FAQs

PDP will count towards your CPD requirement. We view undertaking and completing the PDP as a year’s worth of CPD and it is therefore equivalent to 35 hours of CPD activity. If you undertake your PDP over more than one year, you can add 35 hours to any calendar year or split the hours across years during that time-period.

While PDP covers your minimum CPD requirement as part of your initial development, you will also be undertaking other forms of CPD during that time (e.g. congress, practice/case discussions and meetings, reading or research), details of which should be included on your CPD record. You can count any learning or development that is relevant to you as professional person as CPD so it does not need to be formal learning or clinical CPD.

Recording all CPD, including the PDP, serves as a useful reminder and prompt for skills and career development purposes. RCVS requirements for CPD are 35 hours per year. Your PDP will count as 35 hours of CPD in the year of your choosing. 

VetGDP will count towards your CPD requirement. We view undertaking and completing the VetGDP as 18 months' worth of CPD and it is therefore equivalent to 52.5 hours of CPD. VetGDP will cover your first 18 months of CPD and you can record these hours across years during that time period.

Once a practice/workplace is an RCVS Approved Graduate Development Practice/Workplace they will have a minimum of one trained VetGDP Adviser available to support graduates, but they won’t usually indicate how many VetGDP Advisers they have in total.

The RCVS does not issue permits for entry to work in the UK and is unable to provide advice on such matters. Acceptance of your application by the RCVS does not mean that a permit to enter and work in the UK will be granted.

Information and assistance can be obtained from the UK Government’s website on visas and immigration.

You can contact the Registration Department on 020 7202 0707 or [email protected].

For queries relating to other departments, please view the relevant contact details.

The Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are the framework that describe activities in your role and the vast majority will be very similar in different roles, but there will be some roles that are very specific in one area but have more depth, others in mixed practice may be broader. It is personal and self-directed so you can design your own programme to suit yourself and continue to do it until you are confident.

The online learning to become a VetGDP Adviser totals 20 hours and as the learning is done entirely online, it offers complete flexibility and means you can fit it around your other commitments.

It also allows you to complete the training at a pace that suits you. You may also count the training towards your CPD target for the year.

The expectation is that a minimum of one hour per graduate per week, or equivalent, is required to provide support to graduates once they are employed, and it may be that some of this time (with appropriate reflection) might also count as CPD.  

Yes, in the conclusion to your witness statement, it will state that you are willing to attend a hearing if required and the expectation is that all those who have given statements will attend.

Prior to the hearing, you will receive a witness summons issued by the High Court. A witness summons is a legal document that makes it compulsory for you to attend. We issue witness summonses for all of our witnesses as many find it useful for the purposes of confirming to their employer the reason you will need to take time off work to attend the hearing.

If there are exceptional reasons why you are unable to attend (for example, due to ill-health), it may be possible to rely on your written witness statement as evidence without you needing to attend. However, in order to do this, you will need to supply evidence (for example a Doctor’s letter) to explain why you cannot attend. There is a formal legal procedure to go through to have a witness excused from the requirement to attend the hearing. Therefore, if you think you may not be able to attend for any reason, please contact us immediately to discuss.

In some limited situations, your evidence may be “agreed” prior to the hearing. This means that both parties agree that your witness statement can be relied on without you needing to attend and give live evidence. This is not normally confirmed until very close to the hearing (for example the week before, or week of, the hearing) so you should plan on attending unless told otherwise.

Yes – this is a post-registration qualification, therefore, only available once you have registered as a veterinary nurse with the RCVS. Stipulation on how long you must have been registered will be at the discretion of the programme provider.

All vets and VNs are now being asked to complete their annual renewal online.

However, if you are unable to complete your annual renewal online please contact the Registration Department.