DVM/PhD vs. PhD alone

Pre-Vet & Veterinary Medicine
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hello everyone. i want to do veterinary research in the future. i am majoring in biochemistry for undergrad. i am unsure if i should go for a DVM after my bachelors or if i am fine with a PhD. i want to do a PhD in biochemistry or genetics and i am wondering if i can do veterinary research with that, or if i need a DVM. i have a few more questions:

  • what’s the difference between someone that does vet research with a DVM/PhD vs PhD only?
  • i heard you can do vet research without a DVM, but would you still be considered a “veterinary scientist”?
  • if a PhD alone is fine, do i need a PhD in specifically veterinary science/medicine or is biochemistry/genetics fine?
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You can do veterinary research with either degree. The roles differ somewhat between DVM and PhD, but there’s more overlap than most people would think.

I am a PhD who does research with DVMs. The term “veterinary scientist” isn’t well defined and doesn’t really matter to us. Like I guess I’m a veterinary scientist? There’s a vet on staff in my lab (part-time) and I do work with some large animal models (i.e., bigger than rats) so I could call myself that, but I’ve never thought about it.

People who do research within the vet field come from all sorts of backgrounds and hold all sorts of degrees.

Practically speaking, there’s a lot of overlap in the roles that a DVM and PhD would fill. In our lab, all non-survival surgeries, and some survival surgeries are done by non-DVMs. Our lab DVM does any difficult survival surgeries, and consults on a lot of our other stuff. However, we could do the stuff we do without a DVM if we really needed to. We’d just have to get more help from our institutional vets. Our DVM never did much research before us, so isn’t too helpful with experimental design, data interpretation, etc. However, some other DVMs that have a lot of research experience can and do it all.

Vet school is expensive and hard to get into, while PhD program admission is much easier and you’ll get paid a small stipend while you do it.

However, Job prospects for PhDs in vet science aren’t very good. You’d most likely be looking at working as a poorly-paid technician if you don’t manage to nab the brass ring of getting a job as a principal investigator (a professor running a lab). DVMs can also be lab heads. I’ve known quite a few that don’t practice anymore and just do research. Some DVMs are vet school professors and just teach, others also do research.

DVMs make more money on average, but schooling is crazy expensive and it’s not like most vets are raking it in. So I’d say neither route is guaranteed to be particularly lucrative. Will you be employed? Yes. Will you be well-compensated? Maybe.

The most important thing is to get and stay involved with some sort of biomedical research. You don’t have to work with animals, but it might help you figure out what you’d like to do.

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This is extremely helpful advice! My D26 is also looking into this field, would you mind if I PM’d you a few more questions?

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fire away!

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I should have added something to this. Doing any type of biomedical research will be useful for deciding if you’d like to do a PhD. Getting into a PhD program will not require direct animal experience (you could work with cells in a petri dish, for example).

But if you’re leaning towards DVM, you’ll need experience working with animals in order to get into vet school. You’ll need clinical shadowing, and you’ll need experience with a variety of species.

And, similar to someone wanting to be an MD, you’ll want to do a lot of reading about the profession and its pros and cons, and speak with a lot of DVMs in different position types and career stages.

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One thing that I do not know and I am wondering whether @ColdWombat could answer: If you already have one of a DVM or PhD, does this make it any easier to get the other?

At least based on what I have seen as a parent and/or sibling of a doctorate student, getting either a DVM or a PhD is a long path that requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of hard work. This is not for the faint of heart.

My daughter who recently earned her DVM has said that many students in her program were taking on way too much debt. This is an expensive to get a degree that does lead to a good job, but not a job that allows you to pay off a large debt without quite a bit of hardship.

The stipend part I agree with. PhD programs at least in North America typically cover the cost of tuition and fees and health insurance, and also pay a modest stipend.

Admissions to PhD programs can be tough. One daughter is currently studying in a program that had about a 3% acceptance rate a bit more than a year ago. This most recent round the acceptance rate was even lower due to budget cuts (at one point they were deciding whether to accept anyone at all, I do not know how this came out). Of course admissions to DVM programs is also very competitive.

This is interesting.

To me it is hard to imagine anything that could happen to the economy that would put most DVMs out of work. If we have animals, then we will need DVMs. If we eat, we will have animals. Being a DVM is not going to be super lucrative. If you take the full cost of a DVM program as debt then you are likely to have problems paying it off. DVM work can be hard work and can involve working weekends and evenings. However, if you are a DVM and if you somehow got there without much debt, and if you are fine with working hard and dealing with a wide range of sick animals and their distraught humans, then to me this seems like a reliable, solid, and admirable profession.

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not sure if anyone will see this, but now i’m wondering; the DVM/PhD path does seem interesting. how do i figure out if i should get the dual degree or just stick to the PhD alone?

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I do not think that anyone can answer this other than yourself. We can provide some things to think about.

I probably should remember this from previous threads. However, since I have forgotten, what is your current situation? Are you about to start university, or are you currently part way through undergraduate study? If yes to either, then you still have a lot of time to think about this.

One thing that I have noticed is that getting a doctorate, one doctorate, whether DVM, PhD, MD, or something else, is a long path that requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of determination. You need to want to do it to just get one doctorate. Two I expect would take longer and require more effort.

Our daughter who got her DVM this past May is a very determined and very driven person. She found the path to be challenging at multiple levels. As one example many years ago she told me that undergraduate organic chemistry was “the most difficult B- that I ever had in my life”. More recently she told me that the classes in her DVM program were on average just as tough. It took a lot of work over a long time period to get through these.

As another example, during the first three years of her DVM program she also had a part time job at a drop in animal clinic on campus. Some friends asked her how she could possibly do this due to the time commitment. She felt that she needed to do this in order to stay sane and to keep her mind focused on practical veterinary medicine, which is what she wants to do (and of course is doing now). One day at the drop in clinic every animal that she saw died except for one small pet rat (which had pink eye and was basically fine). The animals that died included two beautiful horses with colic (which can be messy to try to treat, and which can be deadly for horses). The next day another beautiful horse came in with colic. It was very unclear for perhaps the first two hours whether they could save it. In the end they did save it and this third horse left in much better shape. Then she got to go back to studying for classes.

When I attended the DVM graduation ceremony and related party this past May, the graduating DVMs that I met were of course all very happy to be graduating. I am pretty sure that all had jobs lined up (or fellowships or something else positive). However, some of them also appeared to be tired and near the end of their ability to put in so much continued effort. They had all put in a huge amount of effort to get the one doctorate. Three months later my daughter is way more relaxed and loves her job, but I do not think that even she would have had the energy to continue on to get another doctorate.

My other daughter right now is studying for a PhD in a different biomedical field. She has a lot of research related lab work, and apparently not many classes. She seems to be taking this as an interesting job that is challenging and gives her the opportunity to learn quite a bit, including different things you can do in the lab. She understands that this is going to go on for a while, multiple years. Perhaps this is the way to approach a PhD.

One issue with research is that “you might fail” (“You might fail” is a definition of “research” that I first heard from an MIT researcher). It is perfectly normal for someone involved in research to fail many times for a few years before they either succeed, or try something different, or give up.

The good news is that a PhD is typically fully funded. While the stipend may be just enough to live on, at least the cash flow is from university to student rather than vice versa. A small amount of help from a parent (with emphasis on “small”) can help turn this into pretty much just an interesting (and demanding) job, with the understanding that if you do come out with some successful interesting research results they might also give you a degree at some point (which you would not get from most jobs, of course).

If I am remembering correctly then you have a lot of time to figure this out. Talking to professors and getting some experience in both research and animal care situations is likely to help you make the decision.

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thank you very much for the insight. since i want to do veterinary research, i think ill be fine doing either or. my dog’s vet is actually a DVM/PhD, i could ask him some questions as well :slight_smile:

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ok, i have done some more digging. i learned that a PhD alone is fine for non clinical research, where as a DVM/PhD is better suited for clinical research. can anyone give me more examples of clinical and non clinical research?

i would like to note that i decided against becoming a practitioner due to the suicide rate. i have attempted once recently and i do not trust myself staying safe as a practitioner (especially with the easy access to lethal means). with that being said, should i go for non clinical research? is clinical research manageable when it comes to mental health? what’s your take? any advice?

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These are tough questions. Again I can give you a few related examples from family experience, but not really answer your question.

I have been told that there is evidence that radiation therapy to kill cancer might also motivate the immune system to fight off the same cancer. Apparently the evidence of this comes from veterinary studies (I think that quite a bit of this was done at Colorado State University, which has an excellent veterinary oncology program). For example there have been cases where they have been aware of one large cancer plus one or a few smaller metastases; they wipe out the large tumor with radiation therapy; then they watch as the smaller metastases disappear. You could not do initial studies of this with a human because it would be unethical to intentionally not treat a known metastasis. However, they can do this with animals. Of course this could matter for humans who have one known tumor, plus the uncertain possibility that there could be additional unknown small metastases. If radiation treatment would cause the immune system to wipe out unknown small metastases this could be a benefit for patients. I believe that this is considered clinical research. Actual animals were involved in the research. It is very possible that some of the animals might have died.

One daughter is currently studying for a PhD in a biomedical field. In the first week or two she was taken to see patients that were suffering from some of the problems that she might be working to try to find better treatments for. Some of them were in bad shape. She found this depressing. I pointed out to her that she was one of very few people in this world who actually have a realistic possibility of contributing to a breakthrough towards better treatments. Of course research takes a lot of time and effort, patience is needed, but someone needs to do it and she is very well qualified to help out over time in a meaningful way. She found this reassuring, and I think in the end this all cemented her understanding of the value of the work that she is doing. However, she is very happy to not be dealing directly with human or animal patients at this point. She is much happier dealing with cells and organic chemicals and interactions between cells and medications. I am pretty sure that this is not clinical research.

One daughter thinks that reaching inside a cow is a positive that adds to the many reasons to become a DVM. Our other daughter thinks that reaching inside a cow is a reason to find some other career instead. We are not all the same (and I am with the second daughter on this particular point).

And if you make a mistake in a clinical environment someone or some animal might die. If you make a mistake in a lab experiment you might ruin the experiment (eg, kill off cells in a Petri dish) and have to repeat it. This might set you back a few weeks and a few dollars.

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In veterinary research, the distinction between clinical (typically patient subjects) and non-clinical (typically purpose-bred subjects) can get kind of blurry. I’m not sure using that to make the DVM/PhD decision is going to be as helpful as you think. At research institutions, especially those with a vet school, there can be quite a bit of overlap.

My lab doesn’t really do clinical research, yet it often bleeds over and we end up doing some, technically. I’ll give an example. We’re embarking on a set of highly challenging experiments where the animals get a major surgery and we observe them for weeks afterward. I won’t give details, but we’ll be doing a ton of observations and assessments before and after the surgery. For many reasons (ethics, efficiency), we try to obtain as much information as we can from the animals during this process. A couple DVMs and a DVM resident expressed interest in running a study. They perform one of our same assessments in their clinic, and want to see if a particular clinical drug affects the results of their assessment. We realized we could run it on our animals along the way. So we are opportunistically running their study (they’re helping a bit) during our animal training period, before we perform our surgeries. It won’t affect the outcome of our main study, so it’s a win-win. We’re also investing money and time in obtaining even more additional measurements on our animals that aren’t germane to anyone’s current study, but will likely be useful for other reasons in the future: clinically? who knows, maybe. Our lab DVM (a clinician for their main job, who barely does research) will be doing the major surgeries for this research project. We also have a separate human project that we do in conjunction with human clinicians. So that’s me and other non-clinical PhDs doing clinical research (both human and animal), and several clinicians (DVM and human) doing lab work.

Some veterinary research is done in petri dishes (in vitro). Some is done on natural tissue (in situ). Some is done with whole animals, either anesthetized or awake (in vivo). Some is done in the clinic (also in vivo). I’ve done all of those. There’s a huge range of research options and either the DVM or PhD can get you there. There’s a lot to consider in making that decision, and it can’t be so neatly categorized as clinical vs non-clinical. Though if you want to work with animal patients much, you’ll obviously need the DVM. For a few reasons, I actually wish I’d gotten a medical degree instead of a PhD, even though I wasn’t interested in working a lot with patients. I could still do my same job (but there would be other important differences).

Finally, I am very sorry to hear about your recent mental health troubles. You’re wise to consider the most common challenges experienced by DVMs and PhDs. I will caution you that even though I’m not a DVM, I have easy access to plenty of lethal means. They literally surround me daily. That will be the case for most animal research, so it’s important that you safeguard yourself with a lot of support for your mental health regardless of the research setting. While we follow all the safety protocols religiously, the potential for misuse might honestly be worse in the academic research lab setting because there aren’t as many people looking over one’s shoulder as there would be in the clinic. It might take a while for someone to notice a member of our lab stealing the most obvious candidate scheduled drugs (anesthesia/euthanasia), and a less common unscheduled lethal drug (paralytic, neurotoxin, etc.) might not ever be noticed. Take good care of yourself, no matter what.

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thank you very much. i think im leaning toward the DVM. i’ll definitely try to keep myself safe and take care of my mental health.