Speaker biographies
Liz Cox RVN - Independent Vetcare
Karlien Heyrman MRCVS - Vets4Pets and Companion Care
Matt McMillan MRCVS - Queen's Veterinary School Hospital
Pam Mosedale MRCVS - Lead Assessor PSS
Dr William Taylor - Royal College of General Practitioners
Dr Bradley Viner FRCVS - Chair, Quality Improvement Advisory Board (QIAB)
Katie Waine MRCVS - Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine
Liz Cox RVN - Independent Vetcare
Liz, Chair of VN Council, is a registered veterinary nurse and is employed by Independent Vetcare as Veterinary Project Co-ordinator.
Since qualifying in 1991, Liz has gained a wide range of experience of veterinary nursing roles from single-handed practices to large veterinary hospitals, working for both private and corporate veterinary surgeries, and as a locum for Bristol University.
Since joining VN Council in 2011, Liz has worked on numerous working parties and sat on the Standards Committee and Practice Standards Group.
Whilst enjoying all aspects of the nursing role, her main interest within practice is with VN training, mentoring and supporting all staff. Liz is an experienced clinical coach and has been an RCVS nursing examiner since 2000. She is passionate about the veterinary nursing profession, and its future. She co-chairs the RCVS/BVNA VN Futures project and welcomes the change and challenges that are ahead for VNs.
As a practising nurse and a PSS advocate, Liz is keen for audits to become more common place in veterinary practice. She believes that the development and understanding of the importance and relevance of clinical governance is long overdue in general practice and that nurse engagement will be the key to its success.
Liz hopes that her passion for the veterinary nursing profession and her desire to make clinical governance and audit accessible to all will make her an invaluable member of the QIAB.
Karlien Heyrman MRCVS - Vets4Pets and Companion Care
Karlien qualified from The University of Edinburgh in 2010 and has worked in practice in Gloucestershire, and more recently as the Clinical Services Manager at Vets4Pets and Companion Care.
After 6 years in small animal practice she joined Vets4Pets Support Office as Clinical Services Manager in April 2016 where developing a system of clinical governance for the veterinary care. This programme involves setting up the first clinical audits across 400 practices.
Karlien is also involved in creating checklists and best practice guidelines to promote a higher standard of clinical care. She has recently developed a resource toolkit to assist practices in their accreditation process with Practice Standards Scheme, including templates for standard operating procedures (SOPs), and instruction on how to hold, record, and resolve, significant event meetings and audits on a local level.
Karlien hopes to bring a different perspective to the QIAB with her experience working on large scale practice management systems (PMS), clinical audit, and reporting. Being part of the clinical and strategy team from one of the biggest veterinary groups in the UK, Karlien intends to use her network to pilot the resources developed by the QIAB. She is very keen to have more primary practice research carried out, to provide more evidence-based knowledge, relevant to first opinion practices.
Lizzie Locket - RCVS
Lizzie joined the RCVS in February 2005 bringing with her 13 years' experience working in marketing, public relations, communications and public affairs. She spent ten years working throughout Europe for a full-service marketing communications agency, latterly as Managing Director of its UK businesses. Her sector experience included IT & telecoms, agriculture and animal health.
Following this role, Lizzie worked as a freelance communications consultant for four years specialising in the field of environment, food chain and rural affairs.
At the RCVS, the role of Lizzie and her team is to develop and maintain a customer-focused approach to the College’s communications, and to improve the effectiveness of RCVS communication both within and outside the veterinary profession. The team looks after press office, publications, events, web and digital, design and public affairs.
In autumn 2014 Lizzie set up the Mind Matters Initiative (MMI), alongside its then Chair, Neil Smith. MMI aims to make a difference to the mental health and wellbeing of members of the veterinary team and Lizzie runs the programme on a day to day basis.
Lizzie took up the role of Deputy CEO in September 2016 and has responsibility for the development and implementation of the College’s strategic plan, as well ensuring delivery of the RCVS-powered activities of the Vet Futures Action Plan.
Matt McMillan MRCVS - Queen's Veterinary School Hospital
Matt has been working in veterinary anaesthesia for the last ten years becoming a European and RCVS recognised specialist in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia in 2012. Matt currently runs the clinical anaesthesia service at the Queen’s Veterinary School Hospital. His main interests include patient safety especially pertaining to anaesthesia, adverse events and troubleshooting, medical error, clinical audit and veterinary education. He led the team that developed the Association of Veterinary Anaesthetist’s Anaesthetic Safety Checklist, has co-authored a text book on errors in veterinary anaesthesia and regularly lectures on safety, checklists and error.
Pam Mosedale MRCVS - Lead Assessor PSS
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 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 scheme, becoming Senior Inspector before moving on to become an independent veterinary investigator.
Pam has been appointed Acting Lead Assessor and Veterinary Advisor since April 2015. She has been involved in assessor training, with particular focus on the consistency of assessment and welcomed the increased emphasis on clinical governance, clinical effectiveness and audit in the new scheme.
She has been a member of BSAVA committees and, as a BSAVA representative on the Practice Standards Group for the last few years, she is always keen to encourage feedback from members.
Pam is editor of the BSAVA Guide to the Use of Veterinary Medicines, an SQP assessor for AMTRA and still does some locum work in her spare time.
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 RCVS webinars about Clinical governance and clinical audit.
Dr William Taylor - Royal College of General Practitioners
Dr Bill Taylor is a clinical lead for building quality improvement capability at the Royal College of General Practitioners.
He has had an interest in improving quality for many years and recently has been delivering training to general practice in various quality improvement methods and tools.
Together with Joanna Bircher he authored an RCGP guide, Quality Improvement for General Practice. They have developed the tools in the guide to improve diabetes care and early diagnosis of cancer. He also chaired the Quality Practice Award programme of the RCGP for ten years, led on Practice Accreditation in Scotland, was an expert advisor to establishing the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) and led on the process for QOF review visits in Scotland.
Until April 2015 he was a GP partner in Aberdeen for 30 years. He has been a trainer, clinical senior lecturer and appraiser.
Dr Bradley Viner FRCVS - Chair, Quality Improvement Advisory Board (QIAB)
Bradley Viner qualified from the Royal Veterinary College in 1978 and after a year working as an assistant established his own small animal practice in Pinner, Middlesex. This has now grown to a group of five practices in North West London, employing approximately 40 support staff and nine veterinary surgeons, including his son, Oliver.
Bradley joins the QIAB as Chairman and he is also currently a Trustee for RCVS Knowledge.
Bradley has been involved in a wide variety of media and PR work on radio, television, books, and the press. He has authored a range of materials and articles on clinical governance including his book Success in Veterinary Practice: Maximising Clinical Outcomes and Personal Wellbeing (Wiley, 2010).
He is best known within the veterinary profession for his regular 'Reflections' column in the Veterinary Times.
Bradley is an advocate for the recognition of the skills required to become an advanced general practitioner, having completed a MSc and Professional Doctorate with Middlesex University, concentrating on the application of clinical auditing to the veterinary profession.
Bradley was President of the RCVS from 2015 - 2016.
Katie Waine MRCVS - Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine
Katie qualified from the University of Bristol in 2008. She worked in mixed and farm animal veterinary practice in the southwest for three years before relocating to the East Midlands. Here she spent some time as a lecturer and course leader on a veterinary nursing foundation degree course and as a veterinary surgeon in mixed practice. This was interspersed with time spent volunteering abroad and working as a locum in mixed, small and farm animal practice.
Katie is currently working towards the RCVS Certificate in Advanced Veterinary Practice and started her PhD at the Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine in January 2014.
As part of her PhD, Katie has been working with three farm animal practices to conduct prospective and retrospective clinical audits. By working closely with the vets in these practices she has discovered what the vets do and don't understand about audit, the pitfalls of putting some of the existing advice into practice, and some of the barriers to this process.
Katie brings to the QIAB the knowledge and experience of clinical audit that she has acquired during her PhD. She believes clinical audit can play a very important part in improving the care that is provided to veterinary patients, but above all it must be relevant, and achievable. Although her PhD has focused on the use of clinical audit in farm animal practice, the underlying principles are applicable to all types of practice.