3 minute read
Helen Beattie, NZVA CVO
From reactive to proactive
NZVA CVO Helen Beattie outlines a new approach to the NZVA’s guidance materials, developed in response to feedback from members and other stakeholders.
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AS VETERINARIANS WE often have to tackle a variety of complex issues as part of our busy professional lives.
One of the NZVA’s jobs is to help members navigate these issues by offering guidance that makes their jobs easier day to day and helps advance our collective interests.
Depending on the issue, we may do this by developing guidance materials such as standards, policies, position statements, guidelines and standard operating procedures. As a rule of thumb, the materials must advance our interests in areas like animal welfare, product stewardship and veterinary wellbeing, and other member priorities.
Until recently we’ve been largely reactive in our approach to drafting position statements, typically by engaging special interest branches to develop them when issues arise. You’ve told us you’d like this changed, so we’ve tweaked our process to include consultation with the NZVA Member Advisory Group and the wider membership. You can see a process map for this in the April issue of VetScript.
The reactive approach has also resulted in a plethora of policies (we currently have 60 policy documents), of which some don’t sit well with all members and others have quickly become irrelevant for one reason or another.
In discussion with the Standards Committee, the veterinary team has streamlined the process to produce a suite of documents that better serve your needs.
We’ve developed three policy headings, extracted from the seven sections of the VCNZ Code of Professional Conduct: animal welfare; veterinary medicines and disease management; and professional behaviour. We plan to repurpose existing documents where it makes sense to do so and write new ones where necessary, including the overarching policies and several of the position statements and technical notes.
For example, a policy on animal welfare will capture existing material extracted from our current policies on sentience and pain and its alleviation, and new material on animal welfare science and the Five Domains Model of animal welfare, among others.
Under the new framework, NZVA policy and position statement documents should mostly be a maximum of two pages in length, with details found in other material such as technical notes, standards and guidelines.
Each policy document will begin with a succinct statement outlining the NZVA’s position on the issue. This will be followed by a brief explanatory statement, relevant guiding principles for practice/behaviour, and any reference material, including the NZVA’s own internal documents.
Another significant difference is that, while most of our policies and position statements will be made public (to allow other organisations to understand the NZVA’s science-based position), our detailed technical notes will be a member benefit. This reflects the time and effort that goes in to drafting the notes and other guidance material, and our belief that the work should be restricted to those who support our association.
We’re also developing NZVA standards. We note that, as the regulator, VCNZ is legally responsible for veterinary standardsetting under the Veterinarians Act 1995, via the Code of Professional Conduct and associated documentation. Currently the proposed NZVA standards are referred to as guidelines (eg, fitness for transport), but as they’re used to set expected standards of veterinary behaviour (eg, certifying animals for transport), we think it’s appropriate to reposition them as standards, which should be tightly adhered to.
Given that these documents are viewed as reference points by which other parties can objectively measure our behaviour, they’ll continue to be subject to broad consultation, including with external stakeholders such as VCNZ, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Veterinary Professional Insurance Society, specialists and experts.
Where there’s still a need for detailed supporting information, but not as a standard, technical notes will be developed using the existing documents and, in some cases, recommended best practice information. A good example of this guidance is the extensive vaccination information developed by the NZVA’s Companion Animal Veterinarians special interest branch.
The transition to the new framework will require some effort, but we’re excited to bring it to you and will keep you updated on progress. Once the veterinary team has drafted the initial content, we’ll begin the consultation process to ensure you’re all able to contribute to the development of documents.
