9 Feb 2022
Ryan Davies and Robert Hamilton hope their new venture, a roving graduate mentoring business, will provide much-needed support to new vets – helping shrink the gap between grads and senior clinicians.
Joshua Silverwood
Job Title
Ryan Davies (left) and Robert Hamilton have set up MSM Vets to help provide support to new graduates.
Two friends have launched a practice mentorship scheme to help keep the veterinary sector from deskilling amid a widening gap between graduates and senior professionals.
A new roving graduate mentorship business has been launched by Ryan Davies and Robert Hamilton, aimed at providing mentorship services to newly qualified vet staff in practices.
New graduates had previously been described as “lambs to slaughter” as practices nationwide struggled with a growing crisis in the retention of older, more experienced, staff, as Vet Times reported last year.
Dr Davies said in his time working in practice for CVS, he noticed a reticence among younger vets to conduct surgeries – including procedures he says he would have been keen to perform at the same time in his career. It was this that helped prompt the new venture, MSM Vets.
Dr Davies said: “We just worry that the profession is deskilling, so what MSM Vets is trying to do is come in and provide a mentorship channel, so if people are a bit nervous, they can call someone to stand next to them and do the surgery with them.
“Someone to talk them through it and just have that reassurance of having somebody there to do it.”
The new service will offer mentor staff who will come into practice and carry out a procedure, or instruct a member of staff on how they can carry it out in the comfort of their own clinic.
Dr Davies added: “We have lost a lot of the senior people with the corporate takeovers. We have lost a lot of the old guard, as it were, who would have fulfilled that role.
“We see this as a prop for those who need it. I have supported a lot of certificate holders who have got their certificates, but then just lost that bit of confidence when the structure of the learning environment is gone and they are on their own. They are not following through and doing the surgery.
“I have helped people overcome their fears and we have also supported mothers returning to practice, people who have had career breaks, we’ve supported them as well and helped to get them back to where they were. People can lose confidence for all sorts of reasons and we just want to help them get it back; to not lose that skill from general practice.”
Last year, the RCVS phased out its Professional Development Phase scheme and replaced it with the Veterinary Graduate Development Programme (VetGDP), which aims to provide advisors for all new graduates starting out in a veterinary practice.
A key part of the VetGDP is that any practice wanting to hire a veterinary graduate has to have at least one trained VetGDP advisor in the workplace to provide the necessary support. So far, more than 1,500 vets in practice have signed up to, or finished, the training required to become mentors.
The VetGDP is jointly led by the graduates and their advisors, and practices have a responsibility for allowing each graduate and VetGDP advisor time for support activities.
Dr Davies said: “We have been in general practice for many, many years. We want to see general practices flourish, and without surgery, you lose a lot of the satisfaction from the role, and it worries me that people aren’t embracing it like they used to.
“I think retention is the key word with people. I think that is absolutely where we can help. At the minute, everyone is under pressure. I would see us as a sort of support mechanism for people.
“You do a good surgery, you pat yourself on the back, there’s no weeks of worrying about cases. People find it really satisfying because it is instant gratification.
“I think it’s good for people’s mental health.”
