Wrapping up our Strategic Plan and looking forward to the next six months

Six months into 2019 – the third and, indeed, last year of our current Strategic Plan - and it has already been a busy year, with many exciting initiatives outlined in the Plan being completed or getting underway and many more on the horizon as we start to look ahead to the next plan.

In spite of the ever-present uncertainty of Brexit, our team, located just a short walk from the parliamentary chaos of Westminster, has worked tirelessly on our preparations, policies and procedures to mitigate any effects Brexit might have on the veterinary professions.

Most recently the College, working with the British Veterinary Association (BVA), secured a recommendation from the Migration Advisory Committee that the veterinary profession re-join the Shortage Occupation List.

We welcomed this recommendation with our submission focusing on the need for the UK immigration system to recognise that the veterinary workforce is already under capacity and that this problem is likely to be exacerbated after Brexit.

As we gear up for a productive second half of the year, now is a good time to reflect on some of the achievements the RCVS has made and the steps we are taking as we wrap up the 2017-19 Strategic Plan.

Here are just a handful of the initiatives that have contributed towards the delivery of our Strategic Plan over the last six months:

• In March, Council supported the recommendations of the Education Committee to implement an outcomes-based approach to CPD, supporting our aim to be an organisation that encourages lifelong learning and development amongst the profession.
• In March, our Council member who leads on Global strategy, Dr Chris Tufnell, and Policy Manager Ben Myring attended the 7th Pan Commonwealth Veterinary Conference (CVC) of the Commonwealth Veterinary Association in Bangalore, to investigate global interest in RCVS qualifications, the Practice Standards Scheme and Advanced Practitioner and Specialist statuses. This trip has clarified next steps in our ambition to improve animal health and welfare on an international basis by helping to raise veterinary standards overseas.
• The first meeting of the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group was held in April, including representatives from the British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society, British Veterinary LGBT+, the British Veterinary Association, the Major Employers Group, the Association of Veterinary Students and the Society for Practising Veterinary Surgeons – the British Veterinary Nursing Association and the Veterinary Schools Council are also represented on the Group. This is an important step in working towards our aim of being an organisation that encourages and supports diversity in the professions, our Council, our staff and other groups allied to us.
• To improve our communication with veterinary and veterinary nursing students, we have welcomed students to our flagship events. We also now have two veterinary student representatives on each of the Education Committee and the Primary Qualifications Subcommittee (PQSC), who attended their first meetings in spring and provided valuable contributions across a wide range of issues. Also, in March, to ensure RCVS staff have a better understanding of student life, Bristol veterinary school kindly hosted a group of team members for a visit.
• We closed our Graduate Outcomes survey in January and received 1,963 full responses and 3,825 partial responses from veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses and members of the public, in addition to numerous organisational responses. 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.

At the risk of writing a novel-length update, I would also like to share just a few of my personal picks for other achievements we have celebrated this year so far – demonstrating the range of our activity:

• The College is celebrating its 175th Anniversary this year and, 175 years after the RCVS was brought into being with its Royal Charter, we are proud to continue to support veterinary surgeons – and now veterinary nurses – to meet the high standards expected of them by the public and their own professions.
• This year we were ranked 28th Best Place to Work in the UK (medium-sized) by Great Place to Work, and given a Laureate Award for being within the top 50 for five continuous years – a testament to our HR department and all of our wonderful RCVS staff.
• We were also made a finalist in the prestigious European Foundation for Management Development Excellence in Practice Awards, for our joint leadership Massive Open Online Course, run jointly with the NHS and FutureLearn.
• We have seen our Mind Matters Initiative grow in strength and impact this year, with the launch of a series of Wellbeing Roadshows, run jointly with the Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons and the Veterinary Management Group; a series of pilot resilience training days run jointly with the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, and the launch of our inaugural Sarah Brown Mental Health Research Grant, to fund research that focuses on mental health and wellbeing within the veterinary professions. I am delighted that the first award, of £20,000, will be made at RCVS Day on 12 July.
• We have also signed the Time to Change Pledge, to signal our commitment to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our team.
• We have published the results of our second survey amongst non-UK EU graduates, in light of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and recently launched our 2019 Surveys of the Veterinary Professions.
• Given the uncertainty around Brexit, it’s more important than ever that we maintain links with our European colleagues, and we have been represented at the ENQA forum in Tallinn, the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education Conference in Zagreb, and the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe General Assembly in Bratislava.
• Finally, we welcomed 220 new veterinary nurses to the profession at our VN Day at London Zoo.

Looking forward to wrapping up our 2017-19 Strategic Plan

2019 is the last year of our current Strategic Plan and so we have been busy looking at how to deliver on its remaining actions.

One of our priorities is continuing to meet our ambition of being a First Rate Regulator, with much of this work, including reviewing Schedule 3 to the Veterinary Surgeons Act with an aim of bolstering the role of VNs, developing a strategy for the regulation of allied professionals, and exploring the ability of the College to engage in compulsory practice inspections, being tackled by the RCVS Legislation Working Party.

We are also looking at our global reach in terms of how we can share our regulatory best practice internationally as well as the potential international appeal of some of our standards and qualifications, not forgetting to ensure that we continue to learn from regulators around the globe.

A final area of priority is putting systems in place to support the roll-out of our outcomes-based approach to continuing professional development (CPD), which reflects our commitment to creating and sustaining a learning culture.

What next?

One of our key activities in the last half of 2019 will be developing our next Strategic Plan – putting on to paper our vision for the RCVS going into the 2020s.

This year we will be consulting with veterinary and public stakeholders, RCVS and VN Councils and our committees in preparation for the new strategy. RCVS staff will also be contributing to the development of the strategy at the RCVS away day later on in the year.

We also have an exciting line-up of events planned for the remainder of the year, with RCVS Day (12 July), our 2nd Mind Matters Mental Health Research Symposium (24 September) and our 2nd ViVet Innovation Symposium (1 October) open for ticket applications. Check out our events page for more information on these.

Before I sign off, I want to thank all of the RCVS staff for their huge contribution so far this year. I also want to stress that we recognise and appreciate the hard work of veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses in safeguarding animal health and welfare, and public health, in the UK and beyond – we just set out the professional framework, you do the hard work.