Various studies on veterinary profession have revealed that veterinary work is physically challenging and poses a raised risk of severe injuries or trauma. Majority of veterinarians reported some sort of injuries within last five year. Out of total 392 respondents, 5.1% (20) reported no injury, 47.5% (186) respondents had 1-5 injuries, 32.1% (126) encountered 5-10 injuries and 15.3% (60) veterinarians had more than 10 injuries during last 5 years. From the analysis of survey we can avow that physical injuries remains one of the main risk factor for veterinarians (Bonini et al., 2016).

Present study explain needle prick injuries are frequent in the veterinary (Table 1), this is found to be in alignment with the work of Fowler et al. (2016). Needle stick injuries may involve the risk of self-injecting drugs and other harmful substances and the primary method to diminish needle stick injuries is to keep away from recapping needles or at the very least use ‘one handed scooping technique’ to recap (Weese and Jack, 2008). Apart from needle prick injury, veterinarians were also injured by bite, scratch, kick, horn wound, fracture and injuries due to falling while lifting or restraining animals (Table 1). The ergonomic injuries have been acknowledged as physical hazards with recurring task and manual handling burden through lifting and restraining animals contributing too many physical problems among veterinarians (Moore et al., 1993).

The questionnaire also focused on radiological hazards and preventive measures taken for protection from harmful radiations in veterinary practices (Table 2).

The dose of radiation depends on the numbers of x-ray taken by the person, type of machine and setting, involvement of veterinarian in physical restraining of animals and protective devices used by the person (Shirangi et al., 2007). The low proportion of veterinarians 19.1%, taking x-ray is not consistent with an Australian study where 79% practicing veterinarians used radiography as diagnostic tool (Shirangi et al., 2007). The reason for this variance may be unavailability of x-ray machines in government veterinary hospitals in India especially Uttrakhand. The results regarding using protective gears by veterinarians while performing x-rays revealed that 86.7% were using lead apron but other protective gears like lead gloves, personal monitor, protective glasses and lead sleeves were not common (Table 2), this proportion is nearly similar to those reported by Jacobson and Farowe (1964); Shirangi et al. (2007).

The common chemicals handled by veterinarians include drugs, disinfectants, antiseptics, pesticides etc (Shirangi et al., 2007). Responses on chemical hazard linked sickness revealed that 47.7% (187) veterinarians were using antineoplastic agents to treat animals and out of 187 individuals, 2.1% (4) veterinarian accidently injected drugs to themselves. None reported any adverse effect due to self-injection. Adverse effects of disinfectant were reported by 8% (32) veterinarians. Adverse effects like headache, nausea, skin irritation etc. due to pesticides reported by 0.7% (3) veterinarians. Allergy due to latex gloves causing itching, skin rashes, skin irritation was reported in 10% (41) veterinarians. Chemical risk seems to be less pertinent than physical and biological risks but the threats from chemicals and drugs cannot be overlooked and the literature advocated the relevance of these threats (Fritschi, 2008).

Veterinarians confront various microbial hazards including viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic infection acquired from animal contact (Table 3).

Ringworm and other fungal infection are most common zoonotic infection among veterinarians (Table 3), Epp and Waldner (2012) also reported similar result in their study among veterinarian of Western Canada.

The Influenza virus was reported in 78 (19.8%) veterinarians (Table 3) but there is no report of influenza in veterinarian except for 11% seroprevalence of swine influenza virus among veterinary students (Woods et al., 1981).

Among bacterial zoonotic infection, tuberculosis was in 2 (0.5%) veterinarians but in a study conducted by Khattak et al. (2016) in Pakistan revealed that 0 veterinarians and 4 abattoir workers were tested positive for M. bovis. In our study there is no report of Brucellosis, Salmonellosis and Staphylococcosis (Table 3) but Mudaliar et al. (2003); Shome et al. (2017) carried out a survey among veterinary workers in Delhi and Karnataka and reported seropositive cases as high as 27.7% and 7.02% respectively. Study conducted on veterinary students and doctors in the Netherlands revealed a lower MRSA carriage rate (Wulf et al., 2006). Various strains of S. aureous are responsible for food poisoning (Gaurav et al., 2019).

The presence of toxoplasmosis 2 (0.5%) was lower than as reported by Rosypal et al. (2015) which was 5.6% in veterinary student. Amoebiosis and scabies in veterinarian were 20 (5%) while other parasitic infection was 37 (9.5%). Our findings are suggestive of a low level of zoonotic diseases being rampant in the sampled population. Possible explanation for this could be, lack of proper medical checkup, under- reporting of zoonotic diseases.

Work overload, exhaustion due to handling with animals, dealing and satisfying animal’s owner, going to visit patients at their places etc. all these lead to mental stress and loss of working days. Low level of stress was shown by 137 (45%), moderate level by 104 (34%) and high level of stress was reported by 64 (21%) veterinarians. The results of the study are consistent with Fowler et al. (2016) they reported recent feelings of depression in 204 (25%) respondents.

Protective equipments used by participants in survey include gloves by 60%, goggles by 1.1% and apron by 39.8%. However, 36.7% (134) participants did not use any of the protective gear during practices. All participants washed their hands properly after checking patients, similarly Aluko et al. (2016) showed that 100% health care worker followed effective hand washing before and after every clinical practice.

Lack of prophylactic vaccination against zoonotic diseases ranked second most important constraint in dealing with life savings from zoonoses (Landge et al., 2016). The study revealed that veterinarians have been vaccinated against diseases like Tetanus, Rabies and Measles. The 89% (350) participants were vaccinated against Tetanus, 66.3% (260) against Rabies and 81% (318) against Measles in their life time. The findings are comparable with the number of zoo veterinarians having vaccinations in Australia against Tetanus 95%, Rabies 70% and Measles 85% (Jeyaretnam, 2003).

The study showed that 171(43.6%), 122 (31.1%), 67 (17.1%), 32 (8.2%) veterinarians followed deworming at 6 month, 1 year, 2 year and more than 2 year intervals respectively. Nigam and Srivastav (2011) analyzed the details of deworming practiced by the Indian wildlife professionals and it was inferred that only 40.7% reported carrying out deworming in the last 6 months, 22.2% in the last 1 year and 12.9% had done it once in the last two years. 24.1% of the respondents did not follow routine deworming.