RCVS begins consult on landmark legislative reforms

The RCVS has launched a 12-week consultation of vets and RVNs on “historic recommendations” for sweeping legislative and disciplinary system reforms of the professions.

Key recommendations out for comment in the landmark consultation include:

• delivering a vet-led team that includes regulated paraprofessionals
• protecting the VN title, and extending VNs’ role in anaesthesia and undertaking cat castrations
• stronger practice regulation
• a revamp of the disciplinary system that includes a “Fitness to Practise” regime

Recommendations

Recommendations include:

Embracing the vet-led team – including:

• statutory regulation of all members of the vet-led team, including paraprofessionals not currently under the regulatory remit of the RCVS
• statutory protection for veterinary titles (including “veterinary nurse”), more flexible powers of delegation and the separation of delegation from employment

Enhancing the veterinary nursing role – covers extending the role of VNs in assisting with anaesthesia and allowing veterinary nurses to undertake cat castrations.

Assuring practice regulation – including:

• granting the RCVS powers to regulate veterinary practices (and not just individual veterinary professionals) on a mandatory basis to assure practice standards
• powers to enter veterinary practices and issue improvement notices to any failing to meet minimum legal standards

Introduce a modern “Fitness to Practise” regime – including:

• introduction of the concept of “current impairment” so investigation and disciplinary procedures concentrate on an individual’s current fitness to practise rather than past misconduct
• recommendations around widening grounds for investigation of professional misconduct, powers to impose interim orders to temporarily suspend the right to practise, allowing the review of suspension orders and introducing a wider range of sanctions

Modernising RCVS registration – including:

• allowing limited licensure in principle, including in specific circumstances where a physical or other disability would limit the ability to work in all areas of practice
• giving the RCVS power to introduce revalidation processes, to ensure veterinary professionals remain up to date and demonstrate they continue to meet the requirements of their professional regulator as they are now, in line with other health care professions, and mandatory underpinning of undertaking CPD

Specific proposals

The college is also consulting the profession and wider public on three specific proposals to reform the disciplinary system.

The consultation will run until 27 January 2021.