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The Data We Haven’t Faced: Why Disclosure Culture May Be the Most Important Reform in Modern Veterinary Medicine

For decades, veterinary medicine has tried to understand burnout and workforce attrition through the same lens: too much workload, too much stress, not enough resilience, not enough wellbeing initiatives.

But emerging data — from workforce surveys, student studies, and regulatory disclosures — point to a different, and far deeper, story.

A story of needs the profession has never made room for. A story of silence. A story of risk hidden beneath the surface. And when you place the datasets side by side, the conclusion is impossible to ignore:

The greatest unaddressed driver of burnout and attrition in veterinary medicine may be unsafe disclosure culture — and fixing it could reshape the trajectory of the veterinary profession — and its retention, sustainability, and humanity.

It could be the most consequential workforce reform of a generation.

The Workforce is Not Who We Think It Is

In an anonymous Australian workforce survey: 38% of veterinarians  identified as disabled, neurodivergent, or chronically ill.

This is not a fringe demographic. It is not a small subgroup. It is more than one in three of us.

Yet most veterinary workplaces — their rosters, supervision models, sensory environments, communication norms, and HR structures — are built around a narrow “default clinician” that simply does not exist for a large portion of the workforce.

This mismatch is not an inconvenience. It is a structural hazard.

Attrition Data Exposes a Preventable Leak — and We’ve Been Undercounting It

What the data shows across multiple studies is striking:

• 30% of vets are considering leaving within five years.

• And 24% of vets and 28% of vet nurses planning to leave within five years identify a lack of accommodations or adjustments as their primary reason.

That means: At least 7–8% of the entire veterinary workforce is on track to leave due to unmet needs.

Yet here’s the methodological flaw in most surveys: They allow respondents to choose only one primary reason.

That obscures the reality that many vets leave because of multiple interacting pressures, with poor adjustments acting as a secondary or tertiary driver.

If even a modest proportion of the remaining leavers experienced lack of support as a secondary factor — a conservative assumption — the true impact of adjustment failure is significantly higher than 7–8%.

This is not a marginal issue. It is a central workforce instability driver.

Student Studies Show the Scale of the Hidden Problem

At most veterinary schools, very few students disclose disability, neurodivergence or chronic illness. At the Royal Veterinary College, that number was 3.5%. When the culture was changed to be genuinely safe, supprotive and inclusive, that number rose to 20%.

Inclusive cultures can see a 5-6 fold increase in disclosure.

Students do not suddenly become disabled. They simply become safe enough to be visible.

This reveals an uncomfortable truth: we have no idea how many vets are struggling, because culture hides more than it reveals.

Hidden needs are unmanaged needs. Unmanaged needs become cumulative strain. Cumulative strain becomes burnout.

And Then There’s the Most Damning Statistic of All:

Fewer than 1% of veterinarians disclose disability to their regulatory board.

Read that again.

• 38% of veterinarians live with disability, neurodivergence, or chronic illness (according to the AVA Workforce Survey 2023-2024).

• But less than 1% feel safe disclosing those needs to the body responsible for oversight and wellbeing.

This is not just a gap. It is a diagnosis of the culture we’ve built. When fewer than 1% of a 38% demographic feels safe approaching a regulator, the system is communicating one message: “Disclose at your own risk.”

This is not an individual problem. It is a structural indictment.

A system built for safety-critical professions cannot function if clinicians fear the consequences of being known.

Every high-stakes, high-accountability profession (medicine, aviation, policing, military, nursing) shows the same pattern: the more formal and consequential the audience, the lower the disclosure.

If 38% of vets have needs, but <1% feel safe disclosing to governing bodies - then the disclosure pipeline collapses at the point of power.

That is the strongest possible systems-level signal that:

• Disclosure culture is unsafe

• Surveillance cultures produce silence

• Clinicians feel punished for vulnerability

• Boards are perceived as hazards

• Regulatory systems are out of step with disability and neurodiversity realities

This is a textbook example of a “silenced system” — and it is exactly what the psychological safety literature describes.

When the Data Points Are Viewed Together, the Causal Loop becomes Unmistakable

When we lay the data out in sequence, the pattern forms a closed loop.

1. 38% of the workforce lives with disability, neurodivergence, or chronic illness.
   → A large proportion needs flexibility or adjustments.

2. Only a small number disclose these needs in unsafe cultures.
   → They remain invisible where visibility feels risky.

3. Fewer than one percent disclose to regulators.
   → Fear of scrutiny overrides the need for support.

4. Needs remain unmet, and adjustment failure becomes a major exit driver.
   → Chronic adaptation and minority stress accumulate.

5. Burnout appears as a personal problem.
   → In reality it emerges from environmental mismatch.

6. Attrition rises.
   → The remaining staff carry the load, which deepens burnout further.

This is a self reinforcing loop. Hidden needs become unmet needs, unmet needs become burnout, burnout becomes attrition, and attrition increases pressure on the very people who are already struggling.

We have been solving the wrong part of the problem.

This is Why Decades of Burnout Interventions Failed

For years, burnout was treated as a personal weakness. The profession responded with:

• Resilience workshops

• Wellness programs

• Mindfulness sessions

• Self-care reminders

• Time-management techniques

• “Better coping” strategies

But burnout was never driven by a lack of coping. It has always been driven by a system that punishes visibility, suppresses needs, and creates friction for anyone who does not fit the invisible norm.

Burnout is what happens when 38 percent of your workforce has support needs, and fewer than 1 percent feel safe trusting the system with them.

This is not a wellbeing problem. It is a design problem.

The Missing link: How Unsafe Disclosure Culture may Contribute to Burnout and Suicide Risk

And the consequences extend far beyond retention. Veterinary medicine carries some of the highest documented suicide rates of any profession.

For decades, we have tried to explain this through individual traits:

• Personality

• Empathy

• Perfectionism

• Stress tolerance

• Workload

• Compassion fatigue

These factors matter, but they cannot explain why suicide risk is higher among women, LGBTQIA+ vets, disabled and neurodivergent clinicians, and those working in psychologically unsafe cultures.

When we place the disclosure data alongside what we already know about suicide risk, a clear pattern emerges. Chronic masking, unmet needs, minority stress, and fear of disclosure are recognised risk multipliers for both burnout and suicidality in every safety-critical profession.

This is the long tail of the hidden curriculum that teaches vets to suppress needs, endure silently, and equate vulnerability with failure.

Silence delays support. Silence intensifies minority stress. Silence accelerates burnout. Silence breeds isolation, shame, and exhaustion. Silence blocks early intervention. Silence becomes a clinical risk factor.

The link is not dramatic. It is predictable.

When risk cannot be mitigated, harm compounds. And when harm compounds, some colleagues do not survive it.

This is not speculation. It is what appears in every high-risk profession where stigma, surveillance, inaccessible systems, fear of regulatory consequences, and punitive culture prevent early disclosure of distress or health needs. Veterinary medicine fits that pattern with painful accuracy.

People who Don’t Experience a Barrier Rarely Recognise It As Real

If you have never needed an accommodation, have never feared disclosing a health condition, have never been harmed by a regulator, have never masked neurodivergence, have never feared sensory overwhelm, have never been punished for difference, or have never had your competence questioned because of your body or brain -

…then it is intuitively hard to imagine that these factors could drive burnout or attrition.

This isn’t malice. It’s human psychology.

People default to the problems they experience: workload, angry clients, on-call, compassion fatigue, and decision fatigue.

So when you introduce a new framework — one that explains burnout through structural exclusion, unmet needs, and minority stress — it can feel foreign at first.

The Profession’s Culture has Normalised Invisibility

Veterinary medicine has taught generations of clinicians that:

• Coping silently is professionalism

• Self-sacrifice is noble

• Disclosure is risky

• Vulnerability is weakness

• Health conditions are “fitness to practise” problems

• The “ideal vet” is endlessly adaptable

• Any deviation is “special treatment”

So when 38% of the workforce is carrying needs that contradict that narrative, we end up with a major cultural mismatch: the majority doesn’t see the issue, because the minority learned not to be seen.

That’s why the <1% regulator disclosure statistic is so powerful — it quantifies that invisibility.

In every profession studied, neurotypical staff do not recognise ND stressors, able-bodied staff underestimate access barriers, cis/straight staff do not experience identity-based risk, men underestimate the gendered burnout load, white staff underestimate racism stressors.

Vets are no different.

Those who don’t carry these risks won’t naturally see the link between: unmet needs, masking, chronic adaptation labour, exclusion from informal communication, sensory overload, fear of consequences, lack of adjustments, burnout and suicidal ideation.

These connections come into focus only when the data make them visible.

If you haven’t lived these experiences, they do not appear in your mental model of burnout.

And that is precisely why the profession has missed these drivers for decades.

Yet all of this is completely consistent with disability studies research, minority stress theory, organisational psychology, and health-regulation literature.

Burnout is the downstream result of a system where needs cannot surface.

Does Disclosure Culture Meet the Threshold for “Generation-Shaping Reform”?

Unequivocally, it does.

Disclosure culture affects more than a third of the profession directly and the entire workforce indirectly. Improving it stabilises long-term workforce supply by reducing preventable exits.

It targets the root of burnout rather than its symptoms, because safe disclosure is the gateway to adjustments, psychological safety, and early intervention.

It fits squarely within WHS obligations and ISO 45003, which both require systems that enable workers to speak up safely about health and capacity needs. And it enables every other inclusion and workforce reform, from flexible rostering to equitable performance management to genuinely inclusive leadership.

Very few changes in veterinary medicine have the power to shift the profession so widely and so deeply. Disclosure culture is one of the only reforms that checks every box.

From Courage to Culture

For decades, we’ve praised individuals for being “brave enough to disclose.” But courage should never be a workplace requirement. Safety must be designed into systems, not demanded from people.

Fixing the culture around disclosure means dismantling the false binary between able and disabled, between safe to be open and safe to stay silent. It means embedding psychological safety into every tier of veterinary life — from education to regulation, from leadership to law.

When trust is no longer conditional, disclosure will no longer be an act of courage. It will simply be an act of belonging.

This is the future of veterinary medicine — not resilience, but redesign.

To learn more about how we could redesign a whole profession to create healthier disclosure culture, and address our attrition and retention crisis read Why So Many Vets Hide: The Cultural Blind Spot We Can No Longer Ignore.