Changes, growth and loss

This issue of the journal goes to press as we leave the EU. It's a situation sought by some, opposed by others. However, like it or not, we now need to learn to live with it and deal with any changes in our veterinary (and personal) lives that might come as a consequence of Brexit.

The RVCS recently introduced changes in assessing compliance of veterinary professionals in their CPD undertakings. One of these was changing from a 3-year rolling CPD hours requirement to calculation solely on an annual basis (35 hours per year for veterinary surgeons and 15 hours per year for veterinary nurses), with safeguards in place to allow for professional pauses such as parental leave. The second was moving from the online Professional Development Record for recording CPD to the new 1CPD platform, designed to be easier and more intuitive to use as well as providing dedicated space for recording reflection. This fits with the third change: introducing outcomes-focused CPD, involving a ‘reflect’ portion of the cycle of ‘plan, do, record, reflect’. The importance of reflection has been highlighted previously in this journal, with an excellent article ‘Reflection and our professional lives’ by Stephen May in December 2016 (10.12968/coan.2017.22.1.32), and we constantly aim to provide useful CPD for our readers, even though the platform for recording that CPD may change.