10 Jan 2020
BVA president Daniella Dos Santos discusses some of the association’s key objectives for 2020, including increasing diversity within the profession and tackling workforce retention.
James Westgate
Job Title
Daniella Dos Santos. Image © BVA / Flickr
Broadening access to the profession and improving working environments for vets will be high on the agenda for the BVA in 2020.
These issues are close to the heart of its president Daniella Dos Santos, who outlined some of the association’s key objectives for the coming year in an exclusive interview with Veterinary Times.
As well as increasing diversity of both people within the profession and the roles they play, and tackling some of the workforce retention issues bedevilling the veterinary sector, the BVA will be busy in a number of other key areas, too.
These include pushing for stronger regulation of pet travel, developing a new position on exotic pets, lobbying for a ban on primates kept as pets and publishing its latest position statement on bTB.
Dr Dos Santos said: “For me, veterinary diversity and a good workplace are two of my really big passion projects. I want to continue to champion the diversity of the people in our profession, encourage more diverse people in and highlight the diversity of the roles.
“I am a very happy and proud GP vet, but for others, they may be very happy, proud Government vets, scientists, researchers, lab technicians, specialists… and actually, we should be proud of all the spheres in which members of the veterinary profession work and should be celebrating that, too.”
However, a raft of surveys and studies have shown not all vets share the same enthusiasm for their jobs – something the BVA is working to tackle as best it can.
She added: “I am aware there are members of our profession who don’t enjoy it anymore. The BVA did its motivation, retention and satisfaction study, and that showed us why, in part, this has been happening.”
