Career choice: Veterinarian
General Information
Occupation description: Diagnose, treat, or research diseases and injuries of animals. Includes veterinarians who conduct research and development, inspect livestock, or care for pets and companion animals.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Knowledge:
• Biology - Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Medicine and Dentistry - Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
• Mathematics - Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
• Chemistry - Knowledge of the chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
Skills:
• Science - Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems.
• Active Listening - Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Critical Thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
• Judgment and Decision Making - Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
• Reading Comprehension - Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
Abilities:
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Tasks and Activities:
Occupation Specific Tasks:
• Advise animal owners regarding sanitary measures, feeding, general care, medical conditions, or treatment options.
• Attend lectures, conferences, or continuing education courses.
• Collect body tissue, feces, blood, urine, or other body fluids for examination and analysis.
• Conduct postmortem studies and analyses to determine the causes of animals' deaths.
• Determine the effects of drug therapies, antibiotics, or new surgical techniques by testing them on animals.
• Direct the overall operations of animal hospitals, clinics, or mobile services to farms.
• Drive mobile clinic vans to farms so that health problems can be treated or prevented.
• Educate the public about diseases that can be spread from animals to humans.
• Establish or conduct quarantine or testing procedures that prevent the spread of diseases to other animals or to humans and that comply with applicable government regulations.
• Euthanize animals.
• Examine animals to detect