Nearly 7 years ago when I joined the New Zealand Veterinary Nursing Association (NZVNA) Executive Committee, I had no idea that I would soon find myself making history.
After a couple of years on the NZVNA Executive, I found myself at the core of discussions about statutory regulation of our country's veterinary nurses. This was an important topic to me, dating back to the 90s when I was on a NAVTA (North American Veterinary Technician Association) student governance committee. Even back then we were talking about regulation. When I moved to New Zealand in 2002, and began lecturing veterinary nursing, I found myself sharing my office with BVNA Honorary member Sally Bowden. As you can imagine, our ideas flowed and her inspiration and experiences in the UK drove my passion to see changes in New Zealand.
Shortly after I joined the NZVNA Executive a working committee was formed to evaluate feasibility for implementing regulation in New Zealand. It had been tried on a couple of previous occasions over the years, but had never gained a foothold. In January 2015, four of us sat around my kitchen table and discussed how we might push it forward. Our early conclusions were that a voluntary register was an important first step and we looked to the UK and to our own Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ) for guidance as to the infrastructure needed to implement such a move.
We announced the voluntary register at the NZVNA conference in August 2015. By the application deadline on 31 December 2015, 4 months later, we had over 200 people apply to be registered. It was an overwhelming message that our profession was ready.
We knew that in the early days people wouldn't necessarily know the difference between advocacy and regulation. We began a campaign to educate and inform about our intentions. We renamed our working group the Allied Veterinary Professional Regulatory Council to include all of those working in animal healthcare — nurses, technologists, rural animal technicians, dairy technicians, and nursing assistants. We met with the VCNZ who were so impressed with our progress and professionalism that they gave us their full support and invited me to sit as an observer on the VCNZ meetings, and to be an official member of their Professional Standards Committee. They acknowledged that this was the biggest change in the New Zealand Veterinary industry in 50 years. I was making history as the first VN to sit on the Veterinary Council.
Now, the statistics are in for 2016, and we have nearly doubled our numbers in 12 months — 427 people completed continuing education and submitted evidence of this, and 387 met all the criteria for successful admission to the list/register. We have a Professional Standards Committee, an Educational Standards Committee, a Finance & Risk Committee and a Complaints Assessment Committee. We have mapped our essential skills with North America and England and are using this to carefully vet each new applicant to our register to ensure a robust process that might one day see the establishment of international reciprocal agreements between registers, standardised titles, and mapping of essential skills and competencies between counties. Big dreams? Perhaps, but look at what we've achieved so far. The sky is the limit!
I am so proud of the way our profession has rallied behind this. It not only shows our capacity for professionalism, it shows that we are committed to maintaining a high level of knowledge and fitness to practice. It shows that we want minimum standards for animal healthcare, and it shows that we as a profession are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of animal welfare, and public safety.
We hope you enjoy this issue!