The current VN Futures Report and Action Plan, launched at the Vet Futures Summit on 4 July 2016, lays out six aims and ambitions that will feed into achieving our vision of ‘Taking charge of our future together’.
Each of these aims has been further broken down into actions that we may need to take to get there. You can view these aims and actions below.
Creating a sustainable workforce
1. Improve careers materials for schools
2. Encourage more males into the profession via targeted marketing of the demographic
3. Develop VN Careers Ambassadors
4. Review the syllabus (species focused/level/guided learning hours/evidence base)
5. Increase the number of training practices
6. Develop a VN Schools Council
Structured and rewarding career paths
7. Establish a working party through the RCVS to further canvas opinion on the scope, level and delivery of post-qualification awards for veterinary nurses
8. Develop advanced practitioner qualifications and/or status
9. Encourage maximising individual nurses’ strengths; provide progression for all
10. Develop lifelong learning in leadership; mentoring and targeted leadership programmes
11. Actively promote performance review and evaluation across the profession
12. Explore ways to develop the next generation of veterinary nurse leaders; identify and nurture talent, providing the skills and opportunities to succeed
Confident, resilient, healthy and well-supported workforce
13. Deliver a coordinated, well-funded and evidenced-based approach to mental health and wellbeing for the veterinary team
14. Review the approach to recruiting and selecting veterinary nurse students to ensure adequate support, improve wellbeing and manage expectations
15. Develop peer support and/or mentoring mechanisms in all UK veterinary nursing schools and improve support for veterinary nurses post-registration
16. Develop support for overseas-graduated veterinary nurses working in the UK, who may not have benefitted from the same support as UK student nurses
17. Help veterinary professionals to work with uncertainties, and develop reflective practice
Proactive role in One Health
18. Develop links with human-centred nurses in practice, to establish the potential benefits to each profession, share resources and work collaboratively on pilot projects under the One Health umbrella
19. Explore the development of a cross-profession committee and the organisation of regional One Health events and research partnerships
20. Through the use of shared resources, work to empower veterinary nurses to become more involved with, and lead on, public health campaigns
21. Develop an evidence-based resource for veterinary nurses
Maximising nurses’ potential
22. Explore utilisation of a social media and television campaign to promote the role of the veterinary nurse, focusing on the training and development undertaken
23. Provide material for practices to use on their websites and elsewhere to promote veterinary nurses within their practice
24. Research and develop the district nurse role
25. Encourage charging for nurse time and skills by providing case studies/models to demonstrate increased practice revenue
26. Encourage flexible working
27. Establish inter-professional education and training for veterinary students and veterinary nurses along with inter-professional CPD
28. Provide opportunities for overseas veterinary nurses and vets registering with the RCVS to be educated on the role and responsibilities of veterinary nurses in the UK
A clarified and bolstered VN role via a reformed Schedule 3
29. Establish a formal Working Party that will review the evidence assembled by the VN Futures project, and consider possible reforms to Schedule 3 and related guidance
30. The Working Party may also consider proposals to separate the delegation rights of VNs from those of farmers