Hundreds of vet practices are being encouraged to adopt a new initiative aimed at improving learning, wellbeing and clinical standards.

Vets4Pets and Companion Care practices across the UK are now signing up to ‘Just Culture’, an organisation-wide initiative that embraces, among other things, not tolerating a culture of blame and shame at any level.

‘Just Culture’ embraces a philosophy of sharing information and looking after the wellbeing of veterinary professionals, patients and clients.

Dr Huw Stacey, director of clinical services at Vets4Pets, said: “Our colleagues in practice look after the health and wellbeing of thousands of pets every day.
“Introducing this initiative to our practices is a vital step forward in ensuring we look after the health and wellbeing of our colleagues.

“This shift in attitude will ensure people are open when things don’t go according to plan, something that happens in every walk of life.

“As veterinary professionals we’re not immune to mistakes, but we need to help and support colleagues, not rebuke them when mistakes happen, and to then learn from them.

“It is not in the interests of the professional, the patient or the client to bottle things up, and at Vets4Pets and Companion Care we’re also encouraging all of our practices to adopt the VDS VetSafe system, which provides a mechanism for sharing incident reports across the profession, enabling us all to learn from them to the benefit of our patients.

“We’re delighted so many practices across our group have already embraced ‘Just Culture’ and will be monitoring its impact on colleague welfare.

“Any learnings we can take from the initiative will help both our colleagues and the pets they treat, ensuring we continue to put pets at the heart of everything we do.”