Editor’s Note: This article is the second story in a two-part series exploring emergency veterinary care access in Santa Barbara County. Read the first story here.
Accessing emergency veterinary care in Santa Barbara on nights or weekends can be difficult, as burnout contributes to staff shortages — a nationwide problem.
There are only two 24/7 emergency veterinary hospitals in Santa Barbara County: PETS Hospital in Orcutt and Advanced Veterinary Specialists in Santa Barbara.
Since the loss of the area’s third 24/7 emergency room, pet owners have sometimes struggled to access nearby emergency veterinary care on nights or weekends, when general veterinary offices are closed.
However, pet owners aren’t the only ones feeling that pressure, and fixing that problem isn’t quite as simple as opening another hospital.
Extremely Labor- and Skill-Intensive Work
There is a shortage of qualified veterinary professionals nationwide. According to UC Davis, California is projected to have a shortfall of 2,500 veterinarians by 2030.
There are several reasons for this, according to the veterinarians who spoke to Noozhawk.
Becoming a veterinarian is expensive and requires extensive schooling. Most prospective veterinarians pursue a minimum of eight years of schooling after high school: four years as an undergraduate and four years of veterinary school. They must also pass a licensing exam.
In 2025, 40% of veterinarians came out of school with $200,000 in debt, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Roughly 6% had $400,000 or more.
That financial burden can make it difficult to recruit staff to Santa Barbara County, where the cost of living is high. Officials said last year that the cost to live in Santa Barbara County and be able to afford basic needs is $111,602.
Michelle Wright, hospital administrator at PETS Hospital in Orcutt, described a veterinarian as “everything — they’re a cardiologist, a radiologist, an oncologist, they’re … a surgeon for multiple species.
“The amount of knowledge that’s packed into their brains is unbelievable.”
In Orcutt, staff at the 24/7 PETS Hospital work long hours, with 25 to 30 staff members and two or three doctors on site at any given time, according to medical director Dr. Deanna Brown.
Doctors work 12½-hour shifts, and they sometimes stay two to three more hours after their shift to tie up loose ends. Staff shifts last anywhere from eight to 12 hours.
Citing an ongoing shortage of emergency room veterinary staff and increased demand since VCA Care closed, Brown said PETS has turned to promoting and training from within.
Wright pointed to one of their registered technicians, who started at PETS with “zero” knowledge and has now been with the facility for five years, as an example.
However, finding people willing to stay long term in a profession that has hours not “compatible with the rest of society” — as Brown put it — can be difficult.
It’s only one part of the problem. Burnout is a very real issue.
Nationally, the average career of an emergency veterinary doctor is two to three years “because of that pace, because of the emotional toll, the physical toll,” Brown said.
“The people who stay in it for 20 years, like me, are the exception.”
She added: “In a really healthy hospital, like what we have, we do a lot to counteract the burnout, but it still exists. It’s still a challenge.”
‘A Side of Veterinary Medicine That the Public Doesn’t Always See’
Dr. Addie Crawford owns Urgent Veterinary Care on De la Vina Street in Santa Barbara, which offers extended hours into the night and on weekends to help alleviate some burden on local emergency rooms.
She pointed to several reasons for the veterinary staffing shortage: long hours, repeated exposure to death, compassion fatigue, and difficult interactions with clients.
She called it “a side of veterinary medicine that the public doesn’t always see.”
When helping treat patients, Crawford said, her team can be “yelled at, insulted, threatened or publicly accused of not caring, even while they are working incredibly hard under very difficult circumstances.”
People are “understandably frightened and emotional when a beloved animal is sick,” she said. “Unfortunately, that fear, grief and frustration can sometimes be directed at the veterinary professionals trying to help.
“You can’t solve a veterinary staffing shortage by burning out the veterinary professionals who are already here.”
Sometimes, Brown said, her staff have to act as human therapists as much as they have to serve as licensed veterinary professionals.
Some pet owners handle grief well, she said. Others don’t.
Those working conditions contribute to documented mental-health struggles among veterinary staff.
Veterinarians working in the United States are at an “increased risk of suicide,” according to one study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It revealed that male veterinarians are 1.6 times more likely and female veterinarians are 2.4 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Dr. Hilary Quinn, owner of Wilder Animal Hospital in the Goleta Valley, said Santa Barbara has lost two veterinarians to suicide in the past decade.
Working in veterinary medicine is a “tough field,” she said. “We’re all in it because we love animals, and there’s really no other motive behind it.”
Compassion fatigue is a very real thing, Quinn said, and veterinary staff can get stretched very thin.
“We do our best all day, every day. It’s exhausting for us,” Quinn said. “It’s exhausting for the staff who are also in the field purely for the love of it.”
