Welcome

This lecture will discuss what evidence we have for various reported causes of acute pancreatitis in veterinary patients, before providing an overview of how to best diagnose the condition in the emergency setting and provide both in-hospital and outpatient care. Learn how to control vomiting, provide nutrition and keep these patients comfortable. Aimee will also present some novel data, discussing the role of corticosteroids in the management of acute pancreatitis.

Pain is commonly encountered in the emergent patient, but is commonly under treated because of a failure to recognise its presence and concerns about the side effects of analgesic drugs. This lecture considers the impact of pain on the emergent patient, techniques available to evaluate pain, analgesic strategies applicable to emergent patients and the negative effects that may be encountered with different analgesic techniques.

Conditions of the biliary system are more common in cats than primary hepatic liver disease. Patients often present with non-specific clinical signs such as lethargy, anorexia, or vomiting, and with co-morbidities such as pancreatitis and inflammatory bowel disease which present diagnostic and therapeutic challenges.

In addition to the less common conditions of cholelithiasis and cholecystitis in cats, this lecture will look at feline cholangitis/cholangiohepatitis syndromes. Diagnostic and treatment options will be discussed.

Doppler blood pressures causing nothing but frustration? Has your clinic just given up on getting blood pressures because it's too difficult to find the pulse? This lecture reviews how to obtain blood pressure in veterinary patients. Videos will be shown. Oscillometric and invasive methods will also be discussed.

Central venous catheters are placed as standard in many veterinary settings but can be challenging to manage if staff members are not familiar with the aseptic techniques required to care for them. This lecture will discuss the nurse’s role in monitoring and managing patients with central venous catheters in place; the equipment required to maintain central venous catheters, and the potential complications that can be encountered after placement.

Let’s talk about the nursing challenges of sepsis. This lecture will focus on what sepsis is, diagnostics used and treatment options. Nurses will leave understanding the unique nursing care these patients require.

Attendees will be taught a variety of different techniques of IV catheter placement on “naughty” veins. A variety of trouble shooting methods will be reviewed of how to get catheters in difficult veins. Videos and step-by-step pictures will be shown to help participants conquer “naughty” veins.

Working outside of the regular 9-5 can be taxing for mental and physical health and wellbeing. Most health problems associated with shiftwork can be attributed to sleep deprivation, which means that sleep must be prioritised. During this session, we will break down the sleep cycle and how it is impacted by schedule disruption. Sharing strategies for reducing insomnia and improving sleep quality will be the focus.

Emesis is commonly utilised in the management of pet poisonings, but what do you do after you’ve made the dog sick or in situations where emesis is not possible? Taking a case-based approach (and guaranteed to get you thinking!), this talk works through obstacles in pet poisonings, how these can be overcome and how we can advance our management of these cases with tailored treatment.

Coughing is arguably the most common clinical sign of chronic respiratory disease in small animal patients and is also an important presentation of cardiac disease in dogs. This lecture will discuss how taking a detailed history and physical examination can aid decision-making regarding when and how a cough should be further investigated. Indications for advanced diagnostics including CT imaging, bronchoscopy and airway sampling will be discussed as well as therapy and prognosis for the commoner causes of chronic cough in dogs and cats.

Dealing with incoming emergency calls can be challenging and actioning them correctly requires knowledge of related RCVS and Vets Now policies, consideration of the owner’s wishes as well as ensuring the safety and welfare of the pet. This presentation will talk through each step of the process and explain how these cases should be managed once they arrive at the hospital.

In addition, a busy emergency waiting room presents several challenges to the team working on reception as emotions can run high and waiting times can be lengthy resulting in frustration. This presentation will provide ACAs and receptionists with the confidence to effectively manage this environment.

During this presentation, Jenny will cover some of the most common oncology emergencies in brief, providing practical hints, tips and updates. This will include an approach to haemoabdomen (focusing on some of the key facts around splenic haemangiosarcoma, with updates about treatment and prognosis), an approach to common chemotherapy adverse events, an approach to managing hypercalcaemic dogs, considerations about analgesia in oncology cases and reflecting upon our approach to measurement of quality of life and decision-making when oncological patients may require euthanasia out-of-hours.

This lecture will discuss aftercare and long-term management of pancreatitis cases in dogs and cats after discharge from the hospital. It will cover the evidence for the use of various diagnostic tests to confirm the condition, discuss potential specific therapies and summarise common comorbidities in these patients.

Acute diarrhoea is a frequent complaint seen on a day-to-day basis within first-opinion small animal veterinary practice, whilst also being a very common reason for presentation to out-of-hours clinics. Despite acute diarrhoea often being self-limiting in nature requiring symptomatic treatment only, antibiotics are commonly prescribed in the management of these cases. This webinar shall look at the common causes of acute diarrhoea, including infectious agents and the value of faecal analysis. We will then cover when and why antibiotics are used in the management of acute diarrhoea; assessing when antibiotics are truly indicated and considering some of the potential adverse effects that antibiotic usage may have.

Patients presenting with a suspicion of an “acute abdomen” pose a very interesting challenge. Firstly the clinician needs to identify if it is indeed an abdominal problem (or a “look-alike”) and then several decision are needing to be made: a) What else should I do to further gather clinically relevant information to localize the problem and b) Is it surgical? In this session Emma will try to shed some light onto the above questions and share some tips and tricks on how to deal with this patient group.

Add breathwork to your wellbeing toolkit and learn about some of the evidence-based benefits of Pranayama. Explore a variety of breathing techniques and give them a try yourself in real time so you can find your favourites. Just breathe!

Female urinary catheters can be tricky to place. This lecture reviews techniques how to place urinary catheters in female dogs and cats. Videos will be shown so participants leave with a better understanding of how to perform this skill.

Within the context of some health issues common to veterinary professionals, examine some popular and accessible yoga poses in detail so you can confidently utilise them when you most need to.

Central venous catheters are placed as standard in many veterinary settings but can be challenging to manage if staff members are not familiar with the aseptic techniques required to care for them. This lecture will discuss the nurse’s role in monitoring and managing patients with central venous catheters in place; the equipment required to maintain central venous catheters, and the potential complications that can be encountered after placement.

This session will discuss how the veterinary nurse can assist in managing acute spinal cord injuries.
Acute spinal cord injury can present as varying degrees of severity and for a handful of reasons. Veterinary nurses equipped to deal with these challenging patients will undoubtably improve the management of these neurologic emergencies. This talk will summarise causes and types of common spinal cord injuries in the cat and dog. The veterinary nurse will learn about triaging and neuro localisation of patients. Specific nursing care considerations and safe handling techniques will be detailed, and treatment options will be discussed including the decision to refer cases to specialist facilities when warranted.

Our speaker for this session, Kris Gommeren, says he is not a huge fan of the term “acute abdomen”, as the term is rather vague, and describes a tense and/or painful abdomen in dogs. The underlying cause of such an acute abdomen is often identified through the use of imaging techniques. This lecture will discuss the value of point-of-care ultrasound, abdominal radiographs and a full comprehensive ultrasound for these patients. Several clinical scenarios will be presented, illustrating how we tend to choose between these complementary tests, based upon several parameters such as availability, cost-effectiveness and accuracy.

This profession attracts people with big hearts (and we’re not talking cardiomegaly) so let’s check-in and look after them! Connect to your heart centre, get the blood pumping and don’t miss a beat with this stabilising Hatha Flow sequence.

The last thing you need when running a busy emergency clinic is a time-consuming lameness workup. But what can you do in an emergency situation to help diagnose a fracture or joint luxation, and what are your initial priorities? What other injuries need assessment? Are radiographs required? What form of stabilisation is indicated?

In addition to the less common conditions of cholelithiasis and cholecystitis in cats, this lecture will look at feline cholangitis/cholangiohepatitis syndromes. Diagnostic and treatment options will be discussed.

Wound management: first - do no harm! Wounds are often overlooked in an emergency situation, whilst life threatening injuries are being assessed. This session will focus on the dos and don’ts in the first six hours of wound management.

For such a small organ there are many different ophthalmic emergencies, including proptosis, acute vision loss, sharp penetrating injuries, blunt traumatic injuries, deep stromal and perforated corneal ulcers, uveitis, glaucoma, intraocular haemorrhage and retrobulbar disease. This lecture aims to show the approach to some common ophthalmic emergencies, focusing on diagnosis, assessment of prognosis and management in the clinic situation, as well as when to ask for help.

Having an impact on something as big as the climate crisis as ‘just one person’ or just one family can feel overwhelming - where to start, what to do, will it even make a difference? Luckily there are lots of things we can all do that really do make a difference, and we can do them without having to turn our lives upside down and learn how to knit our own yoghurt. Expect lots of practical tips for imperfect eco-action and leave fired up ready to take your next steps.

Our planet is facing environmental crises. As global citizens we have a responsibility to make changes in our daily lives for sustainability, however healthcare itself has a significant environmental impact. Healthcare is energy-intensive and generates a lot of waste, including a high percentage of single-use plastic. There are also high carbon emissions from travel and procurement. There are many ways we can reduce our environmental impact, alongside maintaining excellent patient care and infection control. This session provides an overview of changes that we can make for a sustainable future, considering the planet alongside the patient.

So, your patient has a pyothorax? What do you do next – do you have to arrange for a CT so that your friendly neighbourhood surgeon can chop the bad bit out – after all, a chance to cut is a chance to cure, right? Or is pleural pus just another big abscess in a hard-to-reach place that just needs lancing, draining and rinsing?! Does it matter if it’s a dog or a cat? Come along to one of the now infamous Vets-Now Congress Controversies sessions and watch two experts – a surgeon and a criticalist - put their point of view across and battle it out for your approval!

I would like to tell you that my first leadership experience was flawless, but it wasn’t. It was soaked in insecurity and passive aggressive communication and it’s a wonder I am still working! Megan will give you three quick tips for getting out of your own way when leading a team, whether it’s your first team or your 10th!

We are often presented with complex, critically ill patients that have a range of clinical demands in emergency practice, and every case brings challenges. These are usually diagnostic and therapeutic but will often also include the non-technical aspects of how to balance the different needs of different clinical teams at different times, whilst ensuring that someone is keeping the patients’ best interests in mind.

In this forum, a panel of experienced clinicians will discuss various critical cases that they have grappled with, as well as sharing some of their mistakes and discoveries along the way.

The session will be interactive, and we’ll discuss with the audience some of the dilemmas that face us as we deal with major body system disorders in fragile emergency and critically ill patients. Your input on what we did well and what we could have done differently is very welcome.

Breathwork is so vital in Yoga that it is known as ‘Pranayama’, which translates from Sanskrit to mean “extension of life-force”. We all know how powerful the gift of breath is, and this soothing Hatha class will help you to gift-wrap it and send it first-class to yourself! You can also learn more about Pranayama via the VetYogi pre-recorded presentation, available from 3rd November in the main auditorium.

The dyspnoeic patient can present a diagnostic challenge. In this session we will look at how to obtain the most useful information from thoracic radiographs with a focus on recognising conditions which cause dyspnoea.

We will consider technical factors affecting image quality, developing a systematic approach to interpretation and discussing how to recognise and differentiate some of the common causes of dyspnoea.

Simplifying thoracic surgery. This session will focus on surgical conditions requiring urgent thoracic intervention. The surgeon will provide a review of local anatomy, describe approaches and provide you with tips on how to maximise confidence and minimise complications.

Beginning with the basics, this lecture will help veterinary nurses to understand the common acid/base disturbances seen in most patients. We will then expand into a deeper interpretation of arterial blood gas results and interpretation of oxygen and ventilation status. Case studies will be utilised to understand how arterial blood gas results guide treatment plans, oxygen supplementation, and potentially mechanical ventilation.

During this talk we will think back to the first time the speaker made a mistake clinically and talk about how the mistake was communicated to the clients. Exploring the challenges around having difficult conversations, but the need to be honest and reflective after the event. The speaker will reflect on why mistakes may happen and what you can do to try and avoid this, as well as focusing on the need to be kind to yourself when mistakes do happen – after all they are part of being human and we all certainly have to start somewhere!

We see cardiovascularly unstable patients all the time – but how do we know how bad things really are with the circulation, and how do we know whether our therapy is helping? Forget biomarkers like lactate – the only way to tell in real time is to lay hands on our patient’s pulses and let our fingers do the talking; or are there more sophisticated techniques we can use to give us more reliable, more repeatable information using point-of-care ultrasound?

Join us at this Controversies session and see if one of our opposing experts can convert you, or each other, to their way of thinking!

As professionals, we encounter many dilemmas; some of the most challenging are linked to communication, teamwork and those relating to our ethical framework.

During this interactive session, the panel will share some of the dilemmas they have faced during their career and discuss how these are impacted by the professional code we work within. Please come along and share your thoughts on our dilemmas and any of your own.

It can be hard to feel you’re getting enough rest and sleep when working busy emergency shifts. Known as the “yogic sleep,” Yoga Nidra is a deep and powerfully restorative guided meditation practice, with 1 hour proven to be as restful as 4 hours of regular sleep. Turn the lights low, light a candle and get cosy - it’s time for a little lie-down!

This lecture will cover how to safely investigate a dyspnoeic patient without causing the fragile patient’s condition to deteriorate further. We will discuss how to plan investigations in a timely fashion and logical order, to achieve a rapid diagnosis. This will include when and how to use blood gas analysis, pulse oximetry, imaging including point-of-care ultrasound and radiographs, and airway sampling techniques. We will also cover how to perform in-house laboratory analyses of airway and pleural fluid samples and what samples should be submitted to an external laboratory.

Dyspnoeic patients are challenging cases when presented to the emergency service, as they require rapid intervention, yet want to be left alone at the same time. Along with the signalment, history, observation of the breathing pattern and a decent cardiorespiratory auscultation, point-of-care ultrasound will allow you to differentiate the major causes of respiratory disease in companion animals, whilst still allowing your patient to feel “comfortable”. This lecture describes the pleural and lung ultrasound protocol, and all artefacts and images the veterinarian should screen for whilst performing this complementary examination. A game-changer for those unfamiliar with the procedure.

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a new and rapidly evolving field of emergency and critical care in companion animals. I learned POCUS the hard way, doing “the best ultrasound I could” in my wife’s practice, and trying to perform a “decent echocardiography” during my PhD, so I rapidly got faced with my own limitations. During this lecture, the objective will be to provide a pathway to implement point-of-care ultrasound into your practice. From straightforward procedures to more advanced skills, we’ll go through the indications, caveats, and will highlight the good POCUS can bring to your everyday practice.

The job of an Animal Care Assistant (ACA), Animal Auxiliary or Veterinary Care Assistant (VCA) is an integral role for any veterinary team. Ensuring all essential patient husbandry and welfare needs are being met for every individual patient, as well as providing the key foundation support for all members within the team.

This type of qualification (alongside an English and a Maths qualification) in some instances can be used as an entry route into some of the Veterinary Nursing courses currently on offer. This talk will focus on the key attributes and clinical experiences that could assist in furthering any future application towards veterinary nurse training, as well as a general insight towards the various academic routes that can be used in achieving this path.

We are more and more aware of our abilities to have a positive influence as citizens, but also through our workplace. There is often a workplace focus on sustainability and while this is great, it often starts and ends with the environmental aspects of sustainability leaving social justice sadly neglected.

Giving social justice an equal weighting within any sustainability plans can have real and positive influence at many levels (individual, community, national and international). This session will aim to take social justice from sadly neglected to positive action through understanding social justice, what it can achieve and how any business can make even the smallest of changes for the better.

Non-accidental injury in animals is not only a complex diagnostic challenge but also an ethical and moral dilemma, with the hardest challenge being allowing yourself to consider that the animal presented to you could have been deliberately harmed by those supposed to be caring for it.

In this session we will review the diagnostic guidelines and explore the ethical dilemmas associated with reporting. Using real-life case examples to highlight the responsibilities that we all have when dealing with these challenging cases not only to protect animals, but also to protect people due to the links to familial violence.

Communication is at the heart of delivering veterinary care. In this session, we will explore how it’s not just about what happens in the consulting room: effective communication in practice is a team sport.
How we communicate with clients from the first point of contact to the moment they leave has a big impact on the care our patients receive, how clients experience the delivery of that care and, just as importantly, how much we enjoy our time at work. Join this session to learn how vet teams can all do this better, together.

Let’s talk about money. Money appears to be at the heart of many challenging conversations, complaints, and stressful situations in practice. Why is that? Is it becoming more of a problem? And how can we make it easier for ourselves, and our clients, to navigate this apparently tricky area more effectively?
Join this session to explore these questions and learn how we can all work together to reduce the stress and provide the best possible care for the patient in front of us, whatever the financial situation.

Handling complaints can take up a lot of our time in practice and be a big energy drain – this is particularly challenging when teams are already stretched and under pressure. In this session we will consider how receiving or being asked to handle a complaint might make you feel, and how this can impact the way you deal with that complaint. We’ll ask why clients complain and what they want from us when they do. This will help identify positive, effective ways of handling complaints, and also how we might head some of them off at the pass.

Not every boss is a leader which means not every leader needs to be the boss! By examining common traits in great leaders, the concept of servant leadership, learning how to integrate leadership skills into everyday interactions, and discussing various thought and behaviour changes necessary to rise up, your peers will be viewing you as a valuable leader on the team - whether you’re officially in charge or not!

Do you know that you could be mistaking coping strategies for self-care? Self-care is any intentional action that you take for your health and wellbeing (and it’s not Netflix and wine)! During this session, self-care will be explained and tools for implementing self-care within the eight dimensions of wellness will be the focus.

The emergency room is fraught with difficult conversations around wait times, money, intense cases and euthanasia. Client emotions are running high and team members can have trouble coping without the right communication tools. During this session, we will discuss tips for handling conversations with clients regarding money, euthanasia and bad news, as well as how to effectively approach emotional or angry clients. Delegates will learn how to approach these conversations with confidence and cope with their own emotional reactions.

Establishing and/or maintaining a functional airway is essential to life for our emergency patients, but when do we ever take care to prioritise our own? Match movement to breath in this energising and respiratory-focused Vinyasa Flow sequence and prepare to open your mind as well as your lungs!

Head trauma patients can present us with a number of dilemmas in veterinary emergency and critical care – how do we stabilise them; how do we tell what’s going on inside the skull, how do we protect the brain from injury and how do we prepare for and perform any surgical interventions at the right time without making things worse?
In this mini-forum, we will hear from three different experts in ECC, Neurology and Maxillo-facial surgery who will give us their advice as to how we can get these patients over their injuries and back home with the best outcomes possible.

Upper airway obstruction: living on a knife edge. In this session, the surgeon will share her first experience placing an emergency tracheostomy followed by reflection on how to be comfortable with inexperience.

The first time I performed an epidural was in a cow, on my own in the middle of the night with a farmer watching - it was something I expected to do and expected to be able to do….
The first time I performed an epidural in a dog was in a well-supported practice environment without a client watching - it was stressful, and my colleagues thought it was risky. Was my stress appropriate, were my colleagues right, why should we perform epidurals and how can you make your first time successful and stress-free?

Seizures are an all-too-common emergency presentation, often daunting and distressing to all involved. This lecture will guide the veterinary nurse in how best to assist their veterinary surgeon with triage, diagnostic testing, treatment, monitoring and nursing care. Learning outcomes of this talk will be to gain an understanding of how to recognise seizures and how they manifest. The common causes of seizures and status epilepticus, what treatment is available, and the appropriate diagnostic options will be discussed along with the various drug therapies available and how nurses can assist with patient monitoring and required nursing care.

Oftentimes veterinary nurses are taught what to do. They are not required to “think ahead” for their patient. This needs to change. Veterinary nurses are as responsible for the care of the patient as much as the veterinarian. They must identify problems early, understand changes in their patients and take proactive steps to avoid worsening of disease or injury. This lecture focuses on a skill that human registered nurses are taught in skill and one that our veterinary nurses must know to provide the best care to the patient.

Trauma cases give us a rush of adrenaline as we start fluid therapy and manage multiple problems, but are you confident in your knowledge of head trauma? Blood pressure and heart rate and breathing - oh my! This lecture will cover the physiology of traumatic brain injury, how to treat these cases when they arrive, and the emphasis of the lecture covering the nursing care they need as they recover.

Perfectionism is a common trait among veterinary care providers and often worsens moral stress and psychological distress in practice. This session will focus on the three types of perfectionism, why they occur, and what the consequences can be for mental health and relationships. Several strategies for coping with and reducing perfectionism will also be shared.

Veterinary care providers commonly struggle with strategies to "stay sane" and maintain work-life balance. This session will provide the tools necessary to foster wellbeing, work-life separation, and resilience while working in the veterinary profession. Practical strategies for setting boundaries, saying no, and daily debriefing will be discussed, and examples shared.

As professionals, we are called on to make multiple decisions every day. Whilst many of these relate to the clinical care of our patients, some of the toughest dilemmas we face relate to challenges with communication, teamwork and those relating to our ethical framework. These can be magnified when we work in a high-stakes emergency environment.
During this session, a panel of experienced clinicians will share professional dilemmas they have encountered in their career. We will discuss how these are impacted by the professional codes that we all operate within. Your input is important, and we would love to hear your perspective on our dilemmas and any of your own.

Uncontrolled seizures are a relatively common but stressful presentation in emergency medicine, with many potential aetiologies. By discussing the pathophysiology and the adverse consequences of uncontrolled seizures, this lecture aims to give an understanding of the options available for seizure control, the need for timely and effective initial interventions, and the need for management of secondary systemic effects. Tailoring the ongoing treatment to the individual patient’ needs is vital for a successful outcome and will be demonstrated in this lecture with case examples.

Clinical record keeping is an integral component in good professional practice and delivery of quality patient care. Providing a seamless continuity of patient care, whilst enhancing the communication with all members of the veterinary team, clients, and other members of the multidisciplinary team. Essentially, they are a record behind what has been done, discussed, or proposed for current or future patient care.
Clinical auditing is a valuable tool in helping to monitor the quality of patient care being provided; a crucial aid in our forever strive to improve and develop ourselves both professionally and personally. To enable clinical auditing to take place we therefore need reliable, accurate and robust clinical records to work from. This session will be aimed at presenting and suggesting different strategies and user-friendly methods behind effective clinical record-keeping, which could then be utilised or considered for use by any veterinary team.

Infection control within the veterinary practice is a staff-wide responsibility.
This session will cover infection control strategies and highlight high-risk areas within the hospital to reduce the transmission of infection agents throughout our hospital and our patients.

Quality improvement is not just for vets, or even just vets & vet nurses - it should involve the whole practice team. Successful implementation of QI processes like clinical audit, guidelines, checklists and looking at significant events is all about communicating with and listening to everyone in the practice in order to improve care, outcomes and team morale.

Find out about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of clinical audit. Performing a clinical audit helps us to ascertain if we are doing what we should be doing. Not to be confused with research, this is a simple tool that compares current practice to best practice. It provides a measurable way to identify what we are doing well and where we might like to improve. Clinical audit is something that the whole veterinary team can get involved with. This lecture will discuss what clinical audit is, its benefits, the audit cycle and how to get started.

A recent UK study indicated 4 in 10 vets are experiencing burnout, but few studies have explored the causes and implications of burnout in vets specifically. This lecture will take a broad view, exploring trends in levels of burnout and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will also examine causes of burnout and the consequences burnout has on work outcomes, considering how these relate to veterinary work.

Burnout research has grown exponentially in the last decade, providing more suggestions than ever before about how we can tackle burnout and improve wellbeing. This lecture will make sense of this literature, identifying specific, evidence-based recommendations which organisations can action and identifying strategies individuals can employ to improve their own wellbeing.

This lecture will help you develop your repertoire of communication skills to meet the varying needs of clients. Communication skills that can be applied to enhance clients’ involvement and understanding of information will be the initial focus of this session. This lecture will then explore three models of decision-making and when it is most appropriate for each approach to be taken, using case examples. Communication practices taught during this lecture can help promote client trust, satisfaction, compliance, and appointment efficacy.

Do you fancy a break from CPD for a short time? Grab an apron and join talented Barak Levy-Hirsch for a bake-along like no other! Barak will be sharing his recipe for his mouth-watering cheesecake brownies and will take us through the process step-by-step. Everyone is welcome, so please feel free to bring along your family members – the more the merrier! There will be a prize for the ‘top bake’ and you can enjoy your brownies for the next two days of learning – what’s not to love?

We’ll be in touch with a list of equipment and ingredients so you have everything you need to make the perfect cheesecake brownies!

Anaesthesia in emergent patients can be especially challenging - unstable patients, limited information, time pressure and limited staffing can significantly increase the stress to the anaesthetists and the risk to the patient.
This lecture will consider: pre-anaesthetic assessment and stabilisation, anaesthetic and procedural planning, strategies for premedication, induction and maintenance of anaesthesia, loco-regional anaesthesia, and, management of recovery from anaesthesia in the emergent patient. The emphasis of the lecture will be on a simple practical approach which is applicable to most situations and practices.

This lecture will discuss investigation of diseases of the biliary system in dogs including cholelithiasis, cholecystitis, gallbladder mucocele, and biliary neoplasia. The indications for surgical versus medical management will be covered and there will be a particular emphasis on the rationale and current evidence for the use of diet and medications in biliary conditions, and what results can (and cannot) be expected from their use.

Biliary surgery is renowned for its technical challenges and uncertain outcomes. This session will focus on an anatomical review of the biliary tract, followed by discussion of the most commonly performed surgical procedures. Hints and tips will be provided to maximise a stress-free procedure and overcome technical challenges.

A pet patient presents with a painful abdomen. What caused it? How do we figure that out and what are the unique nursing challenges that may be presented to us? This lecture dives into the acute abdomen and how to best care for these patients.

In this session Chris will draw parallels between human and animal healthcare, particularly around getting the best results in high stress, complex situations. We shall look at the evidence for highly performing teams and at models for how we might better understand each other, thus improving results.

The improvement of care quality is the single biggest impact we can have on the wellbeing of our patient population and is the mission of RCVS Knowledge. In this session, Laura Playforth will describe how quality improvement can not only make care better, but also support sustainable ways of working within our teams.
Pam Mosedale will discuss the multitude of free and accessible quality improvement tools and resources RCVS Knowledge has to offer, which teams can use to focus on what is important to them.
Finally, delegates will hear from Liz Welsh, who will offer her knowledge and experience of how quality improvement can be integrated into daily practice without being an insurmountable hurdle. Liz will talk about her experiences of using QI tools in the clinic and how they have helped achieve realistic and meaningful outcomes for both the staff and the patients.
An interactive Q&A panel will follow, where we encourage delegates to join in with the discussion. This is a great opportunity to ask any questions you may have!

This lecture will focus on how to identify the different types of cardiovascular instability. It will cover the classification of hypovolaemic, distributive, cardiogenic, obstructive and hypoxaemic shock states. The lecture will detail how to recognise and stabilise each of these different shock states.

This lecture will cover the safe handling of a dyspnoeic patient, including the most appropriate oxygen therapy choices. We will look at how to localise the dyspnoea to specific regions of the respiratory tract and how to interpret thoracic auscultation. We will also cover how to treat upper respiratory tract distress and heat stroke, how to perform thoracocentesis for pleural space disease, when to place a chest drain and how to diagnose and manage common diseases affecting the pulmonary parenchyma, including congestive heart failure and aspiration pneumonia.

Once in a lifetime - the journey that resulted in bold and courageous steps being taken, whilst leading the profession through a pandemic. Reflections on a unique period in history.

Several studies report that the majority of hospitalised pets are undernourished, which could impact their recovery and general outcome. Enteral nutrition, voluntary or assisted, plays a fundamental role in the management of the critically ill pet – let’s discuss why, what, how and when to feed your patients.