Dear Reader

Welcome to the June issue of the VNJ. I am Matt, one of the council members. I qualified in 2010 working predominately first opinion practice. But have also spent 5 years in a large referral hospital as a ward nurse working within many disciplines.

I joined the council after being encouraged by other nurses to consider it. I was initially hesitant as I didn’t think I had anything to offer. It is easy to see current and past council members and be in awe of them. But we all started in the same place, we all became registered veterinary nurses. We all from time to time suffer from imposter syndrome. What helped was speaking to current and past council members. I would recommend anyone interested does the same. We are all very approachable. Now seeing what we do I am so glad I was encouraged by those nurses.

There is a place on council for all types of nurses, we are there to provide the representation for our profession and having a wide range of experiences and interests is vital.

My main motivation for joining council was the chance to promote the profession to a wider audience, making the veterinary clinic and then the veterinary nurse a part of the wider community. We should be known, recognised and respected in the communities we work in. This is why I think VN Awareness Month (VNAM) is really important. The BVNA run a campaign throughout May to raise the profile of vet nurses not only to the veterinary team but to the general public. I hope you have all managed to run events and enter our competitions, check out our social media for more information.

Currently within the council I sit on the learning and development committee and represent the BVNA at the Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance group. Thank goodness for zoom as I live in Norfolk. These meetings include influential people across the UK from both the human and vet-erinary sector looking at reducing the use of antimicrobials and therefore limiting antimicrobial resistance. It is incredible to listen to what these people are doing to influence government, doctors and vets in the community. The OneHealth approach is a collaboration to promote a ‘whole society’ approach to implement protocols and change perspective of stakeholders. As the BVNA representative, I ensure the voice of the veterinary nurse is included especially when looking at Antimicrobial stewardship.

Outside the BNVA I work for an independent vet practice, where I love to teach clients about reptile husbandry and volunteer for StreetVet. StreetVet is where I feel I can really give back to the local community as it is an RCVS registered practice delivering free care to the homeless and their pets. We know that homelessness is a growing problem with a lot of the people having pets, predominantly, dogs. What is great is that StreetVet is supported by numerous veterinary allied companies including veterinary corporates and nutrition companies but they really value the time given by vets and nurses.

We are all on the council to represent you, if you would like to contact any of us you can use the email: council@bvna.co.uk

Author

Matt Wright

matt.rvn@gmail.com DOI: 10.1080/17415349.2021.1919405

VOL 36 • June 2021 • Veterinary Nursing Journal