RCVS Knowledge at BVNA Congress 2024

Saturday 12th October 13:45 - 14:45

Pattingham Room

Join RCVS Knowledge Quality Improvement Clinical Lead, Pam Mosedale and 2024 RCVS Knowledge Award Winners Corinne Ackroyd and Emily McGill to discover how QI can help improve our sustainability and environmental impact.

This session will cover:

• How sustainability is an important part of QI.
• How QI can be used by everyone to make improvements to our sustainability.
• How reducing waste should be a priority for all practices, not just waste of resources - although this is very important - but also waste of team members' time, duplication of activities and poor workflow.
• Where waste can be avoided in all areas of veterinary practice and how QI tools and processes can be used to reduce waste and keep practice lean.

In this session, Corinne and Emily will present a practical example of QI and sustainability in action with their Award winning project to reduce their practice carbon footprint from anaesthetic gasses. 

An audit of their anaesthetic usage inspired the team to make changes. Their re-audit results, following changes, were incredible, the whole team had made such an effort to improve. This is an example of how the incorporation of QI into our working lives can really make us think about our actions and make a real difference.

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Saturday 12th October 15:15 - 16:15

Pattingham Room

Join RCVS Knowledge Quality Improvement Clinical Lead, Pam Mosedale, for a session detailing how practices can develop a learning culture through the adoption of QI techniques.

This session will cover:

• What a learning culture is.
• That everything that happens in practice is a learning opportunity.
• How learning from errors can be used to change systems, not blame individuals.
• How QI tools and processes can help to establish a learning culture.

This session will explore what contributes to culture in a veterinary practice setting and how everything that happens in a normal practice day is a learning opportunity.

Quality Improvement can be defined as the combined efforts of the whole team to improve care and outcomes for our patients, but also to improve learning and professional development for team members. QI tools can be used to encourage practice teams to be open to measuring what they do and when necessary making evidence based changes as a result. 

Good communication and civility within the team are vitally important for an effective learning culture and along with QI can help to encourage a happier, safer and more productive work environment.

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Pam qualified from the RVC in 1979 and worked in mixed practice for the first part of her career, then was a partner in a small animal hospital for 17 years.

Pam joins the RCVS Knowledge QIAB as the Chair of the Board, having had extensive involvement with the college. She was a Practice Standards Inspector from the beginning of the BSAVA practice standards scheme and continued with the RCVS, becoming Lead Assessor from April 2015 till October 2020. She welcomed the increased emphasis on quality improvement and clinical governance, clinical effectiveness and audit in the new scheme.

Pam is editor of the BSAVA Guide to the Use of Veterinary Medicines and an SQP assessor for AMTRA. 

Pam first got involved in clinical governance when on BVHA council when she started to look into whether clinical audit could be applied to veterinary practices. She wrote the first article published in the UK on clinical audit in veterinary practices in 1999.

Pam has spoken at BSAVA Congress, BVNA congress, SPVS Congress, BEVA clinical audit workshops, CAW TP conference and on many RCVS webinars and CPD courses about clinical governance, clinical audit and Quality Improvement.

Pam is passionate about QI becoming part of the normal working day for veterinary teams and contributing to a just learning culture in practice. 

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Corinne qualified as a veterinary nurse 10 years ago and has worked in a first opinion small animal veterinary hospital in West Yorkshire ever since. She has several post qualification certificates including Vets Now Emergency and Critical Care (CertVNECC), and the RCVS advanced diploma (DipAVN).  

Corinne also works as clinical supervisor at her practice and takes pride in training the next generation of veterinary nurses. Clinically she enjoys anaesthesia, laboratory work and clinical governance. Alongside Emily, Corinne was recently awarded RCVS Knowledge Champion for their sustainability audit, leading to a substantial overall reduction in oxygen and isoflurane use. 

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Emily is a second-year student veterinary nurse with the College of Animal Welfare and has worked in veterinary practice for 8 years.

Clinically Emily is interested in caring for the inpatients and anaesthesia. She is starting to develop an interest in Quality Improvement. Alongside Corinne, Emily was recently awarded RCVS Knowledge Champion for their sustainability audit, leading to a substantial overall reduction in oxygen and isoflurane use. 

Outside of work, Emily enjoys walking her three chocolate dogs and riding her horses

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