This two day workshop covers topics relating to the Foundations of Advanced Veterinary Practice module or ‘A-module’, the first module in the CertAVP program. The topics are highly applicable to everyday practice and the workshop is open to all, not just those enrolled on the modules. For more information please contact our team at vpuoffice@liverpool.ac.uk.

Through a series of presentations, workshops, and interactive group work we will stimulate you to think about making clinical decisions in context, managing mistakes, improvements in practice and 'caring and killing' in practice. You will leave with ideas about how to approach these and similar topics in your reflective writing for the Cert AVP and your practice in general.

Lunch and refreshments provided.

Day 1 Monday 21 September 2026

• Optimising outcomes through the customer experience
• Understanding today's 'normal'
• Social media and reviews - what does this mean for the veterinary profession?
• Looking at examples of good and bad customer care.
• Looking at your own experience with healthcare - what does good and bad care feel like?

What does all this mean to you, as a vet team member?

We only get good outcomes for the animal when we work with the people who care for them. Working together and understanding our clients' lives, routines and expectations.

Day 2 Tuesday 22 September 2026

This interactive day will help you apply the principles of critical reflection to the following topic areas in practice:

·       Reflection and growth mindsets – how can reflection and having a growth mindset benefit us in everyday practice.

·       Let’s talk about mistakes – how do we feel and think about things that don’t go the way we intended in practice. We consider why mistakes happen and why we find them hard.

·       Thriving through your certificate – looking at time management techniques to help you get the most out of your CPD.

·       Contextualised care – what does this mean to me? - - introducing contextualized care and exploring how the unique factors of each case impact our decision making.

·       Improvement that matters – introducing systems-thinking for improvement. We explore how to take a systems- approach to quality improvement, clinical audit and clinical governance that avoids focusing on individual blame.

·       Reflection roundup 

Through a series of presentations, workshops, and interactive group work we will stimulate you to think about these areas of practice. You will leave with ideas about how to approach these and similar topics in your reflective writing for your Cert AVP.

The day will be delivered by Emma Cathcart and Dr Iain Price from the VDS Training team. They will share their expertise in the areas of professional practice, communication, patient safety and systems-improvement.