CVS launches ‘industry-leading’ mentoring training course

Practice group CVS has launched what it calls an “industry-leading” training course to equip its mentors with additional skills to develop high-flying veterinary professionals.

The new Coaching and Mentoring Applied in Practice training course has been designed to improve day-to-day experiences of graduate vets and student nurses by upskilling colleagues supporting their development.

Modules within the course have been based on real-life experiences within practices, and have been developed by an experienced CVS vet and nurse team.

Supporting colleagues

CVS said the course would be part of its mentor training scheme for veterinary graduate development programme (VetGDP) advisors and its clinical supervisor development programme for student nurse clinical supervisors, and would complement mandatory training required for graduates by the RCVS.

The mentor training scheme will include additional training days on mental health and supporting colleagues, and will take what is described as a “train the trainer” approach.

For this, 30 experienced colleagues across the CVS group will be trained first to deliver the new course, with 250 VetGDP advisors and 400 student nurse clinical supervisors then being trained regionally over nine months.

Responsibility

Martin Whiting, CVS’ director of learning, education and development, said: “We understand the huge responsibility upon us to provide the best day-to-day support for new graduate vets and student nurses – to smooth their transition from student to professional.

“We also recognise that, to achieve this, we need to enable our network of VetGDP advisors and nurse clinical supervisors to be the best coaches they can be.

‘We’ve, therefore, invested significant time and the knowledge of our most experienced teams to develop this new Coaching and Mentoring Applied in Practice training – to develop our mentors to be some of the best in the industry.”