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UK vet Zoë Belshaw has been appointed as Chair of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s (WSAVA’s) Continuing Education (CE) Committee. In this role, she will lead the WSAVA’s efforts to offer accessible and relevant learning opportunities to veterinarians within the WSAVA’s 101 member associations, particularly those lacking the resources to provide these themselves or in regions where companion animal medicine is still emerging.
Zoë Belshaw worked in mixed and companion animal practice before undertaking a residency in Small Animal Internal Medicine from 2006-2009. She moved to Nottingham Vet School as a clinical lecturer in small animal medicine and undertook a PhD at the Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine at Nottingham Vet School, where she now works. She has contributed to the veterinary profession as a volunteer since becoming a member of the International Veterinary Students Association (IVSA) and has been involved with the WSAVA since 2011. She has been involved with the WSAVA CE Committee since 2012 as CE Administrator for Europe. More recently, she has delivered WSAVA CE to countries in Africa and elsewhere.
The WSAVA has run CE sessions in 30 countries so far during 2016. It has also worked with member associations to help them start to organizing their own meetings. Zoë Belshaw said: “We aim to enhance animal welfare and to empower veterinarians to work to the best of their ability and to be inspired to progress and develop their knowledge and skills.
“I've really enjoyed working with veterinarians in the countries we support with CE and have seen at first hand the great work our members are doing with many now moving up through our CE categories and starting to organize their own meetings.
“I’m looking forward to my new role and, as a first step, will be reviewing feedback from the CE meetings we’ve run this year. I’ll then be straight onto planning for 2017 as our meeting program kicks off in February.”
She added: “WSAVA CE could not do its work without the generous support of our corporate sponsors: Bayer, Hill’s, MSD and Purina, together with member associations which support CE in specific countries – BSAVA and NACAM in Africa; ASAVA in Vietnam; NASAVA in Cuba, VOK in Bulgaria and the Global Veterinary Dermatology Education Group, which has supported meetings in countries, including Africa, Albania and Vietnam. We are very grateful for their help and thank them on behalf of the WSAVA’s global veterinary community.”