The date has been set for our seminar to mark 50 years of veterinary nursing – Thursday 23rd June.

The theme of the day will be 'looking back/looking forward’, with the morning sessions celebrating what the profession has achieved during its first half century, and the afternoon fielding some controversial speakers to challenge where the veterinary nursing profession goes next.

The event will be invitation-only, although a small number of tickets will be made available generally. If you would like to join the celebrations, please contact Fiona Harcourt, RCVS events officer, at f.harcourt@rcvs.org.uk

A summary of the day’s events will be made available to all in a special issue of RCVS News Extra.

Teach practical skills from the start

Recently, 26 Level 3 student veterinary nurses attended some RCVS examiner training days to act as exam candidates for the student examiners. Unfortunately, they didn't do very well; and most would have failed the exam if things had been 'for real’. It’s a bit of a worry that. At one of the training days, not a single student – some only six months off completing training – could clean her hands effectively using the recommended WHO method.

The students told us that they had not yet done their practical revision. But that should be immaterial to something as fundamentally important as hand hygiene or preparing an injection. These are skills that should be properly taught and practised from the beginning of training, not learned for an exam.

We'll be following this up with colleges (the new Diploma requires timetables to include practical teaching sessions) this spring. In the meantime, if you are a clinical coach, please do teach your students how to carry out essential nursing skills and ensure they can perform these properly.

Don't just assume that they know how, or are proficient. Remember, you often can’t tell whether something has been done properly just by looking at the end result – hand-washing being a good example! And if you aren't sure how up to date you are yourself, check out the OSCE tasks on our website and invest in a good veterinary nursing procedures book.

Veterinary Nursing Journal • VOL 26 • May 2011 •