Animal Research to examine the question: How can more veterinarians* be prepared for careers in biomedical research? The committee was asked to develop strategies for recruiting more veterinarians into postgraduate training programs in specialties that can be applied to the biomedical research endeavor.

In order to develop a comprehensive strategy for recruiting more comparative medicine veterinarians into careers in biomedical research, the authoring committee determined that a detailed examination of the current comparative medicine veterinary workforce was needed, as were projections on the future of this workforce. This type of quantitative examination requires extensive demographic information on the workforce. Unfortunately, the authoring committee found that the majority of the demographic information they sought does not exist. The comparative medicine veterinary workforce is an extremely diverse workforce, with a wide variety of educational and training experiences as well as many different career pathways. Compounding this is the fact that comparative medicine veterinarians comprise a very small portion of any professional categorization, and there is little impetus for any one professional organization or society to expend resources on the types of detailed demographic surveys that exist for other doctoral professionals such as doctors of medicine (MDs), doctors of philosophy (PhDs), and engineers. The committee therefore reaffirms the recommendation of the 1982 National Research Council (NRC) report Specialized Veterinary Manpower Needs Through 1990 (see Appendix A) that: