January 2000: Professional Guidelines open to Public

For the first time the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) is making its Guide to Professional Conduct of Veterinary Surgeons available to the public. The new Guide to Professional Conduct 2000, published today can be freely downloaded from the RCVS website, www.rcvs.org.uk, where it will be regularly revised as new guidance is issued. The new Guide is also available by post. Only veterinary surgeons and solicitors had access to previous guides.

As RCVS President, Professor Bob Michell, put it:- "Our new Guide to Professional Conduct 2000 has been totally rewritten in response to the current requirement for accountability, accessibility and transparency in all professions."

"There are significant changes in the new Guide," he said. "We have simplified the guidance on advertising and practices may now advertise their fees, provided they advertise a representative range. We have included the need for veterinary surgeons to discuss with clients a range of reasonable treatment options and relative fees to enable them to give informed consent, as well as the routine use of consent forms incorporating estimates. Also included are the need to keep clients advised when an estimate is likely to be exceeded and access to case records on request."

"The new Guide is not intended to be a detailed rulebook," he continued, "but rather sets out ten fundamental principles which may be applied to all the areas of veterinary responsibility with an overriding emphasis on all aspects of animal welfare and client care."

"It identifies the key responsibilities of veterinary surgeons to their patients, clients, the general public and professional colleagues as well as responsibilities under the law, when things go wrong and in relation to the treatment of animals by non veterinarians," he said.

"As a self-regulatory profession which has hugely advanced standards of clinical care for animals in the last twenty years through investment of its time and capital, the profession has much of which to be proud and nothing to hide. Our procedures are open and responsive to change ñ the new Guide and its wider availability reflect just that."

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons new Guide to Professional Conduct 2000 is available from the RCVS,
Belgravia House,
62-64 Horseferry Road,
London
SW1P 2AF
at £15 for members or £20 for non-members, incl. P&P, or viewed at no cost from the RCVS website.