Our 2017-19 Strategic Plan in review

Challenging, stretching, ambitious – these were some of the words used to describe our 2017-19 Strategic Plan when it was first published and, as we reach the end of 2019 and, indeed, the decade, they hold as true now as they did then.

The Plan built upon the foundations laid by the 2014-16 Plan (which was about making sure we were getting the basics right) and added challenges and objectives that pushed us to expand upon our core remit while, at the same time, examining and tackling some of the tricky and persistent issues that face both the veterinary surgeon and veterinary nurse professions.

Of course, we have also had a very challenging external environment to tackle as well, not least around the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

This Plan was forged in the months immediately after the EU Referendum and, like almost everyone else, we couldn’t have predicted how the process of leaving the EU would proceed or, indeed, foreseen all the various points of impact that decision would have on the veterinary professions.

Meeting the goals hasn’t always been easy and, as with any plan when it bumps up against reality, there have been plenty of learning points along the way. But I am immensely proud of what the College, its staff, its Council members and the professions at large have achieved in meeting the ambitions.

While I don’t want to make this a ‘listicle’ I do want to go through the five main ambitions of the plan and pull-out some key highlights from each.

Developing a learning culture

One of our key achievements under this ambition has been the transition to an outcomes-based model for continuing professional development (CPD), which encourages the use of reflection to make learning and development more relevant and impactful.

Thanks to the hard work of our Education Team, Education Committee and the Working Groups looking at this policy this is now very close to bearing fruit with our 1CPD platform and app launching early next year and a transition to a more reflective model of assessing CPD.

It has taken some time to carry the professions with us regarding the benefits of reflection but, thanks to pilot projects, academic research papers, and buy-in of the concept from many employers and CPD providers, the benefits of reflective CPD are now well on their way to being accepted.

Another major area of cultural shift that this ambition looked at was the transition from a blame culture, where mistakes lead to blame and even cover-up, to a learning culture in which the veterinary team can have frank and honest conversations about what went wrong and how improvements can be made, with a focus on Quality Improvement.

Again, thanks to work by our Mind Matters Initiative and partner organisations, including RCVS Knowledge, these concepts are starting to become embedded in the profession and we are currently piloting Schwartz Rounds, a model of reflective practice that encourages non-judgemental discussions of cases that can contribute to a learning culture.

Furthermore, we also saw the formal establishment of the Veterinary Client Mediation Service, a service funded by the College that uses mediation in order to resolve complaints that do not meet our threshold of serious professional misconduct.

This has significantly freed up time for our case managers and case examiners and means that they can concentrate their efforts on investigating the most serious and relevant cases.

Leadership and innovation

In terms of our leadership work, we have launched some fantastic initiatives in this period, not least our immensely popular online leadership course, jointly developed with the NHS Leadership Academy and which has over 7,000 enrolments to date, and an ‘Inspiring Veterinary Leaders’ campaign showcasing the range and diversity of leadership and leadership roles in the professions.

Our work to transition the Fellowship into a learned society and source of mentorship and leadership for the profession has also continued apace, with over 150 new Fellows being welcomed since its 2016 re-launch and increased engagement with veterinary students and veterinary surgeons at all stages of their careers.

On the innovation front, this period saw the launch, in 2017, of our ViVet innovation programme which, over the last two years, has looked at the impact of innovation on the veterinary professions and how the profession can seize the opportunities offered by innovation to transform how it works and widen access to veterinary services.

This has been cemented by a number of presentations at various congresses and events, Innovation Workshops and, this year, the second of our biennial Innovation Symposiums, which focused on the concept of precision veterinary medicine.

Both us and the wider profession have also been talking a lot more about diversity and inclusion and the need for the veterinary professions to better reflect the make-up of modern Britain, whether that’s in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic background or other factors.

Through the launch of our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Working Group we are getting involved in this space and look to do some key work in this area in the coming years.

Continuing to be a First Rate Regulator

There has been some thought-provoking behind-the-scenes work going on via our Legislation Working Party, which has been taking an holistic approach in developing a series of recommendations for legislative reform that will tie-up various anomalies, as well as improving and underpinning the statutory basis for many of our activities and future-proofing our regime.

One of the key areas that has been looked at is delegation to veterinary nurses under Schedule 3, with a 2017 survey finding that there was a continuing lack of clarity and confidence about how Schedule 3 operates in practice. In response to this, we have published Schedule 3 case studies and, towards the end of this year, a poster checklist to help both vets and vet nurses navigate how Schedule 3 works in practice.

On the regulatory front we also met the action to develop a framework by which allied professions could be brought into the regulatory remit of the RCVS should they want to do so. This pathway was opened with a decision by Council at its January 2019 meeting to use powers under our Royal Charter to allow paraprofessionals to become associates of or accredited by the College and both the Association of Meat Inspectors and the Animal Behaviour and Training Council have expressed interest in this.

In 2018, to great fanfare, we also launched our Graduate Outcomes Project and consultation, an ambitious piece of work looking at the future of veterinary education and how the profession (and the College) can better help and support veterinary graduates through the transition into life in practice.

The consultation was launched in recognition of the fact that there is often a mismatch between expectations of life in practice and the reality, leading to problems with mental health and wellbeing and also recruitment and retention.

Nearly 2,000 people responded to the rather lengthy consultation (one of the highest responses we’ve had for a formal consultation) and so it demonstrates the levels of interest in this issue and we hope to publish the conclusions of the consultation – and the various Working Groups and Parties set up in its wake – early next year.

In the Strategic Plan we also said we would review the regulatory framework around new technologies in order to get the balance right between encouraging innovation, while still maintaining high standards of animal health and welfare.

This has been a much debated and discussed issue and, while this review may not have panned out as originally envisaged, in 2020 we will be undertaking our wide-ranging review of the core principles behind the term ‘under care’ which will underpin any future discussions around how and where veterinary surgeons work.

Finally, these years saw the culmination of our discussions around improving the governance structures of the College, with a Legislative Reform Order being approved by Parliament in May 2018.

This Order reduced the size of Council (a process that is still ongoing), has led to formal inclusion of lay and veterinary nurse members for the first time, and also introduced a code of conduct for Council members. The reduction in size of Council means that we can now have more frequent meetings, leading to a more agile, flexible and rapid decision-making process.

Global reach

The aforementioned external environment and the uncertainty that has surrounded the UK’s exit from the EU has meant that much of our energy and capacity during this period has had to go into looking at how we maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks of Brexit, rather than some of our more wide-ranging global ambitions.

Regarding Brexit, throughout the period we have been working with the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and the British Veterinary Association to look at how we can ensure that, whatever Brexit scenario becomes reality, workforce needs can continue to be met and that vital veterinary work still gets done.

In partnership with the BVA we also successfully lobbied the Migration Advisory Committee to recommend that veterinary surgeons be added to the Shortage Occupation List, thus streamlining the process for overseas veterinary surgeons to gain UK work visas. This recommendation has now been accepted by the Home Office.

As a final note, we also signed an historic mutual recognition agreement with the Veterinary Council of Ireland, our equivalent in the Republic of Ireland, meaning that, whatever happens with Brexit, graduates from University College Dublin will be recognised here and UK vet school graduates will be recognised in Ireland.

Over the past three years we have also made it clear that Brexit doesn’t change the close working relationship that we have with our colleagues and partners in the rest of the European Union and the continent as a whole.

So, next summer, we are very glad that the RCVS and BVA will be jointly hosting the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) General Assembly in London, welcoming colleagues from over 40 European countries.

Our service agenda

While our other ambitions might be more headline-grabbing, in many ways this ambition is the most important of them all, because it is all about incremental and small-scale improvements to how the RCVS operates and the service that we offer the professions and the public – from IT to human resources to our service standards.

Some key internal improvements to highlight from the last three years would be changes to how we accept payments from the profession, including Direct Debit management; a wide-ranging project to improve our internal IT infrastructure including our professional conduct management system; and our ongoing efforts to relocate the College to more appropriate premises.

n terms of external-facing projects, the past three years has seen an increase in the number of public events we have been attending (such as the Royal Highland, Royal Welsh and Devon County Shows) where we have had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of members of the public about the profession and how we regulate it (the fact that kids can perform operations on stuffed animals at our stands has certainly helped with engagement!).

This year we have also launched our public-facing digital storytelling campaign #YourKindOfVets to drive public engagement with the Practice Standards Scheme and RCVS-accredited practices.

Thanks to a suggestion by one of our practising members, we also produced and mailed to all practices a poster designed to help clients better understand what they can expect from their veterinary team and, similarly, what is expected of them as animal owners. This idea was well received on both sides as a simple and easy-to-understand way of explaining their duties, obligations and expectations.

It is fair to say that I could go on and that there are many things I have had to leave out or skim over (a full account of how we have met the ambitions of our Strategic Plan can be found in my November update to Council).

However, I would reiterate how immensely proud I am of all the work that has been done by the team here and thank the professions and the public for their continuing engagement, feedback and support for what we are trying to achieve.

I hope that 2020 will be a fruitful year for everyone and look forward to updating you all soon on our exciting new Strategic Plan which is due for publication in the early part of next year. I wish everyone a Happy New Year!