What does the future hold for veterinary practice?

Veterinary practice in the next generation will be no holiday camp - but it will be a place where a well trained and properly remunerated multidisciplinary team provides high quality care using the best available technology, according to speakers at a meeting organised by the RCVS on 16 June 2006.

At the Postcards from the Future Symposium - a forward look to the year 2020 - speakers from both inside and outside the veterinary profession predicted a generally sunny outlook for practice in the next 10 to 15 years.

Even the farm animal branch of the profession will emerge from under its current cloud to develop a new and better working relationship with its clients in the livestock industry, they said.

Introducing the meeting, RCVS President Lynne Hill said if the veterinary profession wanted to shape its future it had to adopt a positive attitude to the challenges it was currently facing.

The recent manpower survey showed that the pace of change was not as extreme as many claimed and she warned against the prevailing pessimistic mood -"gloomy pictures may become a self-fulfilling prophesy," she noted.

In the small animal sector, there will be a continuation of the trend towards larger multivet practices offering a wide range of specialist clinical disciplines and hosting the services of skilled paraprofessionals such as physiotherapists, nutritionists and osteopaths, suggested Peter Watson, Managing Director of the Vets4Pets Group.

Formerly, business development manager of the Specsavers Optical group, Mr Watson pointed out that the challenges facing the veterinary profession were often very similar to those experienced by other healthcare professions like opticians. He predicted that some of the solutions will also be similar, highlighting the transformation of the optical market over the past 30 years with the emergence of corporate chains.

However, in the coming years greater public acceptance of the value of pet insurance will allow veterinarians to continue raising standards of veterinary care.

They will also be able to charge a realistic professional rate allowing them to provide better salaries for themselves and their support staff. And should disputes arise over veterinary fees there will be an independent body in place to act as mediator, suggested veterinary consultant Dr Eric Jackson.

Charging a proper rate for their professional services will also be essential for the future survival of farm animal practice, particularly in view of the changes underway in veterinary medicines distribution, observed Jonathan Long, Livestock Editor of Farmers Weekly.

He foresaw the current decline in the numbers of farm animal practitioners levelling off in the future. Livestock farmers would still need the input of their veterinary advisor although most work would take the form of pre-planned health checks rather than emergency visits, which would become increasingly uneconomic.

A new working relationship would also be necessary between neighbouring practices if they are to continue to provide the range of services and out of hours cover that farmers will need, believed Leicestershire practitioner Peter Orpin.

However, these changes in the structure of farm animal practice must be properly handled by the profession, its clients and government. "Market forces alone may produce a system of change without progress with higher disease risks, poorer welfare and reduced overall veterinary service if this is not managed well," he warned.

In both large and small animal practice, advances in technology over the next 15 years will have a considerable impact on vets' ability to diagnose and treat disease.

Many currently available technologies will be adapted for use in the veterinary field - global positioning systems will be used to trace and identify individual animals, and mobile camera phones will transmit images for vets to make an initial diagnosis at many miles distance.

In animal treatment, current experimental methods such as organ transplantation and stem cell treatments could become routinely used, Dr Jackson predicted.

Yet while most speakers were optimistic about the future of the veterinary profession over the next decade, some current issues were likely to cause continuing problems.

Equine practitioner and recent graduate Huw Griffiths warned that solutions must be found to the problem of mounting debts among veterinary students. This was already discouraging young graduates from taking up a low paid appointment in academia.

If left unchecked, the trend would result in the intake of veterinary schools becomingly increasingly dominated by the offspring of well to do parents, he said.