President’s Report

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... the silly season is upon us and what would normally be our nice hot summer is instead presenting unprecedented weather. I want to start by sending my thoughts to all those affected by floods over the past few months; it has not been an easy time for the communities affected. Please know our thoughts are with you all. As we come into our happy holiday period, I have been reflecting on all that we have achieved as an organisation, not only the challenges we have faced, but also the community we have built coming out of lockdown and living with COVID. Just as we have steered the VNCA ship through some tough times, we are finally emerging in smoother waters. As president, I have been extremely lucky to have so many opportunities to connect with industry at forums, conferences and meetings where I have been promoting the interests of veterinary nurses and technicians nationally. We know as an industry we face staff shortages, and we at the VNCA believe the utilisation of nurses and technicians will go a long way to supporting industry to meet our animal health and welfare outcomes. We will continue to promote utilisation and registration as a way forward. We at the VNCA have an amazing team of volunteers in each state and on every committee who dedicate many hours to supporting you, our members. We know it hasn’t been an easy year, so I would like to thank everyone for all their efforts and recognise the work they have achieved. We had a very successful year of CPD with conferences, state events and webinars, and we have some very exciting plans for next year, including our Perth conference – and the program of speakers is amazing! Launching our values and aligning them to our vet nurse and technician week, we celebrate and recognise two amazing individuals in our industry awards for the Vet Nurse/Technician of the Year, Anita Parkin, and our Student Vet Nurse of the Year, Kristie Wallace – two amazing humans who Rebecca Coventry

VNCA President

are excellent role models and leaders in our industry. Congratulations, once again! We are working with divisions and finalising our planning for 2023–24. There are so many exciting things in the pipeline and we look forward to continuing to support nurses and technicians nationally. On behalf of the Board, I want to thank you for your continued membership, and we hope that you get to spend some time over the holiday period with family and friends, that you celebrate your successes with your team, and have a work celebration to recognise your efforts this year. Stay safe, be merry and we will reconnect with you all in 2023, which I know will be an amazing year! Rebecca Coventry VNCA President

The AVNAT Regulatory Council welcomes this significant move by the AVBC and looks forward to working together to achieve this goal.' There is much work to be done to progress this initiative and VNCA members can be assured that we will continue to work to ensure optimal outcomes for veterinary nurses and technicians across Australia. Keep an eye out for further developments which will be published as they become available.

The VNCA announced on Friday 25 November 2022 that the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) hasagreed to work with the VNCA and AVNAT Regulatory Council towards mandatory registration of veterinary nurses and technicians across Australia. Dr Peter Gibbs, AVBC Chair, said 'Following last week’s Council decisions, work will continue to take this initiative forward. Next steps include refining the definitions of “veterinary nurse” and “veterinary technician”, defining the acts they can perform, and identifying processes required for registration.' The VNCA President, Rebecca Coventry stated ‘Today is a tremendous step forward for our professions. The VNCA has been working towards regulation of veterinary nurses and technicians for 25 years and is looking forward to collaborating with AVBC to strengthen the veterinary team by improving role clarity and career progression for veterinary nurses and technicians. While there is much work to be done, agreement across all parties to progress this long-awaited development is warmly welcomed.’ Ms Jo Hatcher, Australian Veterinary Nurse and Technician Registration Scheme Chair said, 'When the VNCA developed the AVNAT registration scheme our main goal was for registration to move from voluntary to national regulation of all veterinary nurses and technicians in Australia.