RCVS Knowledge award winners announced
17 June 2025
The winners of the 2025 RCVS Knowledge Awards have been announced. They include a team that studied near misses to improve outcomes, a team that applied techniques from human healthcare to reduce errors, and a team that reduced unnecessary antibiotic use.
The awards recognise veterinary teams that have used QI techniques to improve outcomes in their practice or organisation. The first-place champion teams will have the opportunity to collect their awards in person at RCVS Day in London on Friday 4 July.
The 2025 RCVS Knowledge Awards champions are as follows:
Antimicrobial Stewardship Award: Animal Trust Dewsbury, CIC
The practice team focused on the responsible use of highest priority critically important antibiotics (HPCIAs). The team reduced inappropriate use of HPCIAs by using QI techniques to make change in the practice, introducing measures such as team education on evidence-based alternatives, stock control measures, and prioritising culture and sensitivity testing. These changes helped the team reduce HPCIA prescriptions from 3.05% to 0.46%.
Tighearnan Mooney BVMSci, CertAVP, PGCertVPS, MRCVS, veterinary surgeon at Animal Trust Dewsbury, CIC, said: “Winning this RCVS Knowledge award really vindicates all the hard work our team has put in! We hope that seeing what a small and dedicated team can achieve helps to inspire others to further antimicrobial stewardship in small animal practice.
“RCVS Knowledge’s QI training underpinned our use of the clinical audit cycle, and their antimicrobial audit was a great starting point to help us review our use of antimicrobials in general and HPCIAs in particular.”
Quality Improvement to Lead Organisational Change: Linnaeus Medical Quality Team
The Medical Quality Team supported their practices to embed a culture of psychological safety to improve patient safety. An indicator of this is how confident teams are to report safety incidents and near misses. Through promoting and facilitating the reporting of safety incidents and near misses they increased reporting rates from 86% to 100% and increased full significant event audits and reviews from 55% to 80%. Wellbeing support was offered to team members that were involved in significant events and teams were empowered to use the safety data for local practice learning and to take forward local practice improvement projects.
Aarti Hogan BVSc, MCRVS, Quality Lead at Linnaeus, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to win this award! Our team are passionate about supporting our practices in learning from error and using the insights from this to drive change at both practice and organisational level. It’s great to see the hard work of the team and organisation recognised by our peers and colleagues and we hope this will inspire teams across our profession to engage with and learn from patient safety events using the platforms available to them.”
Quality Improvement in Practice Award: Paragon Veterinary Referrals, Linnaeus
The team used the safety data facilitated through the Medical Quality Team to identify areas for improvements in their setting. Inspired by a technique used in human healthcare, known as ‘Huddle Up for Safer Care (HUSH) huddles’, the Paragon Veterinary Referrals team achieved 10 error-free weeks in five months compared to 10 error-free weeks in the 12 months prior, and a 10% reduction in medication errors.
Helen Garbett BSc (Hons), Cert VPM, Cert VNECC, RVN, Business Development Leader at Paragon Veterinary Referrals, said: “I am very proud to win this award, we do have a very dedicated team that works to improve our patients’ safety, and this has been very much a collaborative effort. We looked for fresh ideas to reduce medication errors and came across the HUSH initiative within the NHS. Working closely with the Improvement Academy who use the HUSH initiative and adapting this to work within veterinary medicine, the first time this has been done, we now have a proven method to reduce medication errors.
“We are delighted that the efforts we put into this have significantly reduced our medication errors and had such a positive impact on our team and culture.”
The following organisations were awarded second or third place in their award category:
- Cockburn Vets – 2nd place in Antimicrobial Stewardship Award
- Burghfield Vet Surgery – 3rd place in place in Antimicrobial Stewardship Award
- Clinical Improvement Team, CVS Group – 2nd place in Quality Improvement to Lead Organisational Change
- Oral Health Working Group, Linnaeus - 3rd place in Quality Improvement to Lead Organisational Change
- Vets Now, Bristol – 2nd place in Quality Improvement in Practice Award
- Wildbore Vetstop – 3rd place in Quality Improvement in Practice Award
This year also saw 25 organisations being awarded ‘Highly Commended’ and four as ‘Ones to Watch’ across the categories. Applications were considered by a panel using a double-blinded peer-review process and were scored against predetermined criteria.
If you wish to apply for the 2026 RCVS Knowledge Awards, applications will open on Friday, 4 July.