A highly practical course designed to build confidence in core abdominal surgery skills for new graduates, combining structured online learning with hands-on training to support safe, effective performance of day-one procedures in practice.

The need to perform abdominal surgery is very likely to occur early in your career as a new graduate veterinary surgeon and relevant undergraduate lectures or experiences can feel like a distant memory when these situations arise.

This course is designed to help build your confidence and proficiency in the commonly performed abdominal surgical techniques that are considered ‘day 1’ skills in small animal practice. Lecture notes and videos provide you with a step-by-step ‘how to’ guide for each of the procedures covered. The essential theory is complemented by a full day of practical sessions at the training centre where you will have the opportunity to perform all of the techniques and to ask any questions or discuss specific problems that you may have encountered in practice when performing abdominal surgery. Your lecture notes will provide a useful resource: refer back to them whenever you have a relevant patient.

Ultimately, this course aims to increase your confidence and remove the potential for anxiety that you may experience when you need to perform abdominal surgery in the early stages of your career. Abdominal surgical techniques covered include how to perform an exploratory laparotomy including intrabdominal biopsy techniques, cystotomy, enterotomy, enterectomy and incisional gastropexy. By the end of the course, we aim to have you eagerly awaiting your next abdominal surgery.

What you will learn :-

• Exploratory laparotomy, abdominal biopsy techniques and cystotomy
• Gastrointestinal biopsy, enterotomy, enterectomy
• GDV (incisional gastropexy) and oesophagostomy tube placement
• Complete your learning and get your CPD Certificate for 15 Hours of CPD.

Tutor :  Faye Swinbourne BVM&S MVetMed DipECVS MRCVS RCVS & European Specialist in Small Animal Surgery