Canberk BALABAN’s scientific contributions

Having a pet has become an important phenomenon in recent years and Istanbul stands out as the largest market. The aim of the study is to shine a spotlight on both the veterinarians working in this field and the students who plan to work by examining the economic status of clinics and the socio-demographic structures of veterinarians in Istanbul. Studies were conducted mostly face-to-face in 225 clinics between April 2019 and April 2021. The questionnaires were sent to a small number of veterinarians via e-mail. The first findings were that 42.4% and 63.6% of the mean age of the clinicians are male and the majority were Istanbul University graduates with 77.3%. Vast majority had a negative attitude towards the opening of new faculties (24.9% Bad - 75.1% Very Bad), and the majority (79.1%) had a negative attitude towards the provision of veterinary medicine education in foundation universities. According to the study, for the year 2020 the average monthly earning was 17618 TL (2499 USD) and 28.4% were less than 10000 TL (1418 USD). The largest income item was vaccination with 28.8%, and the largest expense item was drug expenditures with 23.9%. It had been determined that the average rental price paid was 9569 TL (1357 USD). According to the results, the average annual expenditure was 2822 TL (400 USD) for cats and 4516 TL (641 USD) for dogs. In addition, the annual average uncollectible receivables per clinic has been determined as 28444 TL (4034 USD), which meant a large loss of approximately 21 million TL (approx. 3 million USD) on a provincial basis. In general, the research concluded that veterinarians were satisfied with their professions with deficiencies in basic business information and could spend little time on their social lives due to long hours of work. From this point of view, it is of utmost importance to regulate the working conditions and to increase education programs in business matters during university year and beyond.

With the increasing in companion animal (pet) adoption in the recent years, clinics are now becoming businesses enterprises. In parallel with this increase in ownership, a significant number of veterinarians have started to choose companion animal area. According to records there is a total of 7915 ministry licensed enterprises in Turkey (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2021a) and 749 of them are established in Istanbul (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2021b). For this reason, Istanbul has been determined as the study site. In this research, it is aimed to determine the physical structures, technical equipment, patient distribution and to analyze the business activities and problems encountered of the companion animal veterinary clinics in Istanbul. Survey studies were conducted mostly face-to-face (96%) in 225 clinics in Istanbul between April 2019 and April 2021. At the end of the research, it was determined that the majority of the clinics in Istanbul were 100-200 square meters in size, single storey, with 1 examination room. In addition, 96,0% of the clinics are rental and 74,2% of which are sole corporation. In terms of investment, all clinics has a microscopic examination set. Vast majority (95.0%) have X-ray devices and 87.0% analysers. In terms of patient distribution, cats represents 61.9% and dogs represents 33.0%. In the age distribution, those between the ages of 2-5 constitute the largest group for both cats and dogs. The most common reason for the first visit is vaccination with 39.6%. With the research, it has been observed that clinics are generally small-medium in size (81,3%) and independent clinics. The fact that large and chain enterprises are almost non-existent causes both the amount of investment and the expenditure required for promotional activities to be high. From this point of view, it is clearly seen that clinics should become more professional enterprises. In order to do that veterinarians always try to improve business and administrative capabilities by attending to training events.