Congress on Demand 2021: Practice management, strategy and leadership

Overview of VUCA: Today’s 21st century veterinary world is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). In the past, new technologies and industry trends would take years to develop but, today, they arrive almost overnight. Practising today involves a managing a diverse team and client base, coping with every rising consumer expectations and treatment costs against the backdrop of a global sustainability emergency. This new world is putting extreme pressure on veterinary leaders to lead in ways not before seen. If we want to navigate our patients, teams, clients and, not forgetting ourselves, through this new ‘normal,’ we need a different approach. Success for our practices, and everyone involved, requires 21st century leadership and, guess what, it may not be as scary as you think. This session explores the opportunities and threats in today’s VUCA world, and how they may impact veterinary practice. We’ll also explore simple tools and techniques for analysing your own VUCA practice, and your personal role in navigating it.

Key themes of change: Even before COVID 19 hit us in 2020, veterinary practices were having to cope with a huge volume of wide-ranging changes across the whole profession. Corporatisation, the development of technology and data management, rising client expectations, a gender shift and retention crisis were all providing a challenging environment for veterinary business leaders. Add in a global pandemic and clients who continue to demand high quality care at competitive prices, that focuses on them as much as their pets, it is no surprise that our leaders and practice teams are under huge pressure. This session explores how the change management process has had to evolve within veterinary practices to keep up with the fast and rapid changes practice teams have experienced. These changes are happening across every practice and involve managers and leaders, team members and clients. As humans we all react and respond to change differently, some of us thrive on it and others struggle with it, so knowing your people and understanding how to navigate the challenges they are facing will be vital as we move forwards.

SEAs: introduction and overview: Accidents happen. Things do go wrong sometimes – lab samples go astray, animals escape during car park consults. These types of events can have a lasting effect both for the patients, their owners and for the team too. Sometimes the cause of these events might seem obvious at first, but when you study them using a formal approach known as significant event auditing, you can find the root causes. This is used in human primary care and goes beyond the clinical, looking at anything that is significant to caring for patients or running the practice. Looking at these events is a great way to involve the whole practice team to learn from strengths and weaknesses in patient safety, animal and client care, then to make changes if required. The most important part of an Significant Event Audit (SEA) is that team members understand that SEAs are about addressing systems, not about blaming individuals. They can help ensure negative outcomes do not recur and positive outcomes do! This session will introduce delegates to significant event auditing, including top tips, do’s and don’ts and free resources.M&Ms: introduction and overview: It is a fact of life that we all make mistakes, but it is how we learn from our mistakes that truly matters. By talking about adverse events, we can prevent others making the same error again and therefore improve patient care. Morbidity and Mortality rounds (M&Ms), also known as MMCs – Morbidity and Mortality conferences or reviews, have been taking place in human healthcare for over a century. Their use is mandated by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education and in veterinary medicine they now form part of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Practice Standards Scheme. M&Ms provide an open, non-judgemental, confidential and collaborative setting for the review of adverse events. Through identification and presentation of a case where an adverse event has occurred, multidisciplinary reflective discussion, analysis, and identification of contributory factors provide a powerful tool to educate staff and improve patient safety and care. By implementing an organised and structured approach based on a recognised M&M model with clear guidelines for staff, M&Ms can be scheduled regularly, enabling cases to be discussed soon after presentation, to ensure similar adverse events are avoided in the future.