|
Young Graduates on the Piste!
The veterinary profession is one of many that are actively encouraged to do CPD or continuing professional development. This really is essential in the fast- changing world of veterinary medicine and surgery and ensures our skills are kept up to date and your animals stay in safe hands. This year saw the first ever conference dedicated to recent graduates courtesy of an organisation called SPVS; the Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons and some generous sponsorship from Fort Dodge. Recent graduates are often at the forefront of modern thinking and techniques after finishing university but the conference was designed to tackle life in general practice which can be daunting to say the least. Putting what you know into practice can be very stressful in the early days and there are also many things that only experience can tell you, such as consulting skills and business acumen as well as clinical problems and the ever- challenging process of having to deal with the odd difficult boss! Two friends of ours, Richard Hillman and Emma Leyland organised and ran the course on behalf of SPVS and I got invited along because my partner Mark was asked to give the clinical lectures. The other fairly unique thing about the conference was that it was held amongst the snowy peaks of the principality of Andorra. The idea; to uphold the long- standing tradition of work hard, play hard. With lectures starting at 8am and finishing at 8pm it seemed only reasonable that the fresh, young delegates should be given the opportunity to hone their skiing and snowboarding skills in between times! As an ‘innocent bystander’ it was excellent to see the group gel both on the slopes and in the classroom and have the opportunity to ask us oldies things they always wanted to know about being vets but never dared to ask. As for my part, the most stressful task I had was handing out the obligatory awards at the end of the week. Needless to say the ‘best wipe-out’ award was a hard- fought contest! I must say that our intrepid group battled some fairly severe weather conditions, some fairly invisible fences and some very invisible stomach bugs to varying degrees through the week. However, when we tried to get a photograph on the last day of them looking serious to show their bosses what hard work it had been the smiles were irrepressible and, I’m guessing, continued all the way back to work!
View
Pet Talk Archive >> | Back to Top
|
