Dana Varble
DVM, CAE, Chief Veterinary Officer of the NAVC
Dana Varble received her veterinary degree from University of Illinois in 2003 and earned her Certified Association Executive designation from ASAE in 2021. She has practiced clinical medicine in exotic pet, small animal general practice and emergency medicine and serves as an associate veterinarian for Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital. She has spoken locally, nationally, and internationally on herpetological and exotic animal medicine and the state of the veterinary profession. She served as the president of the Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians in 2013 and presently works as the managing editor of the Journal of Herpetological Medicine and Surgery for ARAV. In 2015, she joined NAVC and in January of 2020 she was named Chief Veterinary Officer. As a NAVC spokesperson and a veterinary industry expert, she promotes animal health and the veterinary profession through media interviews and appearances including CNN, Steve Dale’s Pet World, Pet Life Radio, NBC News, local media outlets and others.
She shares her home with a mixed-up brown dog named Hannah, a Leonberger named Kodi, a tank of cichlids, four ball pythons, and a domestic human, Patrick, and his kids Lexi, and PJ.
Read Articles Written by Dana Varble“Human medicine is the gold standard.” I clearly remember that being the party line in veterinary school. We, as veterinarians, were to strive to reach that pinnacle of medical success! I blindly thought that transplants and robotic surgery were the “best” and were simply out of reach. That’s where that “not a real doctor” feeling came from!
A few years out of veterinary school, I attended my first crossover conference. I struck up a conversation with a human medicine anesthesiologist and shop talk had us comparing drugs, laughing over dose differences, and having a bunch of “aha” moments in which we realized how similar our practices actually were. In fact, he expressed admiration for veterinary medicine’s more widespread use of sedation, analgesia, and low-stress practices. It was my first clue that veterinary medicine wasn’t an ant hill next to Mount Everest.
My next reality check was much more serious. My human friend had cancer, and it was terminal. Watching his neurosurgeon, no doubt an accomplished and well-trained medical professional, struggle to tell his family that my friend would not wake up was terrible. The emotions, struggles, and fears were at the very top of my mind, but in the back of my head, a reality crept in. He wasn’t good at end-of-life care, and veterinarians are so much better—more training and practice had given our profession the edge. As the neurosurgeon awkwardly left the room, his family turned to me for help, which I was honored to provide.
Despite these experiences, I still held on to the belief that veterinary medicine was the distant and low-class cousin of human medicine. More recently, though, I attended a human medicine conference focused on technology, information management, and data. Initially, I thought I would be a bit lost. After all, human medicine was so far ahead of us, right? Then I attended sessions on struggles with access to care, workforce shortages, and practitioner acceptance of telehealth. I left bewildered. In human medicine, there are mid-level practitioners, government support, and insurance-supported telehealth apps, and they still have the same issues? Yes, they do!
I have come to realize that veterinary medicine is not “behind” human medicine. It is a unique profession that in many ways is running parallel to human medicine; “behind” in some ways, “ahead” in others. While we can continue to learn and grow based on human medicine, veterinary medicine is as unique and advanced as any profession. We need to find our solutions, whether they are for individual patients or for our profession as a whole.