VetGDP Adviser case studies

We were thrilled when one of the students who had done EMS at our practice accepted a job offer, but to employ him we needed a VetGDP Adviser within the practice, so I decided to do the training.

It ensures that everyone approaches VetGDP in the same way and all new graduates get similar support.

I help our graduate vets understand what they are doing well, assist with any gaps in their knowledge and guide them on how to reflect on their performance and what they have learned. This may involve discussing surgery beforehand, observing and commenting as they are operating, answering questions as they arise and being available for support when they need it.

With medicine it’s similar: either planning cases before they are seen, giving guidance during them or reviewing them afterwards. It also involves regular scheduled meetings to chat about progress, goals and any concerns the graduate has, including how they were coping.

The most challenging part is trying to help the graduate with whatever they’re finding difficult. And seeing the graduate improve and successfully and confidently complete operations and cases that they may have struggled with initially is definitely the most rewarding part.

I'm Fay. I work at Scarsdale. I've worked there for almost ten years now; worked there from being a new grad.

We do cattle work. We do a lot of smallholder work. I do quite a lot of camelid work.

Why did you decide to become a VetGDP Adviser? 

So we've always, as a practice, we've always had new grads coming through. They just bring, like, something different, new knowledge, new skill sets, and I've always been quite involved with bringing them on and helping them learn.

Obviously, there was nothing formal before the VetGDP, so when that came out, I thought it'd be really good idea to get on that so that it could help my knowledge on bringing on the new grads and that we could continue to keep having new grads and having advisers within the practice. So that's really why I volunteered for the job.

What did you think of the online adviser training? 

It took me quite a while to finish it because of, obviously, clinical obligations as well. But getting through it, you can see where all of the different coaching bits and things come into practice, you know, getting with your new grads. So prior to the training, you just sort of do more of the clinical stuff and making sure they're OK. And you are conscious of, you know, things like mental wellbeing and coaching and things like that. But you've never, I had never had any formal training on it, so I thought that part was really useful, like as a sort of you can do this clinically because that's your job and you can teach that, but there are all these other sort of strands where you can help your new grad out.

What has your experience been as a VetGDP Adviser? 

So if they're engaged and they're willing to learn and sit down with you and, you know, talk about what they want and what they're doing, it's really, really positive. I certainly can't say anything bad about it because I haven't had a bad new grad, but I think it's really helpful and it gives some structure to their learning life. So yeah, I think it's really good.

What has been the most rewarding part of the experience? 

Probably when Lucy got her thing back to say she'd passed, that was really cool because, I mean, I didn't have to work particularly hard, but Lucy did obviously work very hard, and just helping her, seeing her grow as a vet and get through it at the end and showing, you know, like we know she's an excellent vet, but it's that recognition from somebody else to say she's done a really good job, she's documented everything really well. I can't take any of the credit for that, Lucy did it all, but I feel like I was there with her.

Has anything been challenging? 

I guess the monthly catch-ups are challenging to fit in, certainly sort of over spring at busy times. We've got a lot of clinical obligations and remembering even to sit down every month is difficult. And it's also gets difficult in the busy times, like being there as much as you'd like to be for your graduate, you know, if they're being sent out to calvings and lambings and you're busy with your own things, it's a bit frustrating that you're not just literally on the end of the, you're on the end of the phone, but not on the farm with them and stuff. But that's just practice, isn't it - you just work round it.

How have you worked around these challenges? 

So we've just tried to be pre-emptive. So getting visits booked in in advance on the daybook and allocating them as non-clinical time. And I guess also with the being out and helping on farm, we've got quite a few more qualified vets. So if I'm not available then one of them always is. So we've sort of worked together in that response and then collated everything back. So when the new grads are doing something with one of my colleagues, they'll sort of feed back to me: they did this really well; they could improve on this sort of thing. So it's sort of a practice-wide thing with me being the sort of hub for the collation of feedback, I guess.

How have you ensured the Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are relevant to your graduate? 

We sort of picked ones the new grads were going to be seeing. So, although some of them are a bit more case-dependent, so we did pick the post-mortem one, but we thought that was important in farm practice. However, obviously you don't see loads and loads, so we sort of tried to do things to overcome that. So going to the pathology unit, but basically just looked and was like, yeah, you're going to see loads of these.

So this will be an easy win, but that's important to be good at, so it's important to have on your EPA surgical things and clinical exams, and population medicine's obviously really important for farm vets, so we picked the ones that we thought were going to be most relevant and also seen regularly by new grads. So none of the more in-depth ones, like the stuff that they're going to come onto in later years.