Yes — measurably.
The veterinary services industry logged 10.6 nonfatal injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers in 2023, more than four times the 2.4 all-private-industry rate, and BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook places veterinary assistants among the highest injury and illness rates of any occupation.
Here is what those numbers actually cover, where the risk comes from, and what is realistic to do about it.
What the injury data actually says
Two federal data sources describe the same reality from different angles.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' injury survey recorded 10.6 nonfatal injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers across the veterinary services industry in 2023 — against 2.4 per 100 for all private industry, more than four times the all-worker rate (BLS, The Economics Daily, published December 2025, data year 2023).
The Occupational Outlook Handbook puts the same finding in plainer words: veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers "have one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations," and when working with scared and aggressive animals, workers "may be bitten, scratched, or kicked."
The case-type split adds texture.
Of 2023's recordable cases in veterinary services, 5,600 involved days away from work and 5,400 involved a job transfer or work restriction; the remaining 26,900 were classified as other recordable cases.
That works out to 71% of recorded cases not costing a day on the floor — high-frequency, mostly non-lost-time events — though "other recordable" still means injuries that required more than first aid.
Why the rate runs so high
Animals are the reason.
Patients cannot be warned, cannot consent to being handled, and are frequently in pain or afraid when handled — BLS's own explanation is that workers "may be bitten, scratched, or kicked when working with scared and aggressive animals." Unlike nearly every other entry-level job, the central task involves physically restraining a frightened animal while other people perform clinical work on it.
Then there is the mechanics of everything else.
BLS describes animal care work as built from "moving and cleaning cages, lifting bags of food, and exercising animals" — repetitive lifting, bending and long periods on your feet, day after day.
The Handbook's summary line for this occupation covers both halves at once: the work "may be physically and emotionally demanding."
The emotional half of that sentence — absorbing euthanasia, client grief and financial limits on care — is its own subject, covered properly in compassion fatigue in entry-level animal care.
This page stays with the physical half.
The honest caveats in the numbers
The 10.6 figure is an industry rate, not an assistant rate.
It counts everyone in veterinary services — veterinarians, technicians, assistants, receptionists, kennel staff together — and BLS does not publish the rate broken down by job title.
Anyone quoting an assistant-specific injury rate, or a percentage split by injury type, is presenting a number that does not exist in the data.
The occupation-level statement carries its own catch: it covers SOC 31-9096, a combined category counting veterinary assistants together with laboratory animal caretakers — the same aggregation issue that affects the role's pay figures.
And the quantified rate stops at the industry line: boarding and grooming kennels sit in a different industry code entirely, and no equivalent published rate was located for them, so the 10.6 figure should not be applied to a boarding-kennel job.
The kennel attendant vs veterinary assistant comparison covers that boundary in detail.
Numbers to be suspicious of
Where the law actually steps in
Two bodies of regulation shape injury exposure directly, and neither is the veterinary board's scope rules.
The first is radiation.
State radiation control programs — usually the health department, not the veterinary board — govern x-ray use, and their rules are written around who operates the machine and who holds the animal, so they reach uncredentialed staff directly.
Oregon requires non-certified veterinary staff to complete a radiation-safety course before administering radiographs; Virginia issues personnel dosimetry to anyone operating the unit or assisting during an exposure, and bars anyone under 18 from operating the machine or holding an animal for it.
The registration, badge, shielding and training obligations sit with the employer.
The second is delegation.
The supervision rules that decide which tasks you may perform are structured as a duty the veterinarian owes — assigning tasks only to people they have determined are competent, per person and per task — and improper delegation and failure to supervise are separately disciplinable failures.
That framework is covered from the employer's side in what you can legally delegate in a veterinary practice.
For you it reduces to a usable rule: if you are asked to do something you were never trained to do, the practice is the side operating off-script, not you.
What actually reduces your risk
No course eliminates the risk of handling animals — the realistic goal is reducing exposure, and most of it is habits rather than equipment.
Learn and actually use proper restraint technique; ask for a second pair of hands on large or stressed patients instead of committing alone; use the muzzles, towels and restraint aids the practice keeps rather than improvising.
Speak up before restraining an animal that is already escalating — a patient given a short break often becomes one who does not need four people holding it ten seconds later.
The interview and first week are when to calibrate a specific practice.
Questions worth asking: how the team handles fearful or aggressive patients, whether restraint is a two-person job by default, who runs the radiation-safety program, and what training a new assistant actually receives.
A practice with real answers is telling you something measurable about your injury odds there.
A practice that shrugs and says nobody here gets hurt is telling you something too.
Take the radiation rules personally as well — they exist partly because the person holding the patient, not only the person operating the machine, is exposed.
If you will be assisting with radiographs, ask what the practice's radiation-safety training covers and whether your state's program requires dosimetry badges.
The realistic bottom line
Relative to other entry-level work, the risk is real and measurable — an industry injury rate more than four times the all-industry figure, and an occupation BLS itself flags among the highest for injuries and illnesses.
Relative to the dramatized version, the honest read is frequency over catastrophe: 71% of 2023's recordable cases in veterinary services did not involve a day away, a transfer, or restrictions — but the volume is high, and "other recordable" still describes injuries that needed more than first aid.
So go in informed rather than either scared or cavalier.
The work is physical by design, the exposure is an occupational feature of handling animals, and the practices worth working for treat that as a training and staffing question rather than a toughness test.
The full veterinary assistant guide covers what the role pays and where it leads, or browse open veterinary assistant jobs to see how individual practices describe their own safety and training setup.
This guide summarizes published government data for general information; it is not legal, medical, or workplace-safety advice. For radiation-safety obligations, contact your state radiation control program; for supervision and scope questions, your state veterinary medical board.