Practice standards – free guidance for BVA members

At the recent BVA Congress seminar on practice standards it was pointed out by speaker Phil Hyde that, in providing the guidance, the BVA was effectively offering practices a free service, which, if being outsourced, might cost them in the region of £2500!  Here Members’ Services Group Chairman, Nick Blayney, gives an overview of the guidance now available for BVA members.

The uptake of the new RCVS Practice Standards Scheme has been, by all accounts, a great success; it is clearly here to stay. It was felt within BVA that there was a role here for us to assist our members.

Most practices have probably got many of the protocols in place already but tying it all together in a presentable and auditable form is the sticking point; it’s knowing where to start that can be tricky.

As well as a review of the structures and procedures in the practice there is a supporting raft of paperwork which must be in place. Tracking down and dealing with the paperwork is quite an exercise and we are pleased to advise our members that we have prepared a resource of material which will prove useful in your practice.

We have reviewed the Practice Standards’ syllabus and have identified as many areas as possible where some supporting literature would be useful. We have engaged veterinary surgeons to prepare the material and have been very grateful indeed to those individuals who have made available material from their own practices.

In particular we are grateful to the BSAVA for allowing us to use its Health and Safety advice which has been available to its members for some years now. We have, with the BSAVA, developed this valuable resource into the structure of a working health and safety procedures manual which is capable of being implemented in practices. Other specialist divisions have also made contributions in relevant areas.

The knowledge base is available on the BVA website (members only)

www.bva.co.uk/members/practicestandards/index.asp for the use of members.

It is our intention to ensure that the resource develops to meet the needs of its users. We are planning to make available to members a consultancy service should they wish to ‘buy in’ assistance in developing the scheme within their practices. It is also hoped that members who refer to the resources will constructively criticise them and assist in their evolution. As with so many veterinary initiatives there is a significant degree of self-help.

It has been an enormous task to prepare the resource to its present state. We hope that in preparing it we can save our members from repeating a lot of the work and that they gain another useful benefit from membership of this Association.

At the recent BVA Congress seminar on practice standards it was pointed out by speaker Phil Hyde that, in providing the guidance, the BVA was effectively offering practices a free service, which, if being outsourced, might cost them in the region of £2500. However, he urged practices not simply to download the information passively, but to make use of other sources of support, such as the BSAVA’s ‘Safe and sound’ course, which was invaluable in helping to put the information into context.