Background
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The UK veterinary profession has made great progress and achieved
excellence in delivering a world class veterinary service of which we can all be
genuinely proud.
However, the veterinary work place in general has changed little as it
continues to cling on to unsustainable traditions, considering the veterinary
working life as a 24/7 vocation rather than a modern Profession, for example.
This is compounded by other factors like: constantly increasing demands for
greater professional competencies; ever-rising client expectations; fear of
complaints, disciplinary procedures and litigation; and the pressures of greater
profit-making in a fast expanding corporate environment. As a result, the
veterinary work place has become a place of anxiety, stress and poor reward,
leading to high levels of mental health problems and suicides in our profession.
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The veterinary profession has been subject to a range of regulations in the
recent decades in the formulation of which veterinary professionals had little
or no effective influence. Many of such regulatory provisions, for example the
Cascade system and the Practice Standards Scheme continued to remain
controversial. Such regulations will need re-visiting to streamline them for a
rational and meaningful delivery by the veterinary practitioners. More
importantly, the profession needs a strong voice is dealing with any regulatory
issues in the future.
Previously existing organisations in the profession have been inherently
incapable of highlighting the issues faced by the majority of veterinary
surgeons and veterinary nurses and failed to offer the support they needed as
personnel and professionals, individually or collectively. No infrastructure
whatsoever existed within the profession to support the allied staff working in
the UK veterinary profession.
The BVU was therefore established with the exclusive objective of looking
after the interests and welfare of veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses, the
allied staff working within the UK veterinary profession and to support
veterinary students and veterinary nurse students in UK universities and other
institutions.