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 60th place at the
time). Remarkably, he achieved 7th
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
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