Ethicists’ commentary on ethical responsibility of veterinarians
Ethical quetion of the month, December 2025
You are a solo practitioner working in an outlying community who primarily services companion animals. You have skills and interest in equine work and have been approached by potential clients to provide veterinary services for their horses. Although you can schedule some routine horse work into your small animal load, emergency care is not always possible. The clients are currently reliant on group practices that are in a distant community and are reluctant to travel to do either routine or emergency work. You approach the practices with your plan of providing some service and are told that without joining the on-call emergency rotation your clients will be “blacklisted” and will not receive any service, either routine or emergent. Joining the on-call rotation is completely impractical given your location, limited equipment, and solo practice responsibilities. Given the challenges of veterinary shortages and geography, you feel that providing at least some service protects the welfare of horses in your community to a certain extent.
Is it ethical to deny service to animals needing care based on who their regular provider is, when there are no other options?
Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe, & Dan Weary comment on this dilemma and you can read it here: Ethicists’ commentary on the ethical responsibility of veterinarians.