Vet Wellbeing Award winners 2018 announced

Three winners of the 2018 Vet Wellbeing Awards will be announced tomorrow [25 January 2019] at the Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons (SPVS) - Veterinary Management Group (VMG) Congress at Celtic Manor.

The Vet Wellbeing Awards, now entering their fourth year, are run by the Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons (SPVS) and our Mind Matters Initiative and were created to recognise those practices who understand the importance of motivating and engaging their teams and who can demonstrate their commitment to being a better place to work. 

Winners of the Vet Wellbeing Awards 2018

• Small Practice:  Westpoint Farm Vets, Chelmsford
• Medium Practice: Beaumont Sainsbury Veterinary Hospital, Royal Veterinary College
• Large Practice: Drove Veterinary Hospital, Swindon

Nick Stuart (pictured right), speaking on behalf of SPVS, said he was delighted that awareness of the awards and engagement with them seemed to be rising year on year: “It is good to see so many practices making wellbeing a priority.  Involving their teams in planning rotas, encouraging support through buddying and mentoring, and encouraging better communication through social events, charity involvement and effective meetings, are just some examples of how our winners stood out.”

The awards will be presented at the opening ceremony of the SPVS/Veterinary Management Group (VMG) Congress on Friday 25th January at Celtic Manor.

Lizzie Lockett (pictured right), RCVS Chief Executive, said she was delighted that the awards appeared to show increasing attention to wellbeing in practice: “This year, it was harder than ever to choose our top three in each category as innovative wellbeing practices become more and more widespread.  There are so many practices now doing great things to value and support their staff, which is fantastic to see.”

The winners will then join a panel chaired by Emma Mamo, Head of Workplace Wellbeing at the mental health charity Mind, to share their innovative approaches to wellbeing in practice. The full results, together with details of the winning practices and highly commended entries, will be published on the Vet Wellbeing Awards website. This is part of the MMI stream at Congress, where other sessions will include ‘The Role of the Line Manager in Workplace Mental Health’ and ‘Managing Emotions in Practice’.

VMG will join SPVS and MMI to run a series of four ‘Wellbeing in Practice’ training events across the country in March and September.  Full details can also be found via the Vet Wellbeing Awards website. For Ami Sawran, Westpoint Farm Vets Chelmsford, winner of the small practice category, this sharing of examples of wellbeing between and within practices is what the awards are all about: “I looked at case studies of past winners on the awards’ website and picked up new ideas, some of which were quick and easy to implement, others are still work in progress.   Entering has been a very positive thing for the whole team as a great deal of collaborative reflection went into the process and we were pleasantly surprised by how much we were already doing; we just weren’t calling it ‘wellbeing’.”