More Work to Do

We have more work to do – the campaign to require owner consent for veterinary student practice now moves to the Secretary of Health and Human Resources. At its meeting on February 16, the Board of Veterinary Medicine approved letting vet students practice before their fourth year, but explicitly rejected expanding the requirement for owner consent from just surgery to all tasks that ordinarily require licensure. They don’t want to require consent for anything other than surgery because “we don’t want veterinarians getting in trouble for forgetting to tell an owner that a student will be intubating their dog for surgery.” Public comments made it clear that this is exactly what the public wants. Of the 94 total comments, 87 were from the public; 74 made it clear that they opposed expanding student practice without owner consent for performance of any task which ordinarily requires licensure, and 28 explicitly said that a sign in the office saying “student working here” is unacceptable. I am appalled that the Board approved the regulatory change in spite of clear opposition from the public. These regulations require the approval of the Secretary of Health and Human Resources before they can be forwarded to the Governor, and our challenge is to persuade his office to return these to the Board for further revision. I have contacted the Deputy Secretary who is responsible for this issue and explained that the Board has approved regulations which the public overwhelmingly opposed, and that we want that process reversed. She is a physician and does not have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, but she has many people wanting something from her, and needs to hear from a lot of you in order to understand that this is something that cannot be ignored. Please send an email within the next few days to Dr. Jennifer Lee at Jennifer.Lee@governor.virginia.gov and state your opposition. The most important points to make are that the Board ignored public opposition to letting students practice before the fourth year without a simultaneous expansion of the owner consent requirement to cover all tasks which ordinarily require licensure, and that you want this sent back to the Board to be corrected. If you are a licensed professional who works in a field where consent is required for student practice, your voice is especially important – be sure to mention that as well. Finally, whether or not you commented on the regulations, you can send this email. We should all be indignant when public comment is ignored. Please copy me at LeeHenkel01@gmail.com so that I have a sense of how many messages she has received and what they have said. As always, I welcome your comments and questions.