Nearly half the practices in our 2026 survey reported that compressed schedules have worked for them as a retention strategy. One Detroit-area practice owner reported zero clinical staff turnover in the 14 months since implementing it.
But dropping a day from your schedule without changing anything else means either compressing the same caseload into fewer hours or reducing total weekly capacity. Both create problems. The practices where four-day weeks are actually succeeding increased per-shift output enough to offset the lost day.
This blog covers one section of our 2026 Veterinary IV Pump Survey. The full report includes data on equipment spending, staffing costs, fluid therapy trends, and business sustainability across 114 companion animal practices.
What the survey found
We asked 114 companion animal practices which retention strategies had actually worked.
Strategy | % who said it worked |
Significant wage increases (10%+) | 61% |
Four-day work week | 47% |
No on-call/emergency hours | 38% |
Profit sharing/bonuses | 34% |
Paid mental health days | 29% |
Student loan assistance | 18% |
Nothing has really worked | 22% |
Four-day weeks ranked second, just behind significant wage increases. The survey notes possible selection bias - practices that have successfully implemented four-day schedules may be more likely to respond than those still struggling through it. Even so, 47% is a meaningful signal.
The 2025 AVMA Report on the Economic State of the Veterinary Profession shows the average full-time veterinarian worked 48.3 hours per week in 2024, which is down from the post-pandemic peak but still elevated. Staff aren't asking for a shorter week as a perk. The workload is heavy.
Four days doesn't mean less work
Image courtesy of Envato
A five-day practice moving to four days has two basic options:
Option | The downside |
Compress the same work into four longer days | Staff fatigue increases. You've changed the calendar but not the experience. |
Reduce total weekly capacity | Revenue drops. You're solving a retention problem by creating a revenue problem. |
Getting to a third outcome - same weekly output on fewer days - requires finding clinical time that's currently going somewhere it doesn't have to go.
Where the hours are going
Our survey asked how many hours per week practices spend on equipment troubleshooting:
Hours per week on equipment troubleshooting | % of practices |
Less than 2 hours | 24% |
2-5 hours | 38% |
6-10 hours | 24% |
11-20 hours | 10% |
More than 20 hours | 4% |
76% of practices spend two or more hours per week on equipment issues. One practice manager in Richmond said "If I added up every time someone troubleshoots a sensor alarm, resets a pump, or calls the manufacturer for help, it's probably 8-10 hours a week across the practice. That's a full shift of lost productivity."
On a four-day schedule, that lost time concentrates into fewer shifts.
Fluid monitoring is a separate drain. Practices running manual gravity drips are spending tech time on something that doesn't require clinical judgment like checking rates, adjusting clamps, rechecking. Pump-controlled delivery eliminates that loop. Practices that shift from primarily manual monitoring to automated fluid delivery recover an estimated 5-7 staff hours per week in redirectable clinical time.
Before you change the schedule
Image courtesy of Envato
If you're seriously considering a four-day week, identify where daily capacity is going before you restructure the calendar.
Manual fluid monitoring. If techs are making regular rounds to check gravity drips, that time is recoverable with pump-controlled delivery.
Equipment troubleshooting. Nuisance alarms and unexpected pump failures eat clinical time. 45% of practices in our survey report having all pumps occupied or frequently needing more during busy periods - if staff default to manual drip because no pump is available, the bottleneck is inventory, not skill.
Reactive vs. scheduled maintenance. Most practices don't have a maintenance schedule. They have a this pump is doing the thing again workflow. That's fixable.
An Albuquerque practice owner who implemented both wage increases and four-day scheduling said "It's a choice between different expenses, because the turnover was costing us more."
That's the right frame. The practices with real retention outcomes from four-day schedules, including that 14-month stretch without a clinical staff departure, solved the throughput problem first. The schedule change was visible. The operational work underneath it was what made it hold.
Data in this post comes from the 2026 AIV Vet Veterinary IV Pump Survey (114 companion animal practices) and the 2025 AVMA Report on the Economic State of the Veterinary Profession.