Currency Research Highlight

Veterinary medicine is one of many professions filled with individuals who feel called to work in their chosen field. 

Anne Marie Zwerg-Villegas, PhD, along with co-authors Bruno Felix, PhD, and Ana Maria Souza Dos Santos, considered how veterinarians manage the challenges of their professional calling in their study, “Overcoming the challenges of living an occupational calling: a study with veterinarians,” published in the September/October 2022 edition of Cadernos EBAPE.BR.

Zwerg-Villegas and co-authors focused on being called into a profession—in this case, veterinary medicine. Through a series of narrative interviews with veterinarians, they discovered that the process of experiencing a calling varied in different ways, such as a calling to be a veterinarian, to do the work of a veterinarian, or to contribute toward helping to heal animals as part of a greater purpose or cause.

Depending on how interviewed workers were called into their profession, Zwerg-Villegas and co-authors noted that there was a marked difference in both short- and long-term emotions and challenges that came from living that profession, as well as ways in which the veterinarians developed coping strategies to overcome those concerns, including social media branding, seeking out pleasurable work activities, and increasing social activism.