Issue 51 - From the Registrars Desk

 

John Baguley, RegistrarWe do collate some of the data provided in annual returns each year and place this in a section in the Annual Report which I have mentioned previously.  If you are interested in numbers of veterinarians, work locations, type of practice, age groups and gender there will be something for you in this report.

You will also find a summary of complaint investigations for the financial year to 2019 in the Annual Report.

For those of you particularly interested in these types of data there are also some presentations under Resources, Statistics.  This year, in addition to a summary of numbers of complaints we have some information on decisions by registration type, gender and location of employment (remoteness index).  The remoteness index is a standard tool which describes the accessibility (or remoteness) of a place to a range of services.

 

2019 Complaint decisions by remoteness (hospital location)

 

2019 Complaint decisions % by remoteness (hospital location)

 

Each year I visit veterinary schools in Wagga Wagga and Sydney to provide information on registration, licensing and complaints to the students and presentations covering these topics are also available from the Resources, Statistics section of the website. 

Students take on the role of the Board to discuss and determine de-identified complaints so that they can become more familiar with the processes adopted by the Board. 

As you will see from the above complaint statistics, we received 59 complaints in the last year involving 81 individual veterinarians.  With approximately 3,000 veterinarians working in clinical practice there is around a 1:40 chance of receiving a complaint notification each year but the important message for the students is that in most of these complaints (around 70%) the Board will not find evidence of a breach of the legislation.

In addition to these topics you will also find presentations on two hot topics for the moment: the movement of veterinarians in the last 12 months and telemedicine or technology-based patient consultations.

Finally, I would like to thank the Board members, and staff members Mary, Glenn, Melanie, Des, Kathryn and Kate for their valuable contributions to the work of the Board during this past year.

Wishing you a safe and happy Christmas.

John Baguley