Veterinary education increasingly incorporates animal welfare science, pain recognition, and ethical reasoning as core competencies, but significant gaps remain between best practice welfare education and what enters routine clinical practice.
Veterinary education shapes animal welfare across the entire clinical lifespan of a graduate. Veterinarians who learn to recognize pain well, communicate effectively with owners about welfare, and apply multimodal analgesia as standard practice provide systematically better welfare outcomes than those who lack these skills. The gap between veterinary school welfare education and routine practice reflects both curriculum gaps and the influence of practice culture once graduates enter employment. Continued professional development in welfare science and the development of welfare-positive practice cultures through leadership and peer norms are necessary to close the gap between welfare education advances and their clinical implementation.