The scale of the ethical challenges faced by veterinary surgeons and their perceived stressful consequences were investigated via a short questionnaire, completed by 58 practising veterinary surgeons. Respondents were asked to report how frequently they faced ethical dilemmas, and to rate on a simple numerical scale (zero to 10) how stressful they found three common scenarios. Fifty seven per cent of respondents reported that they faced one to two dilemmas per week, while 34 per cent stated they typically faced three to five dilemmas per week. The three scenarios provided were all rated as highly stressful with 'client wishing to continue treatment despite poor animal welfare' rated as the most stressful (median 9). The female veterinary surgeons gave two of the scenarios significantly higher stress ratings than the male veterinary surgeons. Stress ratings were not influenced by number of years in practice (which ranged from one to more than 25 years). The results show that veterinary surgeons regularly face ethical dilemmas and that they find these stressful. This has implications for the wellbeing of veterinary surgeons and supports the case for increased provision of training and support, especially for those who entered the profession before undergraduate ethics teaching was widely available.VETERINARY surgeons often find themselves faced with difficult decisions as a result of their duties towards both animals and clients, especially when the wants of the client conflict with the interests or welfare of the animal. Veterinary surgeons also face the added complication that in many cases there is a lack of clearly defined rules of what course of action is best. This leads to situations in which the best outcome is not obvious and these situations are often referred to as ethical dilemmas. These ethical dilemmas typically involve decisions regarding treatment options (eg, whether to try the most advanced treatments available), the welfare or quality of life of the animal (eg, is prolonged life the best option for the animal?), the interests of the client (eg, what is the client prepared to pay for treatment?) and the duty of care to both (Wiseman-Orr and others 2009). In her doctoral dissertation, Morgan (2009) stress to the animal (eg, dehorning in cattle), the controversial issue of healthy animal euthanasia and whether to break client confidentiality in favour of the animal. It is quite possible that facing such difficult decisions regularly is stressful, and a recent poll in the UK reported that over 80 per cent of veterinary surgeons thought that veterinary medicine was a stressful occupation (Robinson and Hooker 2006). In support of this, a survey of recent graduates from five of the UK vet schools (Mellanby and Herrtage 2004) found that less than half of them reported that they could always rely on support from others in the practice and 78 per cent had made mistakes during treatments which had negative emotional repercussions. In a review by Platt and others (2010), 28 studies relating to stress and b...

Veterinary medicine is an ethically challenging profession, but the ethical reasoning abilities of practising veterinarians in the UK have never been formally assessed. This study investigated moral reasoning ability in 65 qualified veterinarians (38 practising and 27 academic) and 33 members of the public in the UK using the Defining Issues Test. Academic veterinarians had higher scores than members of the public but practising veterinarians did not. There was large variation in moral reasoning abilities among qualified veterinarians. Moral reasoning score in veterinarians did not improve with years of experience. These results show that despite having a professional degree moral reasoning skills of practising veterinarians may be insufficient to deal with the demands of their profession. This could have implications for animal welfare, client services and veterinarian wellbeing. The results highlight the need for more training in this area.