This session was recorded during the SPVS VMG Congress on the 13th May 2022.

In addition to traversing the terrain of chronic staffing resource shortages and withstanding the onslaught of the pandemic, the veterinary professions in the UK were then hit with a tidal wave of new pets. Caseload increases of 50% faced diminished and fatigued teams. Fortunately, veterinary teams are problem-solvers and solution-finders. We innovate, we improve, we learn and we share. What we have learnt are new ways of working, born out of necessity, to address the caseload: staffing imbalance. In this session we discuss how system and process changes can significantly reduce the time it takes to perform our roles, how we can implement and measure these changes, making sure we can get to the other side of the caseload peak successfully.

View the transcript here.

Speaker: Dr Laura Playforth BVM&S MSc Adv HCP (Open) MRCVS, Vice-Chair of QIAB

Laura qualified from the University of Edinburgh in 1999. After working in a variety of small animal practices in Yorkshire for eight years, she moved into Emergency and Critical Care as a Senior Veterinary Surgeon at Vets Now. In the early part of her career at Vets Now, Laura successfully led three different out-of-hours emergency clinics, before being promoted to the role of District Vet and then on to the Head of Veterinary Standards role. Today, she is Vets Now’s Professional Standards Director and is responsible for driving clinical and professional standards. She has extensive experience in utilising clinical benchmarking, governance and guidelines in order to embed best practice across the company's network. More recent developments Laura and her team have led have focused on patient safety, the use of checklists and significant event review reporting. Laura also works closely with the Vets Now marketing department on a wide variety of digital content, media and PR work. Laura has an MSc in advancing healthcare practice with the Open University, which aims to develop skills in evidence-based practice, policy development and innovation to facilitate sustainable improvements in care quality. She hopes to bring a fresh and open mind to the QIAB, drawing on more than a decade of experience of clinical leadership in a nationwide provider of first-opinion emergency and critical care.