ECC Skills Swap at Vets Now

Experience life in ECC

Vets Now and PDSA have worked together for over 20 years. For several years, we have run an emergency and critical care (ECC) Skills Swap initiative that offers PDSA graduates the opportunity to grow and develop outside of their day job by working alongside our talented ECC professionals on genuine emergencies.

At Vets Now, we see more than 200,000 ECC cases each year across our nationwide network of clinics and hospitals. That means we’re in an excellent position to provide learning opportunities for veterinary surgeons interested in learning more about emergency and critical care.

We offer placements from January to March in our network of clinics across the UK, working variable shift patterns, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays. We’re confident that gaining this experience and improving your knowledge of ECC will make emergencies easier to deal with when facing the real thing.

Two veterinary staff gently examine a large brown dog in a clinical setting, with medical equipment and colleagues working in the background.

Preparing for your placement

Prior to your placement, you must complete some tasks:

1. Please find a handy checklist here to help you get organised for your placement Click here to view
2. Fill in the pre-placement questionnaire Click here to complete
3. Watch Vets Now Skills exchange video – see below
4. Take some time to consider your goals for the placement. View the learning objectives document here
5. Read through the Guidance notes which you can find here
6. Email your Vets Now contact to introduce yourself prior to your first shift
7. After your placement is over, tell us about your experience by taking the survey here.

Image of two Vets Now vets treating a dog.

After the placement

After the placement, there is just one task for you to complete.

We would love to hear about your experience and learn how we can improve future placements like this.

Please click here to complete

Discover a work life less ordinary

There's lots of satisfaction to be gained from managing emergency cases, both medically and surgically. It's difficult to get this in daytime practice and we've designed our Edge programmes to ease the transition.
All vets have strong caring and responsibility values, but we're also looking for people who are keen to help others and progress themselves, so they're motivated to learn and to share those learnings. However, underpinning all of this is our vets must be strong, empathetic communicators, as emergency situations are often a time of great stress for the pet owner.

Charlie Grainger BVETMED MRCVS working in Vets Now's Colwyn Bay clinic

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