What should you ask a relief veterinarian before booking them?
A relief veterinarian is a licensed veterinarian you book for a shift rather than a permanent hire — so this is a pre-booking screen, not a classic interview.
These questions confirm what has to be true before they treat your clients.
Before a relief veterinarian works a shift at your hospital, six things need confirming: they're licensed in your state, you've settled how controlled substances get handled, they can show a current certificate of their own professional liability coverage, their caseload comfort matches the day you booked, they can work your software and finish records, and you've agreed who owns callbacks.
The questions below surface each one — and what a good answer sounds like.
Before the interview
This is a screen, not an interview.
A relief veterinarian isn't applying for a seat on your team; they're a licensed veterinarian deciding whether to accept one booked shift.
The classic associate questions — five-year plans, compensation expectations, why this hospital — belong to hiring, and our veterinarian interview questions cover that process.
What a booked shift needs is narrower: what must be true before the vet walks in, and what each answer tells you about the day you're scheduling.
Two things before you dial.
First, know the day you're booking well enough to describe it — species mix, appointment load, whether a surgery or dental block is on the schedule, whether they'll be the only DVM in the building.
Vague questions get vague comfort, and vague comfort is what falls apart at 2pm on a full schedule.
Second, separate the questions from the verification: a satisfying phone answer is not a license check.
Verify a veterinary license against the board's own record, and run DEA verification on the registration number yourself.
Finding, pricing and booking relief vets is covered on the role's hiring guide — this page starts once you have a vet on the phone.
Credential and license checks
Are you licensed in [your state] — what's the license number, and when does it expire?
What to listen for: There is no single national list of licensed veterinarians: each state and provincial board keeps its own records, and the AAVSB points you to the right board.
A veterinarian must hold a license in each state where they practice, so a relief vet based just across the state line still needs your state's license for your shift.
A good answer is immediate — license number offered without prompting, expiration date known, no hesitation about you checking it.
Then check it anyway: verify the license against the board's record, not a photo of a wall certificate.
A vet who bristles at being verified is flagging how they'll respond to every other control you have.
Which other states are you licensed in, and have you covered practices in this state before?
What to listen for: There's nothing to police on the list itself: as long as each jurisdiction's requirements are met, a veterinarian can hold licenses in multiple jurisdictions without giving up the ones they have.
You're not judging the list — you're confirming your state is on it and hearing how current they are on your state's practice environment.
If your state isn't on the list yet, ask whether they've started the paperwork and what timeline the board gave them — a booked shift resting on a license in progress is a bet on a processing date you don't control.
Caseload and procedure comfort
Here's the day I'm booking — walk me through how you'd run it.
What to listen for: Describe the real schedule: appointment blocks, the surgery or dental day, expected walk-ins, technician support.
Then listen for how they think about pacing.
A vet who asks clarifying questions — how long are your slots, who restrains, what gets same-day workup — is showing you the judgment that keeps a relief day on time.
A vet who says "no problem" to everything without a single question is telling you they haven't mapped your day against their actual speed.
Which procedures do you want booked for you, and which should we route to another doctor?
What to listen for: Experienced relief vets have a comfort zone and the good ones name it without being pressed: routine dentals yes, surgical extractions no, or the reverse.
You're listening for specificity, because their answer is the shape your schedule has to respect.
Ask about the procedures your hospital books most, including the ones you assume — "are you comfortable doing [your most common surgery] as the only DVM in the building?"
An answer that drifts — "I can do most things" — is a reason to book a lighter first day, not to skip the booking.
How do you handle it when an urgent walk-in lands in the middle of a full schedule?
What to listen for: A relief day absorbs surprises badly when nobody has agreed on triage rules in advance.
You want a vet who triages against the whole day — what waits until tomorrow, what gets seen now, what goes to the ER — and who asks how you want escalations handled.
If you're booking relief to cover urgent caseloads specifically, say so and ask for examples they've covered: a scheduled surgery list and an unscheduled queue are different skills, and it's a fair question to put directly — a vet who only runs scheduled medicine will tell you.
Software, records and callback expectations
Which practice-management systems have you worked in, and how do you handle a new one?
What to listen for: Software friction is the quiet tax on every relief shift — a vet who can't move through your practice-management system slows the whole floor.
Listen for a specific list of systems and a specific way of learning: logins sorted before the shift, a technician assigned to shepherd the first hour, willingness to do a 15-minute run-through the day before.
The answer you want is procedural, not confident.
"I've never stayed lost in a chart for long" beats "I'm good with computers."
What state do you leave records in at the end of a shift — and what do you need from us to finish them same-day?
What to listen for: Record-completion expectations are invisible until a shift goes wrong, which is why they deserve an explicit question.
The answer you want is a standard: charts finished before the shift ends, pending labs flagged to a named person, notes a covering vet could pick up cold.
Ask what typically slows them down — the obstacle is usually fixable in your setup, and hearing it now ("your template needs a field for X") is cheaper than discovering it a week later in follow-ups.
Who owns callbacks on the cases you see — you, or my staff?
What to listen for: Don't assume your default matches theirs — whatever you want has to be asked and then written down.
A vet may call their own surgical callbacks, or expect the practice to own all aftercare — both can work.
What fails is the assumption.
If you want the vet reachable for recheck questions on their own surgical cases, ask whether they'll do it and on what timeline.
If your staff will absorb callbacks, say that plainly so the vet can decide whether the booking still works for them.
Insurance and controlled drugs
Do you carry your own professional liability insurance, and can you send a certificate before the shift?
What to listen for: Own coverage exists for this work: AVMA PLIT — now branded AVMA Insurance Services — states its professional liability coverage is available to licensed AVMA-member veterinarians, including relief veterinarians and independent contractors.
The same insurer notes professional liability insurance is not legally required for all veterinarians, but that many licensing boards, referral partners and contractual relationships expect or require it — which is why the expectation belongs in your booking terms.
Whether a hospital's own policy extends to a non-employed DVM treating on your premises is not something we could verify from carrier pages, so don't litigate it over the phone: require a current certificate of the vet's own coverage, file it with the booking, and ask your carrier in writing how your policy treats a relief shift.
A certificate that arrives without friction is a good sign; hesitation is a problem to resolve before the shift.
How have you handled controlled substances at hospitals you've covered — your registration, theirs, or both?
What to listen for: This is the question with no tidy national answer — the value is in hearing how they think, not in any stock reply.
The baseline federal rule is that a separate DEA registration is required for each principal place of business or professional practice where controlled substances are dispensed.
The provision that comes closest to relief work, 21 CFR 1301.22(b), lets an individual practitioner who is an agent or employee of another registered practitioner administer or dispense — but not prescribe — under that registration, if state law permits; the employee exemption your technicians work under is a different provision.
Neither comfortable shortcut — "they can always use our number" or "they always need their own at our address" — is settled by the regulation's text.
The provision you may hear quoted — transporting and dispensing controlled substances at a site that isn't the registered location, without separate registration — covers house-call and mobile work at sites, in a state where the vet is licensed, that aren't a principal place of practice, not a booked shift inside another hospital.
A good answer sounds like a vet who has asked this before, knows how their last bookings settled it, and expects you to confirm the arrangement with DEA and your state veterinary board and put it in writing.
A bad answer sounds like "everyone just uses the hospital's number."
Do you hold the registrations your states require — federal and state — everywhere you work?
What to listen for: Two layers to confirm.
Federal: DEA requires a practitioner practicing in more than one state to hold a separate registration in each state, after getting state authority first.
State: DEA relies on state licensing boards to decide whether a practitioner may dispense, prescribe or administer controlled substances, and which schedules — and state requirements can sit on top of DEA entirely.
Illinois requires a state controlled-substance registration, issued by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, from anyone who dispenses controlled substances; Michigan requires a state controlled-substances license for anyone who prescribes or dispenses in the state.
Illinois and Michigan are the two we've verified — ask your own board what your state adds, and ask the vet what they hold.
State rules here also change, which is why secondhand memory is a bad source: Texas's board rule once required every veterinarian in a clinic to hold their own DEA registration, but the rule was amended effective September 24, 2018 and now requires compliance with DEA rules — so a colleague's confident "Texas requires…" may be describing a repealed rule.
As far back as 2016 the Texas board reported DEA's position that a practitioner examining their own patients independently, not acting under another practitioner's direction, isn't an agent of the registrant and must be registered — the board relaying DEA, not DEA's published text, so the confirmation goes to DEA and your board.
What's your DEA number and its expiration — and has a registration ever been denied, revoked or surrendered?
What to listen for: DEA's verification tools are restricted to registrants, so validate the number yourself, logged in with your own registration, rather than taking it verbally.
The history question has a firmer basis than ordinary background screening: under 21 CFR 1301.76(a), a DEA-registered practitioner may not employ, in a role with access to controlled substances, anyone convicted of a felony relating to controlled substances, or anyone whose DEA application was denied, whose registration was revoked, or who surrendered a registration for cause.
If the arrangement has the relief vet working under your registration as your agent or employee, that history is squarely your business.
Ask the expiration date even when the history is clean: the practitioner registration a dispensing practice holds runs in 3-year terms at an $888 fee, so "current" is a date to check, not a given.
Red flags worth a direct follow-up
Any one of these can have an innocent explanation, but each deserves a direct question before you confirm the booking.
- Hesitation about you verifying the license, or an offer to "send a copy of my certificate" instead. Verification against the board's own record is the check you control, and a vet who treats it as an insult is showing you how they'll respond to your other controls.
- "I do everything" caseload answers — no procedures named, no questions about your schedule. The vet may be excellent, but a booking without a stated comfort zone makes your live schedule the test.
- Vague records talk: notes finished "within the week," or "the staff handle my charting." Incomplete records from a relief day become your practice's problem the moment the vet drives away, and callbacks on half-documented cases land on whoever is standing there.
- No certificate of insurance by the end of the call, or vagueness about the carrier. Requiring one isn't being difficult — insurers themselves note contracts are one of the places the expectation lives.
- No answer on controlled substances — doesn't know how it was handled at the last hospital, never asked, or "we'll figure it out on the day." The arrangement is confirmable with a phone call to DEA and your state board; booking shifts without settling it leaves the risk with whichever hospital the vet is standing in.
- Dismissiveness toward your protocols or your staff — "I don't use other hospitals' checklists." Relief work is guest work, and the vet who won't operate inside your systems creates the exact risk you booked them to absorb.
After the interview
A relief vet who books well the first time spares you the full hiring cycle, and the screen you just ran doubles as the first round of that conversation.
Settle the mechanics deliberately instead of letting a booking pattern become an arrangement by accident.
If the relationship stays per-shift, put the standing terms — availability, preferred notice, cancellation windows, and the controlled-substance arrangement you settled on the screen — in writing so neither side renegotiates every gap; our relief agreements guide covers that document.
If you're moving toward regular booked days or employment, the questions change: the IRS reads contractor-versus-employee from evidence of control and independence in three categories — behavioral, financial, and the type of relationship — with no set number of factors deciding it, so look at the entire relationship and document the factors you relied on.
Federal rulemaking is in motion too: on February 26, 2026 the Department of Labor proposed rescinding its 2024 independent-contractor rule — which it is no longer applying in investigations — in favor of an economic-reality test built on two core factors, control and opportunity for profit or loss; the comment period closed April 28, 2026, and no final rule appeared on the DOL page as of our October 2026 check.
Treat it as proposed, not in force, and run any conversion past your bookkeeper or employment counsel first.
The sequence that works: rebook the vet on a defined gap, debrief each shift while it's fresh, and when you're ready to talk terms, say so plainly — standing days, or an associate seat.
Covering shifts with relief takes up that strategy in depth, including how a relief booking becomes the pipeline into a permanent seat.
When the seat does open, everything you confirmed on the first screen — license, DEA arrangement, insurance certificate, records, callbacks — is the file you'd assemble for any hire, already done.
More for hiring a relief veterinarian
The Relief Veterinarian Hiring Market Right Now
The relief veterinarian openings you are competing with, from the 283 active listings on VeterinaryHires as of October 22, 2026.
Employers with the most openings
Where the openings are
Pay employers post
- 2% of relief veterinarian listings state any pay at all, so posting a range helps yours stand out.
Benefits listings name
- Dental & Visionnamed in 53%
- PTO / Paid Time Offnamed in 51%
- Health Insurancenamed in 50%
- Pet Care Discountnamed in 39%
- Malpractice Insurance Coverednamed in 24%
Source: active relief veterinarian listings on VeterinaryHires, updated daily. Pay figures use only listings that state pay (midpoint of each posted range). Benefits count listings that name the benefit; a listing that doesn’t mention one may still offer it.
See the listings →Ready to fill your next coverage gap?
Post your relief veterinarian shift, or go back to the full relief veterinarian hiring guide for sourcing, booking terms and onboarding.