Voting for the RCVS Council and RCVS VN Council is open now until 5pm on Friday 22 April 2022. Amongst the 13 candidates standing in this year's RCVS Council election are three BEVA members. Find out more about the candidates and their manifestos below.
Dr Mark Bowen FRCVS
During his time as BEVA President from 2015-2016, Mark Bowen helped establish our internship awareness scheme and developed several initiatives around responsible medical use including the PROTECT ME toolkit.
Mark's candidate manifesto focuses on the importance of ensuring every voice within the profession is heard and listened to. "Listening means considering the impact of new regulations on the whole profession, not just those with the time to respond." He also emphasises the need for the RCVS to learn from Government by undertaking regulatory impact assessments that identify the costs of any change independent of any beneifts. That will then allow Council to form a balanced view to ensure that changes are justified, and "not just vanity projects". Mark sees one of the greatest challenges to the profession as recruitment and retention. He sees the need to ensure that the veterinary profession is attractive and exciting for school leavers from all backgrounds and to create career structures that ensure the profession "provides ongoing engagement for its members". He believes that this falls with the educators and with his own background and experiences as such, Mark promises to "bring a desire to enhance, not dumb down, veterinary education".
Read his full manifesto here.
Dr Abbie Calow MRCVS
Abbie is a first opinion veterinary surgeon passionate about education and the future of our veterinary industry.
Abbie's candidate manifesto focuses also on veterinary retention. She aims to do so through four key areas - public education, practice ergonomics, graduate development and flexible working. Abbie believes that as the foundation of the future of the profession, education should "publicly highlight the range of work veterinary professionals are involved in" to reduce professional dissatisfaction. "Loss of vets and nurses to easily preventable long-term physical injuries caused by poor practice ergonomics should be a thing of the past", Abbie hopes to combat this by incorporating a new element to the Practice Standards Scheme whereby practices are also assessed on ergonomics. The third area to combat retention issues, graduate development, is one very close to Abbie's heart as a mentor for the Grads to Vets mentoring programme. She hopes her inside knowledge from doing so will stand her in good stead for understanding the graduate mindset. Lastly, Abbie wishes to normalise flexible working within the profession.
Read her full manifesto here.
Thomas Gliddon MRCVS
Thomas' work is now primarily equine and farm animal based, but he did work for many years with companion animals as well so has a wide range of experience within the profession. Since 2019, he has worked as the nominated equine veterinary surgeon on the Farriers Registration Council (FRC) Disciplinary Committee, where he advises on matters of equine welfare and professional conduct.
Thomas' candidate manifesto shares his particular interest in education and professional standards. As a member of a VN training centre and host for students' extramural studies, Thomas wishes to see more students benefit from this invaludable resource and would like to advise practices and individual practitioners on how best to engage and train students. In relation to professional standards, Thomas believes that whilst the disciplinary process is in need of modernising, "it is of paramount of importance that fairness to vets about whom the College has received a complaint, is not forgotten". He feels that his experience with the FRC Disciplinary Committee could be useful in this area. "We do not want the RCVS to be a body our profession is afraid of".
Read his full manifesto here.
All vets eligible to vote in the elections will have received an email from Civica Election Services with a secure link to a unique voting website. Voters will be able to cast their vote for up to four candidates. You can view the full list of nominees here. Don't forget, voting closes at 5pm on Friday 22 April 2022.