A Royal College that regulates - veterinary legislation fit for the future

Introduction

Abi Judd-English (00:24)
Hi everyone and welcome to the second episode of our revamped RCVS podcast where we dissect the goings on at the College, explaining why we do what we do, how we do it and how we can all work together as we continue to support the advancement of the veterinary professions. My name is Abi Judd-English and I work in the Communications Team at the College. In today's episode we'll start off with our usual news roundup, providing you with the latest College updates before going on to our main feature, a Royal College that regulates - veterinary legislation fit for the future.

Within this, we'll be chatting about how the College works, including the ways in which our unique role as a royal college that regulates benefits the veterinary professions and the wider public interest, as well as the vital need for a new Veterinary Surgeons Act fit to serve the needs of modern veterinary practice. This conversation will take place in three parts. So firstly, we will be welcoming our wonderful guest chair, Naomi Nicholson, a trustee of the Institute of Regulation and a member of our Audit and Risk Committee. She'll be chatting to our current president, Tim Parkin and Head of Policy, Insight and Public Affairs Ben Myring about the overarching role and objectives of the College, our governance structure, changes we could expect under a new Veterinary Surgeons Act and what we would like to see, as well as the potential for expanding current scope of regulation. As Ben heads up much of this work, he'll then be chatting to our Director of Veterinary Nursing, Julie Dugmore, more specifically about what this means in the veterinary nursing context.

Finally, Ben and I will have a brief roundup chat summarising the key takeaways from both conversations, including what happens now and how you can get involved. So once again, welcome, and we hope that you find this episode both interesting and insightful.

News update

Abi Judd-English (02:19)
It's not been that long since our last episode, but life at the College has been anything but quiet since then. Our honours and awards nominations have now been open for over a month, and for the first time this year, we've introduced our new collaboration award, designed to recognise best practice in collaboration, whether that's bringing together veterinary professionals working in different organisations or fields, or veterinary professionals working with human medics, scientists, lawyers or law enforcement to improve the health of people, animals and the environment.

There are eight awards categories in total, so if you know of someone who has gone above and beyond carrying out exemplary work within the veterinary world, please do consider nominating them. Nominations close Wednesday 7 January, 2026.

In other news, we also issued our response to the Competition and Market Authority's provisional decision on remedies for the veterinary sector following its market investigation of veterinary services for household pets.

Within this, we expressed support for greater transparency around costs and ownership structures and also welcomed the CMA's findings that the government need to prioritise a new Veterinary Surgeons Act with powers to regulate veterinary businesses.

Elsewhere across the College, our mental health project, the Mind Matters Initiative, announced the recipients of its latest mental health research grants.

The £5,000 Discovery Grant has been awarded to a research project evaluating the implementation of reasonable adjustments in addressing mental health and neurodivergence for student veterinary nurses during clinical placement, while the £15,000 Impact Grant will be used to fuel a project researching organisational interventions to support wellbeing in veterinary workplaces.

The Mind Matters Team have also been collaborating with our free online learning platform, the RCVS Academy to launch two new free CPD courses for veterinary professionals.

The first is around managing mental health in the workplace, while the second, Suicide Awareness Fundamentals, is designed to provide veterinary professionals with a fundamental knowledge and understanding of suicide, enabling them to feel more confident and prepared to respond to suicide-related situations with sensitivity and care.

Over in our Standards and Advice Team, the Autumn Update has now been published and is available to view on our website.

This contains important information regarding some recent changes to the supporting guidance to the Code of Professional Conduct, including new guidance to reduce the misuse of lethal medicines.

Within this, the team sets out updates to the core standards of the practice standards scheme, which will require practices to implement suicide prevention plans.

In addition, the update also includes specific guidance for Northern Ireland regarding forthcoming changes to the prescribing cascade and the distribution of veterinary medicines.

We've also been out and about at numerous events and congresses, most recently the British Veterinary Nursing Association Congress and New Scientist Live, chatting to current veterinary professionals and aspiring veterinary professionals alike.

For more information on all these stories, as well as blogs providing more personal insights into our work, please visit our website, the link to which is in the show notes.

A Royal College that regulates - veterinary legislation fit for the future

Naomi Nicholson (05:29)
It's lovely to be here with you. My name is Naomi Nicholson. I'm a trustee of the Institute
of Regulation, which was established for regulators to provide really a professional network to support regulators to do what they do better and to learn from each other.

And I am also a member of the Audit and Risk Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and I work independently with a number of regulators and I'm really delighted to be here today to be talking to you about the work of the RCVS and some of the current issues that there are going and before I do that, let's just introduce ourselves around the room, Tim.

Tim Parkin (06:02)
Hi, my name's Tim Parkin and I'm current president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Ben Myring (06:05)
And I'm Ben Myring, Head of Policy, Insight and Public Affairs at the College.

Naomi Nicholson (06:10)
Great. And one of the reasons actually why I was interested to work with the RCVS was because I was, you know, kind of seeing what the RCVS was doing and seeing the commitment that the RCVS has to being a good regulator. And I know the RCVS is a member actually of the Institute as well and takes part in a lot of our activities, comes to our conferences and takes part in our training and I know is presented at some of our events and things as well.

And I know there's something quite interesting about the RCVS. Because, you know, the RCVS I think is the only regulator that has this dual role of being a royal college as well as a regulator. So there's sort of a lot more professionals kind of involved in the governance and committee structures of the Royal College, and the College has such a wide brief as well. It's fascinating to see how the organisation kind of manages that. And I really wanted to support the work of the RCVS in my role on the Audit and Risk Committee.

And I think it's interesting to see how every different regulator has a different purpose, a different reason for its existence, but we really all exists to protect the public, to maintain standards, to ensure that the public interest is met whether that's in terms of protecting people, protecting the environment or animals.

And so I was wondering, Tim, could you say something a little bit about the objectives of the RCVS and the benefits of being a Royal College that regulates.

Tim Parkin (07:27)
Sure, I mean it's probably worth a little bit of history. So if we think about it, the Royal College is constituted by a Royal Charter and we carry out our functions under the Act of Parliament, making rules and bylaws etc. A new supplemental charter came in place in 2015 and there were two important things that happened at that time. The first is it obviously sets the objectives of the College, namely to set, uphold and advance veterinary standards and to promote, encourage and advance the study and practice of the art and science of veterinary medicine. And I read that quite deliberately just so that we're all aware. And all of that we do in the interest of health and welfare animals and the wider public interest.

The charter importantly gives the College power, again I'm going to read this, to undertake any activities which seem to be necessary and expedient to help it achieve its objects.

Secondly the charter recognises veterinary nursing as a profession and it requires the College to continue to keep a register of veterinary nurses and gives registered veterinary nurses, RVNs, the formal status of associates of the College. The Veterinary Nurses Council is required to set standards for their education, training and conduct and those aspects are really important advances that came in in 2015 from the Charter.

The in quotes Royal College part of what we do operates under that charter and importantly it has enabled the Royal College to go further and probably more rapidly than other similar regulators might have done so over the same period. So most of these additional initiatives are about advancing and supporting the profession. For example under the charter the Royal College is able to run the voluntary Practice Standards Scheme, to which approximately 70% of practices are subscribed. It also enables us, as I said before, to recognise and regulate veterinary nursing as a profession. And one of the key objectives of the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act is that we will then be pushing to enable us to protect the title of veterinary nurse in the future.

And the charter has also enabled us to really establish important initiatives above and beyond what you might think as normal regulation in terms of things like the Mind Matters Initiative, which has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, the RCVS Academy, which holds loads of free CPD available to members and registrants, and indeed the VetGDP programme for new graduates, which I'm sure many members of the profession will be aware of through their VetGDP advisor roles.

Naomi Nicholson (09:39)
Thank you, Tim. It's really interesting to hear about how the Charter has supported the work of the RCVS and I've worked with a number of regulators over a couple of decades and where I've seen regulators really having an impact is where that purpose really drives what they do, which is what you've been talking about, Tim. It's really all about meeting that purpose.

I'm interested to hear a bit more about the charter in terms of that future proofing and flexibility that Tim was mentioning.

Ben, do you have anything you wanted to add on that?

Ben Myring (10:04)
Yeah, I think that's part of it that often people don't know about because as Tim says, you've got those sort of two twin objectives there in the charter, partly regulatory setting and upholding standards and then partly that kind of wider role around the art and science of veterinary surgery. And then there's that power there, as Tim says, that means that we can carry out other activities and fund those activities, even if they're not specifically listed in the charter or in the legislation. So long as we feel that they are supporting those objectives we're able to do them and that means that things like veterinary nursing, as Tim mentioned, there's very little in the Veterinary Surgeons Act, and very little in the charter about veterinary nurses, but we introduced regulation of veterinary nurses because of that additional power. Same with the Practice Standards Scheme. Before they were codified in the most recent version of the charter, we already started doing that work and that could happen again in future if you think about whether it's artificial intelligence or other things that at the moment we just can't envisage how that's going to impact the profession just as how in 1966 people weren't really thinking about practice standards or veterinary nurses.

So those powers, even though it's an old piece of legislation, a Royal Charter, you know it's very old-fashioned in one way, it allows us to be very forward-looking and future-proofed in another.

Naomi Nicholson (11:17)
Thank you, Ben. I mean, what you've said really is quite an interesting point there about that need for flexibility. And I know that, it's something that regulators always have to get the balance right on because we can be too prescriptive and then that doesn't give the flexibility and freedom that, the market needs or we can be too broad about it and not be specific enough about what our requirements are and I think that flexibility to be able to respond to changes in the environment is really important for regulators.

Can you say something, Tim, because I know, as the RCVS's work changes and responds to the changes in the environment, there's plans also for changes in our governance. Can you talk a little bit about that, Tim?

Tim Parkin (11:54)

Yeah, one of the clear benefits of being a Royal College that regulates in terms of the additional support and guidance and we can provide with other initiatives. But we have to also recognise that we are a little bit out of sync with similar regulators. And we're almost unique in this Royal College that regulates framework that we have. So, for that reason, Council did approve, a few months ago now, to move to a more appointed rather than elected council.

That will happen as and when the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act comes into place.

But it's also the case that most regulators retain at least lay parity on their top governance board or council so that's another aspect we're likely to move to.

The exact make-up and structure of that council or board will be determined as part of the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act.

But this move does bring us much more into line with other regulators and provides the benefit that RCVS can then seek to appoint board members with particular skill sets and expertise, in particular related to regulatory matters or governance. This doesn't mean that members of the profession regulated under the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act would not be on that board. Indeed that's definitely not the case. We'd most likely see a governance board that had lay parity, so half the board members would be from the professions that the Royal College in future regulates. It's important to note that we'd anticipate that each profession beneath that governance board would have some form of council or faculty through which their own profession in quotes, decisions or initiatives that they wanted to formulate and drive could actually be pushed forward. And again, the constitution of those councils or faculties, whatever they happen to be - so there would likely be a veterinary nursing council or faculty, and there would likely be a veterinary surgeons council or faculty plus other allied professionals which you may come to later on - each of those would have their own faculty or council.

They would then drive forward their own initiatives but the structure of those have yet to be settled upon and that would be part again of the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act.

Naomi Nicholson (13:43)
Thank you, Tim. It sounds like there's some really careful thinking been taking place about how to get the balance right for the Royal College exactly for your specific circumstances.

Tim Parkin (13:52)
I would say some careful thinking over many, years, many years prior to me coming into this role as well. So yeah, I can't remember when the Legislative Working Group was stood up.

Ben Myring (14:01)
Yeah I think 2017 was when it started and finished in 2021, I think.

Tim Parkin (14:06)
Yeah, so we're getting towards a decade of significant thinking around this aspect.

Naomi Nicholson (14:10)

No, thank you. I mean, Ben and I were exchanging some thoughts earlier today actually about the broader picture here and I think for all regulators, particularly those who are regulating professions, there's a real need to find the right balance between involving and bringing in the expertise of professionals, but also making it very clear that this is an independent regulator who is here to set and maintain and uphold those standards and avoiding any sense of conflict of interest there.

So Ben, could you talk a little bit more about how the RCVS is really exploring that clarity between the regulatory and non-regulatory functions, and what are we thinking about in this area? Where's our current thinking at after this long ten year period thinking internally about this and talking externally too.

Ben Myring (14:52)
Yeah, so there often is a call for greater clarity between the regulatory and non-regulatory functions that the College has. I mean, we should always stress that there is no inherent conflict between those functions. It's not like some bodies in the past that had representative functions and regulatory functions. There's no inherent conflict there, but there are often calls to ensure that the profession has a clearer idea of what those functions are, perhaps through governance reform, and we can definitely explore that.

I mean one option would be for the board to be able to delegate to different committees depending on whether they were carrying out regulatory functions or non-regulatory functions and have a degree of additional financial clarity say on where the money is going there. I think just what we have to be cautious about is undermining any of the benefits of being Royal College that regulates so whether that's clarity I mean it could potentially be counterproductive if you create a system that's too sort of Byzantine.

That could decrease clarity. It could increase costs. There's huge benefits to doing all of this work under one roof. But if you start to create duplication, you know, with two boards or going as far as having two executives and that kind of firewalling, then the costs start to increase greatly and you lose those benefits. And also the whole coherence and cohesion that you get in terms of having the regulation and those additional College functions being carried out under one roof.

To give an example there, in the human medical field it's the royal colleges that do a lot of the work on specialist education and the development and delivery of the curriculums but it's a matter for the regulator to set the standards for those specialist postgraduate qualifications. Here we do it all under one roof and we have a single education department that's informing that work. I recognise that there are some differences because of the role of the European institutions but we do have that shared expertise being able to inform that work across the piece. Whereas if you were to have an internal division or a full split of the college and regulatory functions then you immediately have to duplicate that work and there's additional costs and again lack of cohesion I think that comes with that. So we just need to make sure that any move in that direction is balanced and well evidenced in terms of its impact.

Naomi Nicholson (17:07)
Yeah, thank you, Ben. And that point about efficiency, I think, is really super important because, for any business operating in, the environment that we're in at the moment, it can be really challenging. So all regulators, I think, are, really thinking carefully and governments actually asking regulators to think really carefully about what burden they're placing on those they regulate.

And I was really interested in what you were saying about the two functions there as well because having worked across a number of different regulators, I've noticed that a lot of regulators, particularly over the last 10 years have been doing a lot more to proactively promote standards and to do preventative work and proactively and positively support the professions and those they regulate to comply. So I think there is a really wide range of activities that can fall under the umbrella of what a regulator does and it's not just all about fitness to practice as a regulator, we can do preventative work as well.

Ben Myring (17:55)
So yeah, I think that's a crucial point. So in human healthcare, in other professions, you're actually seeing a growing overlap between the roles of regulators, who are doing more and more supportive regulation, leadership type work, and the traditional work of royal colleges.

So while those regulators still don't go as far as we do when it comes to things like Mind Matters and so on, we still are well out in front on some of that work. Other regulators are in a sense catching up with the RCVS in that role where we have those dual objectives in a sense of setting and upholding standards, but also that more supportive upholding the professions kind of work.

So yeah, in a sense, there's less clarity between their roles than there was before. So I think it would be a backward move to split that work up in the veterinary sector when it isn't being divided elsewhere, particularly when the veterinary sector is so much smaller, less capable of supporting multiple institutions. All it would do would add great cost with little provable benefit. And then again, to reiterate, if you were to go for that full split, then the Royal College would become a voluntary organisation. And those things like MRCVS that a lot of vets feel very passionately about those post-nominals, that membership, that would no longer be synonymous with being a veterinary surgeon.

There are numerous very clear disadvantages of going for a full split, whereas the benefits are really not clear or provable at all as far as I can see.

Naomi Nicholson (19:29)
So I just want to also just talk about some of the changes in the external environment and what's going on. We've mentioned this legislative reform a couple of times that the college is talking to Defra about, and then we also have the Competition and Markets Authority investigating the market. So we've got a lot of things happening outside of the RCVS that the RCVS is involved with.

Tim, could you talk a little bit about what that might mean for the RCVS.

Tim Parkin (19:55)
Sure, I mean it is kind of serendipitous I think that these two things are going on at the same time. They've certainly, you could say to some extent, they've helped each other, to sort of motivate each other, but equally that you might regard the CMA as a bit of a further catalyst for the legislative reform as well. Many people will have seen the preliminary decision report that came out from the CMA and the accompanying consultation to which we would encourage as many registrants to respond as possible. But one of the clear objectives of the reformed Veterinary Surgeons Act is to provide the RCVS with the authority to regulate practices via a mandatory Practice Standards Scheme. And given that many of the CMA remedies relate to exactly that, some of the activities or practices that they would need to undertake rather than necessarily individual veterinary surgeons or veterinary nurses, such as, for example, transparency of pricing, transparency of ownership, development of routes for clients to raise concerns or complaints. There is very clearly a degree, quite a reasonable degree, of overlap between what is going on with respect to the Competition Markets Authority and they might send down orders and what we might hope comes out of the reformed Veterinary Insurgents Act.

Naomi Nicholson (21:03)
So essentially those two pieces could kind of dovetail and support and so you won't have, you know, can kind of bring them together in some way and make it bit more coherent.

Tim Parkin (21:10)
I think there is a certain amount of overlap between the two where they might both end up in the same place. But there's plenty of aspects of each of the two different things going on that are very independent of each other and facing in different ways as well.

Naomi Nicholson (21:23)
There's a lot of moving parts here, isn't there? And it's interesting because again, I was just reflecting before this about, how as regulators, we are also regulated, so the Competition and Markets Authority is looking at this area, you know, I've worked in regulators where I've been subject to regulators having an interest in what we're doing. And actually, we are all regulated, even the regulators. So, we're part of ensuring that the way we regulate meets those wider objectives and public good as well.

Ben, could you say a bit more about the longer term with the reform and the CMA. Where do you think this is kind of going in the longer term and how do you see that playing out?

Ben Myring (21:59)
So I think it dovetails really off what Tim was saying. The CMA aren't just making shorter term recommendations about what they might do through an order, through their own powers. They're also making recommendations for legislative reform, similarly to we have done. And there's a great deal of overlap there. I think what the key bit for me is that they recognise that there's that need regulate businesses, not just practices, but businesses. So at the moment, we only regulate individual vets and veterinary surgeons and that's where our powers of enforcement lie as well.

Whereas if you really want to make practice regulation have teeth, then the enforcement mechanisms need to apply to the practice itself, to the license for that practice, and potentially to the owners of that practice. That could be through fines or other sanctions right up to taking the license away if necessary. And if you don't have that, everything hangs off the lead, the named veterinary surgeon, and that may not be entirely fair, because sometimes they're going to be operating in an environment where decisions are being made by non-vets at the very top of the organisation. You know, the CMA are calling for the regulator to have more teeth in that particular area, which is again what we've been doing since at least 2001. So, there are some real synergies there.

Naomi Nicholson (23:14)
That may come through in the legislative reform in due course.

Ben Myring (23:17)
We hope so, yeah. We know that Defra are in conversation with CMA just as we are, so hopefully we'll all be pointed in the same direction.

Naomi Nicholson (23:25)
And the regulatory geek in me is quite fascinated about how that regulation of practices will work and that's something obviously quite new for this sector, but a number of other regulators, particularly in the sort of healthcare sector, there are already models out there aren't there for regulators who regulate both professionals and the organisations as well like the General Optical Council for example. So there are those sort of models out there that can be looked at and can help inform anything that might be done in this space.

Ben Myring (23:50)
Definitely yeah, pharmaceutical council too, I think.

Naomi Nicholson (23:54)
Thank you, that's been really helpful and is there anything else we'd like to highlight for people that's happening in the College at the moment that people might be interested to hear about Tim, I don't know if there's anything you'd want to add.

Tim Parkin (24:05)
I think a couple of other aspects just to think more broadly about the amount of work that's gone into the Veterinary Surgeons Act reform and that sort of thing. We've had these as they're called sprints with Defra since December, January time, an enormous amount of time has been spent on that. And, a couple of other things that maybe the professionals would be interested in that we've touched on in there, things like license to practice, new fitness to practice regimes might come in. At the moment we can only really take forward to disciplinary committee, cases that provide a real prospect of being agreed as serious professional misconduct. And really our only sanctions are sort of suspension or striking people off the register. What we'd really want to be getting to is a much more forward looking fitness to practice regime where we support individuals and look forward with their professional conduct in the future and ensure that essentially, they don't fall foul of the disciplinary process. So that's one aspect that has taken quite a lot of our time and quite a lot of attention.

Another aspect that's potentially of interest is a potential move to license to practice regime where we could look at for example conditional license practice or conditional licensure such that individuals who may not be able to complete all day one competencies for example for reasons of some form of disability are still able to practice in some form but with a conditional licence to enable them to do so and I think that would be a real advance for us, better reflect the society that we serve.

Naomi Nicholson (25:25)
Thank you. Yeah, it sounds like you've been a bit restricted there. It's been a bit of a blunt instrument and you're looking at something that's much more flexible and responsive to people's needs.

Tim Parkin (25:33)
No, that's exactly right.

Naomi Nicolson (25:36)
Thank you. And Ben, is there anything you want to add to let people know about this point?

Ben Myring (25:38)
The one that really kind of excites me as a geek, a regulatory geek, as you put it is around the regulation of other professionals. So at the moment we just regulate veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses but there are obviously plenty of other professionals out there who are working in an unregulated environment whether that's musculoskeletal therapists of one kind or another, physios, chiropractors, osteopaths, and veterinary technicians - a fairly new but growing profession - and then cattle foot trimmers, equine dental technicians. If we can get these people onto formal registers with protected titles, that has the potential to have a huge impact both on public assurance but also on animal health and welfare too. You know, you can really set and uphold their standards. Everybody then knows what the educational level of these people are, so you have that assurance as veterinary surgeons as well to know who to work with, who to delegate to. And yeah, I think the potential impact of that on the whole veterinary team is enormous.

Naomi Nicholson (26:34)
Thank you. Yeah, and that sounds like another change which is really embedded in what we talked about at the start about the purpose of the regulator, the interests of the health and welfare of animals and the wider public interest. It sounds like we're thinking about all of that when we're thinking about allied health professionals as well.

Ben Myring (26:50)
Definitely.

A veterinary nursing perspective

Julie Dugmore (27:06)
I'm Julie Dugmore, a registered veterinary nurse. I qualified in 1987 following training in a small animal general practice. And I was in practice for around 15, 16 years before moving into a teaching position. And then I actually joined the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in December of 2002. So coming up 23 years this year.

I've had varied roles within that time - started as an external verifier and then moved my way up the ranks and now I'm Director of Veterinary Nursing, leading the team working on both regulatory and charter functions.

Ben Myring (27:43)
So Jules has been at the College for even longer than I have. I think I started at the end of 2006 and I started in the veterinary nursing department as Jules will remember very well. And I think one of the first things that I worked on once I moved into policy work was trying to protect the veterinary nurse title in the big campaign that we had back in 2015 which, although that wasn't successful in of itself, it did get the ball rolling with discussions with Defra and internally about what we wanted from legislative reform. But yeah, over those years, we've seen such a big change with veterinary nursing being properly regulated and going from the list to the register and so on. So there's been huge strides made, but we can only go so far under the charter. We need to be able to protect the title which needs proper legislative change.

So I was wondering Jules, why you thought that protecting the title meant so much to veterinary nurses.

Julie Dugmore (28:34)
I think it matters because it's about fairness, it's about recognition, it's about trust. Veterinary nurse training is hard. It takes a long time. The student nurses have to meet robust standards, the day one competencies, the day one skills, professional behaviours. And at the end of it, whether it's a two year programme or a four year programme, they join the register and they are accountable professional people. They are not assistants, they're very skilled and they are an essential part of the veterinary healthcare team. And I think protecting the title, it's not about status, but it's about recognising that expertise that they bring to the patient health and welfare and the clients and the patient outcomes.

Regulation, I think, gave us a basis, it gave us professional status, it gave us accountability. And it also gave us a clear identity, but it is just a foundation. And without that protecting of the title, anybody can call themselves a veterinary nurse. They can probably still and probably will still do that even with the title protected. But it does, I think, give some reassurance to the profession that they have a protected title and it allows the public to understand that we are professional people in our own right, who are caring for their animals.

Ben Myring (29:51)
Yeah, so it's that public assurance bit as well, so that the public know who people that are using particular professional titles are and how they're trained. Because, if you go to a veterinary practice, you should be able to assume that if someone's called a vet, that they're a veterinary surgeon, someone's called a VN, that they're actually a proper registered veterinary nurse. So that stuff is really important.

What do you think the other planned reforms that we're working on that would impact VNs? What do you think about those? Is there any that you'd highlight in particular?

Julie Dugmore (30:22)
I think probably the most significant is reforming schedule three, which is outdated. It doesn't sort of cater for the fact that veterinary nurses are now professional, regulated accountable people. It's very rigid. It's ambiguous and that ambiguity can lead to it being limiting. Veterinary surgeons don't necessarily have confidence to delegate and all of the tasks currently have to be delegated. think the proposal to replace it with a system that's more flexible, where the regulator can determine what tasks a nurse will do and with what kind of or level of autonomy is brilliant. That will also allow us to potentially add skills to further qualifications. So our advanced certificate in veterinary nursing, for example, whilst it currently has a lot of extra advanced knowledge at the moment, it's not got any skills because once you're on the register, you're a veterinary nurse and you can have delegated tasks so long as the veterinary surgeon is confident that you are competent and qualified to take on that delegation.

I think a more modern, flexible approach is what the profession needs in order for us to continue to evolve and work to the top of our licence. And it would also, I think, future-proof. So as we evolve further, we will be able to bring in more skills, more autonomy etc.

Ben Myring (31:52)
Definitely true. Schedule 3, it's rightly disliked, I think, as a mechanism for doing things at the moment. What one of its eccentricities that not many people know about, is that it links veterinary nurses to farmers. So the same language is used to veterinary nurses as it is for farmers. So at the moment, if we say that VNs can do more, if we say something is covered by schedule three, that also means that farmers can do it on their own animals without any training. That's one of the limitations that we're facing at the moment. Jules, anything else that you think that we should highlight when it comes to the legislative reform?

Julie Dugmore (32:30)
I think separating employment from delegation would be a really big step forward. It would open up the door to more flexible ways of working. So community nursing, for example, potentially an advanced practitioner, particularly if we can add certain skills to certain roles or statuses, it would mean we could take on more responsibility.

We can do preventative and follow-up care that we can't necessarily do at the moment, working as part of that team. Right person, right time, right skill, right job. I think that would a key thing.

And it's not a radical idea. We see it already in human healthcare. There are nurses who are advanced practitioners, there are community nurses, district nurses.

So I think bringing that kind of model into veterinary practice would make the whole system stronger by making best use of everyone's skills.

Ben Myring (33:23)
I think another thing perhaps worth mentioning in that context is the possibility of a VN prescribe a role, we've been thinking about for quite some time. That's actually not something that requires the Veterinary Surgeons Act to change. It would need the veterinary medicines regulations to change. But it's definitely worth exploring a role in which VNs can do more in terms of first vaccinations, in terms of flea and worming prescriptions, for instance, things that are sort of low risk that they may be able to prescribe without a vet first carrying out a clinical assessment. So that's something we've got a research project at the moment that's assessing the risks and benefits around that.

Summary chat

Abi Judd-English (34:13)
Yeah, so Ben, obviously some really, really interesting conversations that you've had this afternoon with obviously Naomi and Tim, and then just with Jules just now. But obviously you head up all of this work at the College, with a huge range of people, both internally and externally. And I know that it can be a bit of a minefield. There's a lot to navigate and it can sometimes be really difficult to distill, which is obviously why we've recorded this podcast, just to sort of try and simplify things a little bit for people.

If you want people to take sort of one thing away from these conversations today, what would it be and why?

Ben Myring (34:47)
I can't believe you're trying to get me to restrict to just one thing when there's, yeah, as you say, there are so many elements to this.

I think depending on who you are, whether you're member of the public or a member of the profession, or indeed, you know, a veterinary nurse, rather than a veterinary surgeon, there may be different things that a more or less important to you.

I think if I were to highlight one thing though, it would be that preservation of the Royal College that regulates model.

Because while it is unique and it isn't the norm, I would argue that it is best practice. It's very cost effective. It does allow a coherent and cohesive approach to regulation, holistic approach to regulation. And it allows us to go further than other regulators when it comes to that supportive work, that leadership work that other regulators do, but they're not going anywhere near as far as we do. And it also means that the professions are more closely involved in their own regulation than you see elsewhere. You know, we've got veterinary nurses and veterinary surgeons embedded on every committee in a way that you don't necessarily see in other regulators, but much more is in the hands of the executive. I do think it's an important and precious thing and something that other professions actually should be looking to emulate as a model. And I do think that if that were to be lost, it would be a real shame and would have no discernible benefits, actually, none that can be really evidenced, the losses of the things that we would no longer have, if you were to no longer have that model, I think they would be quite clear.

Abi Judd-English (36:19)
Yeah, completely, because the value of that knowledge and experience of the veterinary professionals themselves, that can't be underestimated within all the work that we do. And it is really important and we really need that knowledge as well.

What do you think this means moving forward? Why is it so important for people to sort of get involved and get their voices heard and how can they do that? So obviously, veterinary professionals themselves, but also other stakeholders and the wider public as well.

Ben Myring (36:47)
It's a good question. We've been in discussions with Defra throughout this year about the possibility of actually achieving these legislative reforms. And, we're closer than we've ever been, we think. It seems likely that Defra will consult on recommendations for legislative reform, and hopefully sooner rather than later. If they want to introduce new legislation in time for it to pass before the next election, then they really need to make some decisions on that fairly soon. If that consultation does come about, that is a once in a generation, in several generations, opportunity for everyone to have their say, whether you're a member of the public or a member of the professions, to actually express your views on this. I would strongly urge you to, when that opportunity comes about, to support those reforms to have that new modern legislation giving us those same powers that other regulators now have and to preserve the Royal College that regulates model. Take the opportunity, whether as an individual or whether as part of an organisational response, super important that the message is heard loud and clear in government that it is time for that change.

Abi Judd-English (37:57)
It's exciting times, it? Change is coming and Veterinary Surgeons Act originally from 1966. So I think we are well overdue aren't we.

Ben Myring (38:06)
It's even older than me.

Abi Judd-English (38:07)
Well, thank you very much, Ben. And it's been great chatting with you and speak again very soon, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (38:11)
Hope so - thanks all. Bye.

Outro

Abi Judd-English (38:28)
That brings us to the end of our second episode. A big thank you to all our guests and to you for listening. If you have any questions or suggestions for future content, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected]. We've added this email address to the show notes, where a link to our news, blog and events pages can also be found. We've also added a link to our podcast webpage, where all podcast episodes will be available to download from now on.

Remember to like and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on so you don't miss an episode. We've always got loads going on and there are plenty of opportunities for you to get involved. I'd really recommend keeping an eye on our news and events pages as well as on social media as the chances are there'll be something happening that you'll be keen to get involved in. And we also now have a WhatsApp channel so you can get RCVS updates directly to your phone.

Currently this is only available to access directly via a link. So we've added that link into the show notes for ease as well. So you can just click that to follow us on there. And finally, if you're a veteran professional, don't forget listening to this episode counts towards your CPD. So be sure to record and reflect on one CPD app. Many thanks again for listening. hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.