How practices can better support and retain veterinary technicians from different backgrounds

Veterinary technician retention remains a persistent challenge across the profession, prompting ongoing conversations around compensation, workplace support, and career development. In this video, Melody Martínez, CVT, president of the Multicultural Veterinary Medical Association, discusses strategies practices can consider to better support staff, including competitive pay, professional growth opportunities, and creating workplaces that recognize employees’ varied backgrounds, skills, and career goals.

Below is a partial transcript, lightly edited for clarity:

Martínez: What would it look like to grow the Spanish-speaking community at that clinic? Could that person be involved in programming and in opportunities that bring that community as a whole to that clinic? That clinic is seen as the place where Spanish speakers, Vietnamese speakers, Creole speakers, and Arabic speakers go to get their pets' needs met.

One of the ways that we need to critically understand how to retain people of color in the profession—and especially technicians, assistants, and support staff in general—is to ask ourselves not “What more could they be doing?” but “What more do they want to be doing? And how do we support that?”

I recently spoke to another Latina technician who told me that she signed up for a medical interpretation program at her local community college because she wanted to provide more robust medical interpretation at her clinic, and her clinic was allowing her to use her professional development stipend to do that. I said, “That is incredible and unheard of. I really hope that beyond giving you the professional development dollars to be able to take that course, that when you finish that course, they actually allow you to innovate and change how that clinic serves the Spanish-speaking population within your area—not just the people who happen to walk in who have limited English but to grow the clientele and to support and be in relationship with that community.”

It's really important for leadership, practice owners, and practice managers to ask: What more could we be doing? What more do you want to be doing? And I think another question is: Who do you want to be serving, aside from animals? What's important to you?