Our BSAVA wrap-up

The annual BSAVA Congress brought together 4,000 professionals and 70 speakers in Manchester Central from Thursday, March 23 – Saturday, March 25.

The British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) Congress aims to enable the community of small animal veterinary professionals to develop their knowledge and skills through leading-edge education, scientific research and collaboration.

“People, community and education is why I love the BSAVA Congress,” said Lou Northway, Quality Improvement Clinical Lead RVN.

Following online events during the pandemic, this year’s BSAVA Congress took place largely in-person, bringing together individuals from across the veterinary profession.

“Covid has meant we haven’t had these opportunities over the last few years,” said Chris Gush, Executive Director at RCVS Knowledge. “But it’s great to be back at the BSAVA congress.”

RCVS Knowledge hosted eight talks over the three-day event, covering a range of topics from anaesthesia monitoring, to cruciate management and antibiotic stewardship.

“It’s great to see how a small charity like RCVS Knowledge can make such a big contribution,” said Pam Mosedale, QI Clinical lead for RCVS Knowledge and Chair of the RCVS Knowledge Quality Improvement Advisory Board.

Pam led two talks, ‘How small changes can produce big results’ and ‘Practical ways to reduce errors.’

With medication errors all too common in veterinary practice, Pam’s talks aimed to prove how “you can make little changes to make a big difference.”

One attendee highlighted to Pam that she’d dispensed Onsior instead of Omeprazole as the medicine cabinet had been organised alphabetically and the items had been next to each other.

“These errors cause harm to the patient and stress to the team,” Pam said. However, she aimed to show people how discussions with the team and assessment of practice systems can help avoid these errors.

As concerns about antimicrobial resistance in veterinary and human medicine increase, Chris’ talks aimed to help veterinary professionals respond to these concerns.

“There is a need for people to understand the challenges that we’re facing with a potential rise in resistant organisms and the role that the veterinary profession can play,” said Chris.

The talks demonstrated the interventions veterinary practices can put in place to improve the stewardship they have at practice level and identify areas for improvement, set goals, track progress, and share best practices to promote responsible antibiotic use and improve patient outcomes.

On Saturday, inFocus Clinical Support Lead at RCVS Knowledge Sally Everitt was joined by Georgia Woods-Lee and Carrie Tooley for a talk about the use of neutering as preventative healthcare.

“It was incredibly well-attended,” said Sally. “There were people sitting on the floor and people who couldn’t get in. With the amount of people who came up to speak to us afterwards, the panel could have run a lot longer.”

Sally’s talk ‘To neuter or not?’ looked at attitudes surrounding the use of neutering as preventative healthcare.

She added: “We’ve been through a period of time where there was some fairly generic recommendations and I think there’s been a move away from that now.”

Sally asked all attendees to leave with the message that neutering decisions need to be based on the individual animals and carers circumstances.

Lou Northway’s talk discussed methods to prevent hypothermia in anesthetised patients and the key role vet nurses play in anaesthesia.

“The perception is ‘if the patient gets cold, we can warm them up’ but actually, if you allow your patient to become hypothermic it adversely impacts their anaesthetic and patient safety,” said Lou.

Hypothermia adversely affects all of the major body systems and increases risk to the patient.

“Prevention is better than intervention,” she added.

Anyone who attended the Congress on a lecture pass can access the programme recordings via the BSAVA Library.

Learn more here: https://www.bsavaevents.com/bsavacongress2023/en/page/home