18 Oct 2024
Preliminary findings from a new BVNA survey show 52% of respondents said they knew of someone using the “veterinary nurse” title inappropriately.
Lacey Pitcher
Job Title
Image © Tom Jackson
A senior RCVS official has urged professionals to speak out after a report outlined widespread concern about suspected misuse of the “veterinary nurse” title.
The call came after preliminary findings from a new BVNA survey showed 52% of respondents said they knew of someone using the title inappropriately.
Protecting the title has long been a key campaigning aim for both the BVNA and wider efforts to secure legislative reform in the sector.
But in a debate on future regulation of the profession at the association’s congress in Telford, college policy and public affairs manager Ben Myring said the body had received no reports of title misuse at all during the past year.
He pointed out that vets would be in breach of their code of conduct if they referred to someone who was not an RVN as a veterinary nurse as he pleaded for the profession itself to help make the case for change.
He said: “We need to have evidence that it’s a problem in order to persuade Government to fix the problem. Don’t sit on your hands.”
Other panellists endorsed the plea for action, including BVNA president Lyndsay Hughes, who said: “We all need to be part of making the change and calling out when the title is used incorrectly.”
Mrs Hughes, who is continuing for a second year in the role, highlighted the example of a vet student who was said to have stated they “worked as a vet nurse during their summer” and questioned how widespread such attitudes were.
Her BVA counterpart, Elizabeth Mullineaux, also voiced concerns about what she described as students “being used as quasi-nurses”.
She said: “Vets don’t grow up seeing nurses as essential. I’d like to get to a point where anaesthetics must be monitored by an RVN or supervised student and the public must be made aware.
“I think the general public would be shocked if [it] knew practices could open without registered veterinary nurses.”
But Belinda Andrews-Jones, who chairs the RCVS VN Council, argued many aspects of nursing work were already protected through its Practice Standards Scheme.
The survey, a full report of which is due to be published before the end of the year, also found that more than a quarter of respondents felt they were underutilised and not using all the practical skills they were trained for.
Dr Mullineaux said that, while the profession’s hopes were largely pinned on protecting the title, there was “so much work that can be done now.”
She added: “Schedule 3 allows us to do a lot already and we need a mindset shift.”
Marie Rippengale, the event’s keynote speaker who chairs BEVA’s nursing committee also reflected on the latter group’s work to outline the roles that nurses can take on within equine practice.
She said: “We can’t just ask and demand that vets let us do more.
“We need to put our money where our mouth is and make valuable contributions to generate income.”
