This edition is the first to have a section for nurses and SQPs with welcome contributions from Pam Mosedale and Ian Wright addressing organisational skills and quality improvements, and internal parasites. Pam and Ian bring a wealth of experience in these areas and this information will be of interest and value to the whole practice team. I know that nurses and SQPs will also find the material from David Rendle and Jo Ireland on obesity and quality of life assessment of great interest, as will I.
The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak has caused us to modify our working practices to maintain social or rather working distances with additional strategies to protect our staff, clients and businesses. It did, however, for many of us break up our established teams with us working in semi-isolation, in pairs as a single epidemiological unit or totally separately, with some team members furloughed and some working from home. We obviously need to remain vigilant and careful and we will need to adapt moving forward, but re-establishing our practice teams is going to be important to share the workload and the stresses and strains of practice life, as well as sharing in the joys of success and the sadness of loss. Re-engagement with the team, I think, will become easier with the opportunity for everyone to get back together face-to-face. We need to remain mindful of our team's mental health and wellbeing. The RCVS Mind Matters Initiative is a good place for help and resources and if you are not already aware I draw your attention to the new free mental health webinar series aiming to tackle issues affecting veterinary team wellbeing.
Face-to-face CPD has temporarily been put on hold and the near future brings much of our CPD online through webinars, courses and online congresses. The challenges for providers is to design a format using modern technologies to engage with delegates and provide value for money learning, and the challenge for us as delegates is to try and engage with the online material to get the most from it. I personally prefer the face-to-face interactions and often learn as much from the ensuing discussion as from the presentation itself. I find myself being distracted while online and struggle to maintain engagement. The practical components of a course or workshop are invaluable to me personally as a teacher, while as a delegate, an opportunity to have a go, or to be shown has been essential to my own personal progression in my field. Outside of COVID-19, one of the biggest challenges facing practical CPD moving forward is the use of live horses for teaching. This is particularly highlighted in equine reproduction when internal examinations are being performed. How do we demonstrate an internal procedure using either a virtual or real-life simulator? This will need some thought and likely much investment in terms of time and money, however, it is likely that this kind of element will become more common in the future. When we can all safely get back together face-to-face is unknown; BEVA congress has been postponed until September 2021 and hopefully we will have a positive shift in the COVID-19 outbreak by then.
We must not forget about the next generation of equine vets. We have students wanting to book in for ‘seeing practice’ in 2021 and we have been unsure if we can safely do this. Without the opportunity to experience and learn from you in practice before graduation we will all be disadvantaged when these new graduates come into the workplace. BEVA have a vet graduates section of their website and have launched a ‘What I wish I'd known’ initiative where we can all contribute our tips of what we wish we had known when we first started: https://www.beva.org.uk/Vet-Graduates/Top-tips-for-new-graduates. I encourage you all to get on board with initiatives such as this as it is a good step towards getting the team back together.