Also called: ER Vet, Veterinary Criticalist
Treats pets hit by cars, poisoned, or in sudden crisis, often overnight at 24-hour animal hospitals.
Works a 12-hour overnight shift: stabilizes a dog that ate rat poison, does emergency surgery on a cat with a blocked bladder, and runs CPR on a collapsed Labrador. Board-certified criticalists run the ICU.
Estimate; board-certified specialists typically earn well above general-practice vets.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Professional degree (MD, JD, DVM…), about 12 years after high school. Bachelor's, 4-year DVM, a 1-year internship, then (for specialists) a 3-year emergency and critical care residency.
Ways in: 4-year college, Professional school. Training cost: Over $150k.
Majors to look at: Animal Science, Biology, Pre-Veterinary, Zoology.
Growing much faster than average (about 10% over 10 years). Emergency vets are in especially short supply.
Low risk for 10 years. AI monitoring flags crashing patients and speeds triage; stabilizing poisoned dogs and emergency surgery at 3 a.m. stay human.
Classes: AP Biology, AP Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, Physics.
Official data: O*NET occupation 29-1131.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.