Royal College Day 2019 speeches: RCVS CEO Lizzie Lockett

Nothing makes you feel quite so unworthy as coming to the lectern after such a succession of amazing award winners. I am so delighted that the new range of awards we launched in 2018 now allows us to celebrate such breadth and depth of achievement, with vets and nurses accomplishing wonders at all stages in their careers – bravo to you all!

It’s particularly important to celebrate such achievements because, as a regulator, our correspondence bag – or, rather, messenger inbox, these days – is often full of people describing situations that haven’t gone quite so well.

It’s important to remind our team at Belgravia House, and the world at large, of the huge contribution that the veterinary team makes to animal health and welfare, public health and wider society, each and every day.

It is to nurture and support such success that we launched programmes like Mind Matters, for mental health, and our leadership and innovation initiatives – to give vets and vet nurses the skills and support they need to be the best that they can be, rather than simply to reassure the public that we have a robust complaints process, in case anything goes wrong (we do, but that’s not the point).

Yet when I stand on stages at conferences and talk about these things there is always one person in the audience who says ‘but surely you are being hypocritical, the RCVS is a source of stress, you don’t always handle things well…how can you be talking about supporting the profession?’

To which I always reply yes, I agree. We are not perfect. But we are always striving to be better. And, meanwhile, I would rather not wait until we are perfect before we start reaching out to try to improve things for the professions. Things like mental health and wellbeing, everyday leadership skills, and the ability to deal with innovation, change and uncertainty.

And just as we are aiming to help turn a blame culture into a learning culture, by encouraging self-reflection and discussion around mistakes, it’s important to reflect on our own areas for improvement.

I think for sure there are times this year when we could have handled things differently, made quicker – or slower – decisions, brought the professions with us more, explained ourselves better.

We will get plenty of things right, but we will fail – and I guess, for the benefit of those evidence-based scientists in the room, sometimes we will need to fail again, just to make sure it’s statistically significant! – but we are learning all of the time. And listening. And adapting what we do.

So, what have we been doing?

We have spent a good deal of this year updating our governance structures to reflect last year’s legislative reform order – including working out a succession plan for our Operational Board, and putting in place our new Advancement of the Professions Committee, which shines a light on our ‘Royal College’ activities – many thanks to Professor Gary England for being its founding chair.

Now that the bulk of our governance changes are in place, I am delighted that we can focus much more on making decisions on policy, guidance and standards. Not that this is always straightforward.

I have a coaster on my desk – given to me by one of our lovely Council members – thank you Chris Tufnell. It features a group of people sitting round a board table, and one of them is saying ‘Here’s an idea, why don’t we just do stuff that’s going to be really massively successful?’.

It would be nice. But, as a regulator, we often have to make difficult decisions, tackle issues that have no clear right or wrong answer, and work our way through potential minefields, all with the aim of safeguarding animal health and welfare. Our ongoing discussions on telemedicine and ‘under care’ are an example of this, but it’s an area that we cannot afford to ignore.

So, as we start to develop our new strategic plan for the next few years, it’s timely to reflect on what we have achieved this year:

• We gained our accreditation from ENQA, a pan-European association that accredits organisations which themselves quality assure higher education institutions and degrees. It did us good to be on the receiving end of such a process for a change – perhaps knowing how that feels will encourage us on our journey to be a more compassionate regulator!
• We launched our Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, including representatives from across the professions. Niall will touch on this later, but it’s worth highlighting that we included some questions around diversity in our Survey of the Professions this year and had some vets refuse to complete them, calling us all manner of names in the vein of political correctness…which goes to show the necessity of addressing the issues.
• We launched a major consultation around the future of undergraduate veterinary education – Graduate Outcomes – under the chairmanship of Professor Stephen May, and were delighted to receive nearly two thousand full responses and around four thousand partial responses from vets, nurses, organisations and members of the public. Key themes are now being worked on to help us meet our aim of developing veterinary surgeons well able to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
• Closer to home, we were ranked 28th medium-sized Best Place to Work in the UK by Great Place to Work, and given a Laureate Award for being within the top 50 for five years on the trot. During the last 12 months we also signed the mental health Time to Change Pledge, were awarded ‘Excellence in Wellbeing’ status and ranked within the top ten for the second year as a ‘Great Place to Work for Women in the UK’. They must have seen the shoe cabinet in my office…
• It was also a great achievement to be a finalist in the prestigious European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Awards, for our leadership MOOC with the NHS and FutureLearn. You will hear more on this from Amanda shortly.
• We have seen our Mind Matters Initiative grow in strength and impact this year, with the launch of a series of Wellbeing Roadshows, jointly with the Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons and the Veterinary Management Group; a series of pilot resilience training days with the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, and, as you have just heard, the launch of our inaugural Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant. And thank you so much to Sarah’s mother, Fiona, and sister, Sophie, for being with us today.
• We secured, with the British Veterinary Association, a recommendation from the Migration Advisory Committee that the veterinary profession rejoins the Shortage Occupation List – and have continued to devote a lot of resources to Brexit preparedness. I won’t dwell on that here – it’s a day for celebration! – but I can’t help thinking that our preparation may seem a mere apprenticeship compared with the challenges that might follow.
• And to end this list on a positive note, I’m delighted that VN Council has recently agreed a new post-registration qualification framework for veterinary nurses – a proposal that grew out of the VN Futures project, which we’ll hear more about from Racheal shortly.

Finally, as I hope you have noticed from your programme, we are celebrating our 175th anniversary. That’s over 175 years since a group of veterinary surgeons petitioned the Royal Veterinary College because they felt that its training was not fit for purpose.

Do please take some time over lunch to have a look at the display of some of these letters – the sentiments they express might still sound a little familiar.

It is perhaps fitting, though, that 175 years later, the RVC is celebrating being independently ranked the top vet school in the world and, whilst our own founding fathers would no doubt heartily approve, I am not sure we can entirely claim that as an RCVS success.

As we have just seen, the RVC’s Principal, Professor Stuart Reid, is leaving Council today on this high note. I guess this is the veterinary political equivalent of a mic drop…

Our staff haven’t been here for 175 years – although some of them have been with us for a very long time. But whether they are into their fourth decade with us, or, have only joined us this week, I am very lucky with the team we have built at Belgravia House.

I would like to thank them all very much for their amazing work, and also thank our hardworking and committed members of Council - especially all those who are stepping down today, after dedicating so many combined years of expertise, experience and wise counsel to us all.

And of course, a huge thank you to our Operational Board and our President, Amanda Boag, for all their help this year. And in particular for the support of Council in helping to look after our staff team at Belgravia House and understanding how important they are to the success of their – your – College.

And in that same spirit of collaboration and support, as we look to build our new strategy for the next few years, I look forward to working with all of you to help ensure our veterinary professionals can work to the very best of their abilities to achieve the highest standards of health and welfare for the animals committed to their care.

Thank you.