Once again, we are delighted to join our colleagues at the BSAVA congress and with this issue we wish to extend a warm welcome to our new readers who may be seeing The Veterinary Nurse for the first time. We are proud to be the only internationally recognised peer-reviewed veterinary nursing journal in the world and hope that you see us as an important asset in your career.
For all the delegates at the BSAVA congress, you will be enjoying a wealth of CPD options there as well as valuable opportunities to connect with colleagues. Whether you have been in practice for a decade, or a year, finding support and encouragement from peers is immensely rewarding and you can use it as an opportunity to refocus on your professional goals, or to create some new connections.
In our continuing effort to bring veterinary nurses more inspiring and useful CPD opportunities, we at The Veterinary Nurse and the Mark Allen Group held our first ever workshop this month. The workshop offered applied sessions where delegates could explore ideas and discuss options amongst themselves allowing for a great opportunity for interaction and involvement with the material.
One topic covered at the workshop was a lecture on wound care, given by board member Louise O'Dwyer. Wound care is such an important area of practice and an abundance of new research and developments in the area mean that there is always more to learn. Nursing care can have a direct effect on healing so being well prepared and informed can dramatically affect the outcome for a patient recovering from a wound. Nutrition, warmth, humidity, and activity level are just some of the factors that can affect healing and considering the impact we can make on each of these factors, we can all benefit from reflecting on our current practices and considering how we might be able to improve.
Additionally in our workshop was an excellent session on nutritional assessment of patients run by board member Rachel Lumbis who also happens to be a member of the WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee. The WSAVA Global Nutrition Guidelines were first published in 2011 and were revolutionary in that they established a global initiative to recognise nutrition as the 5th vital sign (after temperature, pulse, respiration and pain). These guidelines address the need for objective nutritional evaluation around the world and firmly establish clinical policy and modern objective methods for the assessment of nutritional status in animal patients. Objective guidelines are vital for developing countries, but also increasingly important in areas where clients are exploring alternative options to processed foods. This and many other interesting discussions were held at the workshop and in this issue we cover this in more detail in Rachel's write up on page 64.
Continuing education is such an important part of developing and maintaining currency for our professional community. Not only is it important to ensure that we are competent, but it also helps us to provide the best possible options to our patients as we are up to date on the leading research. Just as important is the need for us to establish our professional presence as we get closer to statutory reulation. By regularly gaining quality CPD, you are already one step ahead and are boosting the esteem of our great profession.
We hope you enjoy this issue.