Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-123)
MR CHRIS
BARKER, MRCVS
18 FEBRUARY 2008
Q120 Chairman: How do you currently
keep yourself up to date in your practice?
Mr Barker: We have journals. We
spent five years at university learning from books, and we are
still able to do so. I tend to relate it directly to cases I have
seen, so if I see something I am not quite up to date with, I
will go away and read about it. The British Veterinary Association
produces an excellent journal called In Practice, which
every month will produce articles which are published by the very
people who might go on these courses and sit there, bum on seat,
to watch them, talk to me, put up slides. The same stuff is presented
to me in a brilliant way by something like In Practice
and I have time to take it in at home when I have time. There
are many ways of achieving CPD without having to go on courses.
Q121 Chairman: That means that when
you are confronted in the field—you do not have to sit there,
do you, with the animal in your photograph, saying, "I have
read about this"—
Mr Barker: It has been known!
The first case of over-active thyroid in a cat I ever diagnosed,
I diagnosed three days after reading an article in one of our
professional journals. The method works.
Q122 Chairman: Do you think it would
add a great deal to practice costs if the Royal College's suggestion
in this respect was introduced?
Mr Barker: No, as long as they
will admit to us being able to learn still off our own bat, sitting
down and reading books. The thing that I think would be very expensive
is the revalidation process that they propose, and I have not
seen any proposals from them about how they know they would do
it. Take a for-instance. We are a profession of less than 15,000
people. If we are as incompetent as the Royal College seems to
be suggesting, we will probably have to revalidate every five
years: 3,000 vets a year, 60 vets a week! If you went to one of
the universities and said, "Can you revalidate 60 vets a
week?" they would go, "no, no way—that is like
running our final-year exams every week throughout the year".
If we can not do it by that way, how else are we going to do it?
Are we going to do a paper exercise? Maybe we will sit down and
look at multiple choice, or maybe I will do a protracted essay,
something I would have to research. How does that confirm my competence
over the breadth of my experience and the work that I do? If it
ends up as a paper exercise, it is wallpaper; it does not convince
anybody that you have truly revalidated the profession! I do not
think they have thought through the consequence of how we would
provide it and what the costs would be. "It is there as an
aspiration: trust us, we will get it right." I do not trust
them. They are not practically based. I do not think they understand
the way that we would have to do such things. When you are working
in the north of Scotland, if you want to go on a CPD course not
only have you got to find time out of practice, but you have got
to do the travelling; you have to employ a locum to come and fill
in for you for maybe three days, to get down, go to the course
and then return. Has that been thought through by the Royal College?
Not at all.
Q123 Paddy Tipping: You told us earlier
on, Mr Barker, that you agreed there was a need for the College
to change the way it handled its disciplinary procedures. Can
you explain how that should be?
Mr Barker: I do not know how it
should be. In essence they are saying: "At the moment we
have forty councillors from which we have the Council; you draw
Preliminary Investigation and you draw Disciplinary: they all
come from the same pool." So they make the rules, they apply
the rules and then judge it. That, apparently, is not compatible.
The problem I have—and this is something they have not spoken
about—is that the Preliminary Investigation and Disciplinary
have the heaviest workloads of the committees within the Royal
College. My suspicion is that the people seconded on to these
do it as a duty and are quite grateful when they are out of there
and can then spend another two years of their four-year term influencing
policy in other parts. If you are going to remove those people
from the central council that is making policy, where is the glory?
I do not know who they are going to get to volunteer to fill these
positions, and if they are not going to volunteer, they are going
to have to be paid, which, again, adds to the cost. As a profession,
we are now becoming a niche supplier to those sorts of people
who can afford us. My head nurse went on a CPD meeting only last
week and came back with the take-home message: "The heart
of our business is women who have children." Apart from pensioners,
I do not know of any other part of Joe Public that is more hit
by the cost of food, the cost of energy, the council tax going
up. If all this regulation adds to the cost of me providing veterinary
surgery, my prices will go up and fewer people will come through
the door. We already mirror the retail trade. Last September retail
sales in the shops went down: our turnover went down. The year
before, retail was high in January and low in February and March,
and we were the same. Whatever the Welfare of Animals Act says,
people have to be careful with their money. They willfind money
for emergencies. I would not like to be a farmer having to call
out a vet—but they will find money if the animal is ill;
but for the routines, like vaccination, worming and flea control,
routine neuterings—even things like dental work, they will
postpone. If we add to the cost of providing veterinary attention,
we damage animal welfare, and all this regulation will add to
costs.
Chairman: Mr Barker, despite the fact
that our Division Bell has been going, your words have been recorded.
I am sorry we have got to go in a rush, and I know you have a
journey north. Thank you very much for coming and spending your
time. Your evidence will be taken obviously as part of your contribution
to our inquiry. Thank you very much for joining us today. I am
sorry we have had to cut things a little bit short.
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