Disappointing Regulatory Committee Meeting

The Regulatory Committee of the Board of Veterinary Medicine met last week, and I have very little good news to report. They began with a review of the public comments on the periodic review of veterinary medicine regulations. I had used that process to state that they need to establish standards for who can supervise veterinary medicine and veterinary technology students, and to establish a registration process so that the Board knows in which veterinary practices students of either type are working and who is responsible for their supervision. My comments included the fact that 25% of the practices on Virginia Tech’s list of approved sites for vet medicine students have veterinarians who have been disciplined by the Board, some more than once, and for some very serious offences. For the veterinary technology programs, Blue Ridge Community College and Northern Virginia Community College had rates of 15% and 16% respectively. In addition to my comments on Town Hall, I also provided the Board with a spreadsheet for each program which listed names, the nature of the offence, and the date. It was included in the committee background materials but was not discussed. The committee’s first reaction to setting standards or to registering students and practice sites was that they lack the authority to do this. Once staff confirmed that the DO have the authority, the response became that they don’t want to get into it. Very discouraging. I will be thinking about whether we need a separate campaign to address this issue, and it would help to hear your thoughts. Towards the end of the meeting, and with very little time left, they got back to the issue of owner consent. Unfortunately the draft they were reviewing still requires owner consent just for unassisted surgery by veterinary medicine students. No consent is required for any other type of care by vet medicine students, and no consent at all is required for care by veterinary technology students, whose experience is almost totally from working with the patients of veterinarians in private practices. I think that in general the Board members mean well, and I will give a couple of them credit for trying to see the situation through the public’s eyes. But on the whole, the attitude is pretty clearly “WE know what is safe, and we will give you what we think you SHOULD want, not what you tell us you want.” That means that getting any change is going to be hard and slow. I think it can be done, because I see a little movement – they are at least talking about requiring that a fully qualified veterinarian be in the surgery suite with a student who is performing surgery. I don’t think that anything more is going to happen until the next full Board meeting, which will take place in July. At some point the proposed regulations on expanding veterinary student practice will come up for public comment, and that is going to require all of us pushing very hard to overcome both the Board’s pro-profession, anti-public bias, as well as the communications networks of the training programs and the veterinary association. There is nothing specific for you to do now, other than continuing to share this information with people you think might be allies when the time comes. Please feel free to contact me with comments and questions: LeeHenkel01@gmail.com (Please note that links don’t always work in Change.org – you may need to copy and paste my address instead.)