The North West Veterinary Specialists Quality and Governance framework provides us with a guide and benchmark to follow for the delivery of safe, effective and high quality veterinary care for our patients and clients. We utilise our framework to help us to continually evaluate and improve our standards of care.
What is Quality & Governance?
- Assess current standards within our hospital – both clinical and service-related.
- To set standards within clinical and client service areas
- Run audits to ensure we are exceeding set standards
- To ensure the highest level of evidence-based clinical care
- To safeguard our colleagues’ wellbeing
Quality & Governance at Northwest Veterinary Specialists covers six key areas:
Our Clinical Excellence Committee comprises nurses, specialist vets and non-clinical colleagues. The Clinical Excellence Committee covers:
to ensure that we are reading, reviewing and putting into practice the latest veterinary knowledge
both teaching and attending courses
Many of our vets and nurses are involved in clinical studies to answer important clinical questions, to help drive improving veterinary knowledge. All of our specialists and many of our other colleagues have publications in peer-reviewed literature.
we record and analyse all adverse events within the hospital. Analysing this information allows us to identify and reduce risks – learning from our collective experience.
Our Infection Control Team sets protocols to minimise infection risks within the hospital – to pets and humans. We regularly perform spot-checks and environmental swabbing to ensure that our procedures are keeping the hospital clean and safe. Any infection that occurs while in hospital is logged and investigated.
The Regulatory and Responsibility team ensures that we comply with regulations set by external bodies such as the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Our Client Services Team exists to try to make our clients’ experiences as stress-free as possible. Our clients not only pet owners but also primary referring vets –we aim to make it quick and easy for vets to refer their patients, so that the pets get the right specialist care as quickly as possible. Though it’s a stressful time for pet owners when their pet is unwell, we hope to reduce that stress by offering friendly and efficient client service.
Life and Wellbeing is about making sure that our colleagues are looked after. At Northwest Veterinary Specialists, animal welfare is at the core of our being and we all invest a great deal emotionally in looking after our patients.
Specialists, nurses, animal care assistants, client services and all of our paraclinical colleagues get to know our patients well: We all go through the ups and downs of caring for unwell pets day on day. This can take its toll and we’re serious about looking after our colleagues too. As well as our regular first-aiders, we have mental health first-aiders and ready access to counselling or emotional support for all colleagues. Apart from caring about our colleagues, this ensures we are in our best condition to look after pets in our care. Northwest Veterinary Specialists Ethics Committee reviews our day-to-day procedures to ensure that we are always working in our patients’ best interests. Any clinical studies that we perform or participate in have to go through internal and external ethical approval before proceeding.
Complaints Policy
Visit our complaints policy page for more information
Quality & Governance involves many working groups within our hospital, who do this work alongside their clinical or client services work.
The membership of these teams varies, but the following colleagues head particular areas:
Quality and Governance team
Ben Harris
Aimee Bebbington
Jenny Pearson
Miguel Martinez
