Veterinary Continuing Professional Development (vet CPD) is the process by which vets, nurses and customer care team members continually maintain, improve and broaden their professional and personal skills and knowledge to ensure they remain professionally competent.

• In the UK, all practising vets must undertake a minimum of 105 hours of Vet CPD in any three-year period, with an average of 35 hours per year. This applies whether you are full or part-time, regardless of the number of hours you work.
• Registered Veterinary Nurses (RVNs) need to complete a minimum of 45 hours of CPD in any three-year period with an average of 15 hours per year. Again, this applies whether you are full or part-time
• There is no requirement for other members of the practice team to undertake any CPD – at Onswitch we think this is a significant oversight given just how important the customer care team are in recruiting and retaining clients. Of course, successful practices understand the need to train, support and develop every member of the team with regular CPD, regardless of the lack of a statutory position for non-clinicians

Veterinary CPD is crucially important because we all need to keep using our skills so that we don’t lose them, and there are always new developments in surgical techniques, clinical research and customer care training that we need to ensure we stay on top of. Most people working in veterinary practice will do considerably more hours of CPD than required each year, with a number of sources of knowledge counting towards CPD hours:

• Attending courses, lectures or seminars
• Shadowing someone or being mentored
• Journal clubs and learning sets – informal colleague meetings discussing interesting cases and meeting feedback
• In-house training
• Secondments to other practices
• Keeping a reading diary of veterinary journals and other relevant publications
• Research
• Reflection

Have you considered coaching?

In any job we learn something new every day – a different technique in theatre, a useful phrase when discussing weight management of patients with clients or a new approach in defusing an angry conversation at the reception desk. Much of this learning and growth is unofficial, and we may not even recognise when it happens. Coaching and mentoring are great ways to share best practice with colleagues and learn from others who have been through the same experiences you may now be facing. Ask a colleague or team leader if you can spend time with them to observe how they approach their work, or schedule different colleagues each time to share their knowledge in a short discussion session at the next team meeting.

Choose accredited training courses

All of Onswitch’s training courses and workshops generate CPD-accredited hours, and there is something for every member of the practice team to learn in our wide range of Bertha-run courses:

• Telephone Skills – 5 Steps
• Telephone Skills – 5 Steps Equine
• Veterinary Consult Training
• Nurse Consulting – 7 Steps
• Managing Difficult Situations
• Cat Friendly Practice
• Opening Your Own Vet Practice
• Pet Health Plan Training
• Value and Price
• The Customer Journey

Bertha is Onswitch’s custom-fitted training bus, and she travels around the UK bringing interactive workshops to practices that might otherwise struggle to schedule travel and time away for key members of the team to attend courses in distant cities.

You can check out the current training schedule, watch a short video explaining course content for each and book your CPD quickly and easily at onswitch.co.uk

Access online veterinary CPD any time, anywhere

Sometimes it’s hard to fit in a day of training and attending a couple of hours on a course can mean several hours travelling to and from the venue. This is where web-based learning and development can be very beneficial. Many organisations deliver webinars and distance learning CPD so that busy vets, nurses and customer care professionals can keep their CPD hours topped up without compromising the working day too much.

For online CPD provision, you’ll find an unrivalled range of topics at cxclub.care, a huge online library of veterinary team CPD content, streamed on demand so you can choose a time and place convenient to you. One great value monthly practice subscription of just £99 +VAT unlocks unlimited access to content for up to ten team members, covering every aspect of customer care and the client experience. As an added bonus, there is no limit to the proportion that online learning can make up of your annual CPD hours, so with Onswitch online veterinary CPD courses you and the team can access valuable and impactful personal and professional development whenever and wherever you want.

Cx Congress – the UK’s only veterinary customer experience congress

Every June, the annual Cx Congress is held near Nottingham – two days of sessions and workshops dedicated to the customer experience. Vets, nurses and customer care team members can pick and choose lectures from several streams of content, tailoring each day’s CPD to meet your own development needs. Tickets for the next Cx Congress are on sale now at cxclub.care/cx-congress and if you can’t make, it you might like to know that the whole thing is captured on video so you can purchase a year’s access to every previous congress to watch and digest at your leisure!

Whatever your role in practice, and no matter how much experience you have, it’s vital to keep up to date with veterinary CPD. Thanks to Onswitch and cxclub, there are lots of easy and great value ways to access CPD at a time and place that suit your busy life.