterinary assistants are presented in the FOCUS study by sex, average age and professional experience.

Number of veterinary assistants

% male and female veterinary assistants

 

France has the highest number of practising veterinary assistants with almost 13 000 employees. The United Kingdom, with approximately the same population has only 5000 veterinary assistants. Surprisingly, Romania has roughly the same number of assistants as the United Kingdom. It would appear that the profession of veterinary assistant is combined with that of agricultural technician and more particularly that of zootechnician. This would explain the very low proportion of women in the profession in this country. A similar level is found in Slovenia.

Finally there appear to be few assistants in Finland (60) but that may be explained by the fact that there are few vets and veterinary surgeries.