Profile of currently practising veterinary assistants

Numbers of currently practising veterinary assistants are presented in the FOCUS study by sex, average age and professional experience.

Number of veterinary assistants

% male and female veterinary assistants

Country	DK	ES	FI	FR	HU	PT	RO	SI	SK	UK
Number of practising veterinary assistants	250	2 000	60	12 800	230	500	5 500	122	320	5 000
% men	n/a	10	10	18	10		60	70	40	1
% women	n/a	90	75	82	90		40	30	60	99
Average age	n/a	26	27,5	30	25		27		30	20
Qualified assistants	350			1 800			5 550	150	154
% men	0						40	70	22
% women	100						60	30	78
Average age				28			28		19
% Qualified/Total	140			14			100	123	48

France has the highest number of practising veterinary assistants with almost 13 000 employees. The United Kingdom, with approximately the same population has only 5000 veterinary assistants. Surprisingly, Romania has roughly the same number of assistants as the United Kingdom. It would appear that the profession of veterinary assistant is combined with that of agricultural technician and more particularly that of zootechnician. This would explain the very low proportion of women in the profession in this country. A similar level is found in Slovenia.

Finally there appear to be few assistants in Finland (60) but that may be explained by the fact that there are few vets and veterinary surgeries.