Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1131.00
Veterinarians
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.
- US jobs
- 83,900
- Median wage
- $130,100 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of veterinarians?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Treat sick or injured animals by prescribing medication, setting bones, dressing wounds, or performing surgery.
- Inoculate animals against various diseases, such as rabies or distemper.
- Examine animals to detect and determine the nature of diseases or injuries.
- Collect body tissue, feces, blood, urine, or other body fluids for examination and analysis.
- Operate diagnostic equipment, such as radiographic or ultrasound equipment, and interpret the resulting images.
- Educate the public about diseases that can be spread from animals to humans.
- Counsel clients about the deaths of their pets or about euthanasia decisions for their pets.
- Advise animal owners regarding sanitary measures, feeding, general care, medical conditions, or treatment options.
- Euthanize animals.
- Attend lectures, conferences, or continuing education courses.
- Train or supervise workers who handle or care for animals.
- Perform administrative or business management tasks, such as scheduling appointments, accepting payments from clients, budgeting, or maintaining business records.
Other job titles for this occupation (48)
Companion Animal Practitioner · Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) · Emergency Veterinarian (Emergency Vet) · Large Animal Veterinarian (Large Animal Vet) · Mixed Animal Veterinarian (Mixed Animal Vet) · Small Animal Veterinarian (Small Animal Vet) · Veterinary Medicine Doctor (DVM) · Veterinary Surgeon (Vet Surgeon) · Veterinary Surgical Specialist (Vet Surgical Specialist) · Zoo Veterinarian (Zoo Vet) · Animal Anatomist · Animal Chiropractor · Animal Doctor · Animal Pathologist · Animal Physiologist · Animal Surgeon · Equine Dentist · Equine Vet (Equine Veterinarian) · Horse Doctor · Laboratory Animal Care Veterinarian (Lab Animal Care Vet) · Laboratory Veterinarian (Lab Vet) · Managing Veterinarian · Poultry Veterinarian (Poultry Vet) · Professional Services Veterinarian (PSV) · Public Health Veterinarian (Public Health Vet) · Relief Veterinarian (Relief Vet) · Technical Services Veterinarian (Technical Services Vet) · Treatment Coordinator · Veterinarian Epidemiologist (Vet Epidemiologist) · Veterinary Anatomist (Vet Anatomist) · Veterinary Bacteriologist (Vet Bacteriologist) · Veterinary Cardiologist · Veterinary Dentist (Vet Dentist) · Veterinary Epidemiologist (Vet Epidemiologist) · Veterinary Inspector (Vet Inspector) · Veterinary Laboratory Diagnostician (Vet Lab Diagnostician) · Veterinary Livestock Inspector (Vet Livestock Inspector) · Veterinary Meat Inspector (Vet Meat Inspector) · Veterinary Medicine Scientist (Vet Medicine Scientist) · Veterinary Microbiologist (Vet Microbiologist) · Veterinary Parasitologist (Vet Parasitologist) · Veterinary Pathologist (Vet Pathologist) · Veterinary Pharmacologist (Vet Pharmacologist) · Veterinary Physiologist (Vet Physiologist) · Veterinary Radiologist (Vet Radiologist) · Veterinary Toxicologist (Vet Toxicologist) · Veterinary Virus Serum Inspector (Vet Virus Serum Inspector) · Wildlife Veterinarian (Wildlife Vet)