Busy times... A Presidential Address
Busy Times…
By Dave Charles, AVS President 2018/2019
As well as being a final year at Bristol Vet School, I have the immense privilege of being your Association of Veterinary Students President. My committee and I have achieved so much already, since I took over in February and with 5 months left in office there’s still lots to be done!
The big theme for my year (and a large part of my manifesto) as President has been supporting students on EMS.
We hit the ground running in Spring 2018, partnering with VDS Training to bring you the first ever AVS EMS Grants. We’ve listened to your feedback and felt that producing grants that are open to any student for any form of clinical EMS (not just research) would allow us to have a real impact and improve people’s time on EMS. Applications open now!
In August, our Member Services Group finished an 18 month project - launching The AVS Clinical EMS Guide. This means we can now support students from their AHEMS in first year to their last week of clinical EMS in final year through our amazing student produced guides. I was also lucky enough to attend a meeting of the EMS teams at every vet school and as a result both our clinical EMS and AHEMS guides will be freely available via your university in both digital and hard copy. We also partnered with Vets4Pets to stock it in practices across the country.
The third, and final arm of the EMS project this year was the EMS Experience survey which had an incredible response rate (approximately 25% of you). Off the back of your feedback we have produced a report that will launch at London Vet Show, alongside resources for vets in practice to help them make EMS placements the best they can be for you. We also secured a multi year partnership with the team at London Vet Show, allowing our members to come at a greatly reduced price starting at £39.
I want to also take this opportunity to thank everyone who attended one of our events this year; from the biggest ever AVS Congress, to Sports Weekend or any of the fantastic guest lectures our university reps organise. Also to everyone who engaged with our polls, surveys or focus groups - the more we hear from you the more we can ensure we’re the voice in the room representing you on the issues that matter be that to the RCVS, the BVA, your veterinary schools or anyone else!
Make sure you stay connected: like us on facebook, follow us on twitter, chat to your university AVS reps and keep any eye out for further updates to hear the latest news about what your AVS are getting up to - we absolutely love to hear from you to help shape the direction AVS takes!
We’re hugely looking forwards to welcoming more of you than ever before to Sports Weekend in November (Nottingham have some big plans), and hopefully seeing lots of you at London Vet Show using our exclusive AVS discount. Then in February it’s all about Congress at RVC, where we’ll award our inaugural AVS EMS Grants, open elections for next years committee and I’ll handover to my successor.
I look forwards to meeting as many of you as possible throughout the year ahead,
