Week 23... And Counting

This has been a week of vet school tours.

On Monday I visited Vienna Vet School, https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/, as part of BEVA’s vet school tours.  This was our first time visiting Vienna as part of the Vet School Tours.  Our point of contact there is Edmund Hainisch, who many of you will know.  Edmund is a larger than life character, both physically and as a personality.  I know I’m not “man mountain” but I’m not small either and he totally dwarfed me (see below).  He (eventually) graduated from Vienna, which is close to his hometown, in January 1996 after a prolonged undergraduate career (his choice), which was interspersed with some long distance lorry driving to fund his studies!  He explained that as an undergraduate he had stumbled across a copy of Equine Veterinary Education in the university library.  He was immediately struck by the quality of the publication and it enthused him to find out more about EVE, EVJ & BEVA.  He arranged to visit the UK and to see practice at Fellowes Farm with Peter Green, stopping off in Newmarket on the way to watch the horses work on the gallops.  He was enthused by equine practice in the UK and was also struck by the close network and camaradery of UK horse vets through BEVA (Peter Green was a BEVA Council member at the time).  Following graduation, he successfully applied for an intership at Liphook (Jeremy Mantell was the BEVA President at the time), followed by a surgical residency at Liverpool, finally returning to Vienna in 2005.  During his time at Liverpool he was coerced into Sarcoids by DCK and is now doing some fantastic research work in the lab at the vet school investiagting immunotherapy for the prevention of sarcoids, with some really exciting results.

In the foyer of the hotel with Edmund – my kids thought we looked like father and growing son!

I left Vienna early on Tuesday morning to do a full round of calls followed by a colic referral that night…..

The following day I drove to the University of Surrey to visit the new Vet School http://www.surrey.ac.uk/vet.  Chris Proudman, the Head of the School, who still commutes weekly from Merseyside had invited me as BEVA President.  I’ve known Chris for years as he was a Resident at Liverpool with Luise back in the early 90’s; I’m sure there are a few embarassing stories to tell on both sides.  Although the new buildings for the Vet School, the Pathology labs and the Large Animal Teaching unit are still under construction the first tranche of 45 students are about halfway through their first year.  They are due to take possesion of the new buildings later this summer.  The whole project is costing in the region of £60 million with a business plan to break even in about 10 – 12 years.

Chris was explaining that the rise of Surrey University has been driven by the “newish” Vice Chancellor, who pledged, when he took over some 8 years ago that he would elevate the University of Surrey into the top 10 of the University league tables within 10 years (it was lying in about 60^th place at the time).  Remarkably, he achieved 7^th place in 7 years.  I do have concerns about the number of veterinary graduates, which the British University system is producing.  However, there is obviously still a need for them and more besides; there was an equal number of non-UK RCVS registrants in 2014 as there were UK registrants, i.e. new graduates.  Therefore there is an argument that we should be filling the UK job vacancies with graduates trained to the exacting standards of the UK vet schools.  Furthermore, I think that with somebody like Chris at the helm at Surrey Vet School I am very confident about the quality of the end-product and I wish them well.  

Chris with his new company car

Week 22?! and counting....

Most of March so far has been pre-occupied with trying to sort out the £227,000, which was stolen from the practice bank account, through our Internet banking, at the end of February.  I don’t mention it with any hint self-pity but bring it up to try and warn you all about the devious methods used by the fraudsters.  It’s amazing how much you learn, once you’ve been a victim.  The front page of one of the Sunday Times supplements, which went to print just over a week later was entitled, “Why Friday is the most dangerous day for fraud.”  The reason being is that after about 4 pm on a Friday the majority of banks’ fraud lines are closed until Monday morning.  This gives the fraudsters all weekend to move their ill-gotten gains from the bogus account to which it has been moved from the victim’s account, without the fraud department being available to be contacted to freeze the aforementioned account.  http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/money/Consumer/article1527879.ece?shareToken=19135c367b19ac3a111d31237f45ea92

User beware - if you get any exceptional phone calls from the bank on a Friday afternoon, especially from a man called Peter, who duped us, (a name he uses regularly, we’ve now been told) it could be a hoax.  I’m sorry to tar all “Peter’s” with the same brush but I’m still smarting (a lot) about it. 

We are currently in negotiations with the bank, which have offered to refund half of the loss.  I will elaborate on this scam at a future date, once we have reached a settlement.

At the beginning of March, I went down to London to attend the National Equine Forum (NEF), which was held at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers at 1 Birdcage Walk, which is just a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament.  My trip coincided with one of my colleagues, Becky Wall, having to go to the RCVS to sit the practical and theory part of the CertAVP examination in Diagnostic Imaging; so I chaperoned her to and from the venue.  Obviously it involved a trip on a Boris Bike and we did a bit of sight-seeing, passing Buckingham Palace en route, which I think put Becky in relaxed mood for her exam.

Obviously at the end of the day, when we met up again it was all death and destruction from Becky…she’d done really badly, couldn’t answer any of the questions, it wasn’t at all what she expected, nothing she’d revised came up, she was going to fail, bla, bla, bla!  She received confirmation the following week that she’d passed, with flying colours…but in her opinion didn’t deserve to!  That is such a girly thing to do….I remember well that if I said I’d failed…I’d failed and deservedly so.

Back to the NEF; it’s the 23^rd time the event has been held and it is growing year on year.  The aim of the forum is, “To host an annual assembly of individuals who reflect every area of the equestrian industry, to hear presentations from experts on diverse and topical aspects of the industry and allow them to share their views.”  Effectively, the who’s who of the horse-world…. and Monty (David Mountford our CEO) and me.  High profile attendees included the NEF president, HRH the Princess Royal and Lord de Mauley TD.  The main topic of discussion for the day was the need for the “industry” to implement a robust and workable equine ID system, which has been pinpointed as the cornerstone for equine health, welfare and management in the UK.  There was a debate, chaired by Roly Owers, which included representatives of the Chief Veterinary Officers of the four UK countries.

Full report about the NEF: -

https://www.beva.org.uk/news-and-events/news/view/716

Incidentally, I had arrived at the NEF fashionably late, at the same time as Celia (Marr), who is always great value, which meant we were seated together.  The catering wasn’t what we were used to in that the mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks were “comfort breaks” with water only and no coffee, and no coffee at lunchtime either – WTF, no caffeine!  At the mid afternoon break Celia and I sloped off to Café Nero, which was just around the corner for our fix.  I was fine with an Americano but Celia ordered two double Espressos’ – even the guy servings’ jaw dropped.  Respect – I bet she can eat 3 Shredded Wheat too….  No wonder she achieves so much in a day; with that much caffeine who would be able to sleep?