Powering into a new role as hospital director from outside the profession.

Julie Davis started her working life as a sports journalist then sought a change of direction and joined the NHS. Fifteen years later she is now applying her skills and knowledge in a veterinary referral hospital.

Do clients really perceive vets as being motivated by money?

In this column, a dog owner discusses why she thinks the criticism levelled at vets as a consequence of the CMA review is unfair.

Client's understanding of instructions for small animals in a veterinary neurological referral center.

BACKGROUND: It is not known how much information clients retrieve from discharge instructions. OBJECTIVE: To investigate client's understanding of discharge instructions and influencing factors. ANIMALS: Dogs and cats being hospitalized for neurological diseases. METHODS: Clients were presented questionnaires regarding their pet's disease, diagnostics, treatments, prognosis and discharge instructions at time of discharge and 2 weeks later. The same questions were answered by discharging veterinarians at time of discharge. Clients answered additional questions regarding the subjective feelings during discharge conversation. Data collected included: data describing discharging veterinarian (age, gender, years of clinical experience, specialist status), data describing the client (age, gender, educational status). Raw percentage of agreement (RPA) between answers of clinicians and clients as well as factors potentially influencing the RPA were evaluated. RESULTS: Of 230 clients being approached 151 (65.7%) and 70 (30.4%) clients responded to the first and second questionnaire, respectively (130 dog and 30 cat owners). The general RPA between clinician's and client's responses over all questions together was 68.9% and 66.8% at the 2 time points. Questions regarding adverse effects of medication (29.0%), residual clinical signs (35.8%), and confinement instructions (36.8%) had the lowest RPAs at the first time point. The age of clients (P = .008) negatively influenced RPAs, with clients older than 50 years having lower RPA. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Clients can only partially reproduce information provided at discharge. Only clients' increasing age influenced recall of information. Instructions deemed to be important should be specifically stressed during discharge.

Combining sentiment analysis and text mining with content analysis of farm vet interviews on mental wellbeing in livestock practice.

BACKGROUND: The aim of the How Farm Vets Cope project was to co-design, with farm veterinary surgeons, a set of web-based resources to help them and others deal with the different situations that they can face. As part of the wider project, participants were recruited for one-to-one semi-structured phone interviews. These interviews focused on elements of job satisfaction and how the participants coped during periods of poor mental wellbeing or with setbacks and failure. METHODS: Transcripts of these interviews were analysed using both quantitative methods of sentiment analysis and text mining, including term frequency/inverse document frequency and rapid automated keyword extraction, and qualitative content analysis. The twin aims of the analysis were identifying the important themes discussed by the participants and comparing the results of the two methods to see what differences, if any, arose. RESULTS: Analysis using the afinn and nrc sentiment lexicons identified emotional themes of anticipation and trust. Rapid automated keyword extraction highlighted issues around age of vets and support, whilst using term frequency/inverse document frequency allowed for individual themes, such as religion, not present across all responses, to be identified. Content analysis supported these findings, pinpointing examples of trust around relationships with farmers and more experienced vets, along with some examples of the difference good support networks can make, particularly to younger vets. FINDINGS: This work has confirmed previous results in identifying the themes of trust, communication and support to be integral to the experience of practicing farm veterinary surgeons. Younger or less experienced vets recognised themselves as benefiting from further support and signposting, leading to a discussion around the preparation of veterinary students for entry into a farm animal vet practice. The two different approaches taken showed very good agreement in their results. The quantitative approaches can be scaled to allow a larger number of interviews to be utilised in studies whilst still allowing the important qualitative results to be identified.

Chickening out of seeing pet poultry? Gain confidence at BVA Live!

There aren't many poultry vets in the UK - and even fewer who focus on pet poultry. It is likely, therefore, that people who keep a few hens as pets will present them to their regular veterinary practice when they become unwell. Henrietta Kodilinye-Sims hopes her session at BVA Live will give vets who do not regularly see poultry the skills they need to approach these cases with confidence.

Finding a care plan that suits everyone.

In a recent survey, Hannah Capon asked the owners of arthritic dogs what they would like vets to do differently. She'll be using her findings to help delegates at BVA Live better understand the owner experience of veterinary care and contextualise their approach accordingly.

Sustainability and modern pet ownership.

Booming pet ownership in the UK and elsewhere brings significant implications for the carbon pawprint. Yet it is unlikely people will ever stop owning pets, so how can pet ownership be made more sustainable? At BVA Live, Justine Shotton and Jen Gale will explore the role of vets in this complex area and how they can support clients in minimising the impact of their pets on the planet.

Scotland calling: embracing a career abroad as an official veterinarian.

Olivia Andronic qualified in Romania but had a yearning to work in the UK. Now a veterinary advisor at Food Standards Scotland, her unusual career took off after she applied for a role as a meat hygiene inspector.

Message from the President.

Anna Judson invites you to help us spotlight the incredible care that Team Vet provides.

A decade of amplifying your voice.

Since 2014, our Voice of the Veterinary Profession survey has played a pivotal role in supporting our campaigning and lobbying work, delivering insightful data, raising the profile of vets and their work through the media, driving legislative reform and shaping the profession.