Mufflah  Offline
house trained
Joined: Jun 16, 2011
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Posts: 78
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1496 LabPounds
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No.of Labs: 2
Lab Names: Tarka, Lochan
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 Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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All vets practising in the UK have to be members of the RCVS, the professional regulatory body. The RCVS runs a (voluntary) Practice Standards Scheme which practice owners can apply to join. It involves a HUGE amount of paperwork and an inspection of premises by an RCVS-appointed inspector. There are 3 tiers, 1 = basic, cover all the bases 2 = good standard 3 = old hospital standard. You need to have all the health and safety, human resource stuff sorted and also each tier has certain requirements as to type of equipment present, type and numbers of kennels, drainage, emergency cover, etc. Each vet in the practice has to prove that they have done a minimum of 105 hours of further education averaged over 3 years. It is a good thing to do for a practice in that it forces you to ensure all your clinical waste disposal etc is performed within the law. However, whilst you have to have a certain level of equipment for each standard there is nothing in the regulations that says you have to actually be able to use that equipment properly. So, for example, if it states in the regulations you have to have a flexible endoscope to be a tier 3 practice you don't actually have to have a vet competent to use it (although obviously most practices will). So, from an owners point of view, if a practice is RCVS accredited it implies all the anaesthetic and xray equipment is safe and serviced for example, and the autoclave is shown to be functioning correctly and hygiene procedures in theatre are strict, the temperatures are logged in the pharmacy fridge and all drugs are stored correctly it has absolutely NO implications about the standard of clinical excellence you will receive. Of course, any practice which goes to the trouble of being RCVS accredited (and believe me it is an enormous undertaking) will tend to have vets at the helm who are forward thinking and progressive and doing their best hence clinical standards are likely to be higher but the accredited practice scheme (practice standards scheme) does not check standards of diagnosis or surgery in itself. Hope this helps.
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