A vast amount of nontraditional jobs provide options for veterinary technicians

There is a vast amount of nontraditional jobs for veterinary technicians and roles that rely on the skills these professionals have built. In a CE session at the 2024 American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Convention in Austin, Texas, lecturer Melody Martínez, CVT, president of the Multicultural Veterinary Medical Association, discussed her career path to a nontraditional job in veterinary medicine, and options that are available to technicians who are interested in a different role.

In an interview with dvm360 at the AVMA convention, Martínez outlined a variety of nontraditional jobs. These include roles in academia, administration, veterinary support industries, and more.

The following is a transcript of the video:

Melody Martínez, CVT: Some of the typical nontraditional careers include insurance work [such as] a claim adjuster, an administrative role, an insurance company, industry jobs—whether it’s sales, pharmacology work or administrative work in an industry role—academia, so teaching veterinary technology or teaching about careers in veterinary medicine. Some of those academic jobs also include campus recruiters or program recruiters, as well as administrative roles.

And then there’s a wealth of jobs in animal welfare, whether it’s shelter work or rescue work, that are really suited for technicians. They may not be jobs or roles written for technicians, but [jobs] where the skills and the education that a technician has come to bear really well. And then, recently, there’s kind of been an uptick of a lot of telehealth and teletriage remote jobs, and grief support jobs or palliative care or hospice jobs that are nontraditional, whether they are remote or hybrid or mobile in nature.

There are also roles that are entrepreneurial. So a lot of technicians who go on and do relief services or do medical pet sitting or do some sort of concierge service that they’re providing to their clients in the community or doing palliative care or death work.

[There are] just a lot of different options for technicians, and those aren’t even the roles that are kind of in the network of veterinary health, like grooming and boarding or pet sitting or dog training, or any of those sorts of jobs that are kind of still within the realm of animals or veterinary health.