Question: Is it ever hard being a vet and a cancer research scientist

Jocelyn Bisson answered on 10 Jun 2022:

Yes sometimes!

At the moment I’m taking time away from being a vet so that I can completely focus on science. Eventually I’ll try to do a bit of both at the same time as I want to improve treatments for my patients by doing the science in the lab myself.

There are may similar skills between the two jobs but some big differences too. Being a vet means being on the go all the time and often the results you get (treating an animal and it gets better or not) are very instant. When you go home at the end of the day everything is complete. However, veterinary patients can’t wait for treatment and so you may end up staying late or having to be on call over night.

For science experiments the results take a lot more time and you don’t get instant job satisfaction; it can take years to get clear results. However you can plan your life more carefully and it’s easier to get home on time and have a good work life balance. It’s also more creative; you can make up new experiments and try out new ideas. You can’t really experiment as a vet!