In the face of the cloud of COVID-19 restrictions BEVA has found a silver lining for its members by more than doubling digital and hybrid CPD courses, culminating in the return of the ultimate event that is BEVA Congress 5 to 7 September 2021.
BEVA is recognised by the veterinary industry for providing some of the best educational courses for vets and vet nurses. However, constraints caused by the pandemic inspired the association to develop its online CPD offerings during 2021, including the introduction of interactive formats, enhanced content and new courses. This year BEVA has a schedule of 13 online CPD courses, together with 14 hybrid events and 10 attended only options. This represents a more than 50 percent increase from 2020 (six online courses and 11 attended courses). In addition, the association introduced new, interactive and more engaging ways of delivering content.
“We’ve gone from having webinars as our only digital offering to having a wide range of online discussions, courses and webinar style member benefits,” said Sarah Gaspar, learning manager at BEVA. “The courses are more affordable to run and thus more affordable to attend and subsequently we have much higher attendance– we’d normally have 30 on a face-to-face wounds course but had 140 online.
“We’ve also had a lot of love for the accessibility of our digital courses and ease in which they fit into the rest of life, which is why we will be keeping several courses online or as hybrid options in 2022.”
New online courses for 2021 have included:
- Wounds- a masterclass and Pain management, running as a series of live online discussions with online theory
- BAEDT advanced theory and the AI forum ran as full day live online discussions
- Practical foal nursing, nurse imaging and nurse rehab, as well as headshaking – meeting the challenge, finding answers after life, beyond the fundamentals of equine dentistry and event incident management, all ran online with live practical demos
Online clinical catch ups have been a favourite as a less formal “down-the-pub” style CPD as have the new Transatlantic Equine Clinics which have opened up CPD to involve the best international minds the USA and Europe in discussion on topics that are in the news. An added benefit is that these sessions are easy to download and watch on demand and free for members to attend or watch back.
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive with comments including:
- “Very practical and straightforward for new grads like myself.”
- “Fantastic amount of information, enthusiasm and banter.”
- “Provided good, thorough knowledge, giving me confidence to face these cases in practice.”
- “The fact it was online, to do in your own time in manageable chunks and at an affordable price meant it was something I could easily do.”
“The past 18 months have been tough,” said Sarah. “But we are incredibly lucky to work with some amazing course organisers and speakers, who have risen to the challenge of providing CPD online; we remain ever grateful as they have come up with the goods no matter how novel the course content and delivery suggestions! We are immensely proud that our CPD has reached equine vets from the Falklands, Oman, Iran, Japan, Chad as well as Europe, North America and Australasia. We look forward to building on our online success in 2022.”
To find out more visit the BEVA website.
BEVA Congress, Europe’s largest equine veterinary event and a flagship source of CPD is to take place live from 5 7 September 2021 at the ICC, Birmingham and will be celebrating BEVA’s diamond anniversary with the theme of 60 years of teamwork within the profession. The new format also offers a plethora of high-quality online content, which should stop rotas getting in the way and allow everyone to enjoy and benefit from the event in one way or another.
It’s not too late to book your tickets: visit the BEVA Congress website.