WATCH BACK our Interview the Boss with Aoife Reid to learn more about the AdvantEdge program 

Watch back our Interview the Team discussing the Cutting Edge Programme:

Watch back our Interview the Team discussing the AdvantEdge Programme:

Organisational background

Vets Now was founded in 2001 by Richard Dixon, a veterinary surgeon who understood the pressure of being on-call round the clock while also trying to maintain a good quality of life. His solution was Vets Now, a dedicated out-of-hours emergency and critical care service for pets.

In the following years, Richard and his team helped revolutionise the way emergency veterinary care was provided outside of normal surgery hours. He worked in partnership with local veterinary practices to offer vets and their clients an out-of-hours service. At the heart of this was a team of full-time vets, vet nurses, and support staff who only worked at night, over weekends, and during public holidays.

In 2019, Richard sold Vets Now to Europe’s leading veterinary care provider, IVC Evidensia, but our mission has not changed and, today, Vets Now provides a trusted service to more than 1700 veterinary practices across the UK — from 60-plus dedicated out-of-hours clinics and two 24/7 pet emergency hospitals.

In total, our highly-skilled staff treat around 200,000 small animals every year — and during seasonal holidays, like Christmas and Easter, we answer around five queries an hour from worried pet owners. So whether you’re in Aberdeen, Belfast or Portsmouth we’re there for you and your pet when you need us most.

We’ve also pioneered other ways to help pets, pet owners, and the veterinary profession, such as our comprehensive referrals service, innovative Video Vets Now consultation platform, and providing our staff with industry-leading training. We also support the pet blood transfusion charity, Pet Blood Bank UK. Meanwhile, our hospitals — in Glasgow and Manchester — are home to some of the UK’s leading specialists in the field of emergency and critical care and provide care 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Organisation aims & mission

Together, we save pets’ lives.

At Vets Now, we’re committed to giving people and their pets the care and support they deserve at the time they need it most. It’s our core purpose. It’s in our DNA. It’s all we do.

Watch back our Interview the Boss:

• Caring — Together we show compassion and empathy in our interactions
• Innovation — Together we ask ourselves ‘how can we make things better?’
• Releasing Potential — Together we strive to be the best we can be
• Responsibility — Together we take ethical, evidence-based decisions

Our values apply to us all, whether we have been working at Vets Now for ten minutes or ten years. They define what we should expect of our colleagues and what our colleagues will expect of us.

Recognising achievement and celebrating success is an important part of the Vets Now ethos. Each year Vets Now staff who go above and beyond for their patients and colleagues are recognised at a special awards ceremony. The Making a Difference, or MAD, awards see plaudits handed to staff members and teams for their hard work and dedication.

However it’s not just about our awards, everyone in Vets Now is encouraged to nominate their colleagues who they believe are living and breathing our values daily. Every member of the board, including our CEO Patricia Colville reads every values submission, and each quarter one member of our team is recognised with an award for the amazing contribution they are making.

Caring: Vets Now launched a £200,000 “Angel Fund” to help vets save the lives of sick pets who might otherwise face being put to sleep. Every vet working for Vets Now will be given £1000 a year to provide emergency care to animals whose owners cannot afford treatment costs.

Innovation: Launching our Video Vets Now service during covid. Video vet offers worried pet owners peace of mind by allowing them to speak with a specially-trained Vets Now clinician from the comfort of their home. With social distancing and isolation measures impacting many practices during the Covid-19 outbreak, our profession has to find new ways to ensure we can be there for our clients and patients at the time they need us most, in order to fulfill our duty of care.

Responsibility: In April 2020 we set up an initiative to enable clinic and hospital staff to volunteer for local charities or community groups for 2 days a year during working time.

Such volunteering days can have a positive impact on both the charities and our teams and we like to encourage all our teams to participate in them. Volunteering allows Vets Now to contribute to the communities in which we operate and to be socially responsible. Most importantly, it provides charities and community groups with invaluable support and engagement from the business community.

We enjoy a close working relationship with the PDSA, one of our first out-of-hours partners. As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the work of the PDSA, Vets Now offers discounted emergency out-of-hours treatment to pet owners registered for its Pet Care scheme.

Working with Street Vet: We are also proud to provide out-of-hours care to the pets of homeless people registered with StreetVet in various locations, as well as ensuring its VDS cover enables Vets Now staff to volunteer for the charity.

StreetVet was set up by volunteer vets to ensure homeless people had more widespread access to veterinary treatment.

Releasing potential: At Vets now, we take extra time to invest in training and professional development and we understand that as vets and vet nurses, it’s your responsibility to maintain and develop the knowledge and skills relevant to your professional practice. That’s why at Vets Now, you receive a generous CPD allowance and the support, coaching, and mentoring to make the most of every opportunity. To give you the best start, we’ll also support you through a comprehensive induction programme. For many vets and veterinary nurses, this is through one of our Edge programmes.

Our clinical development team has developed a unique programme of training and courses to continue your learning and development as you progress in your role.

We understand it can be challenging to hold down a demanding job and study at the same time, so our training is diverse and flexible, offering different options depending on your needs. You can study online at a time and place that suits you, attend onsite training sessions with your district team, day seminars, and of course, our annual emergency and critical care UK Congress.

For all veterinary surgeons and principal nurse managers, we support and refund VECCS membership, to access online journals and receive discounted rates on IVECCS and EVECC Congress.

If you manage a team, you’ll also receive leadership development training to help you make the most of your people’s talents and abilities.

Our culture is what makes us special (and different). But it’s more than just our values that shape your life at Vets Now.

We’re proud of our open learning culture. Everyone across Vets Now shares their experiences and thoughts in recognition that there are often many ways to approach an emergency case

We have a just culture. We recognise that people are sometimes unsure and make mistakes but as long we have made our best judgement at the time and take accountability for our actions then these are opportunities to learn. However you’re not alone, we provide support and guidance to help our clinicians navigate challenging ethical and moral decision-making, develop resilience and maintain the highest levels of professionalism

Ultimately we want to deliver the highest quality care tailored to the needs of the specific animal and owner, recognising that different owners will want different things for their pets, we work collaboratively with them. To do this it’s essential that our clinicians have clinical freedom. We don’t set targets for clinical work – feedback provided by our benchmarks is used to support the development of our clinical teams, not measure their performance.

Together, we’re making the profession better.

We offer a work-life less ordinary. We understand that working in the veterinary profession, particularly in ECC, is a vocation and not just a job. As a Vets Now clinician, we will support you to be the dedicated veterinary surgeon or veterinary nurse you are trained to be. This ethos applies to everyone in the Vets Now family, including our dedicated support teams, who are all made up of true experts in their field. Whether that’s our learning and development professionals who support the continued learning of our teams, our technology analysts who maintain our IT infrastructure, or our skilled people services advisors who support our employees each and every day.

We recognise that each and every individual in the Vets Now family has a part to play in our success. That’s why when we say we offer you a work-life less ordinary, we really mean it.

At Vets now, we take extra time to invest in training and professional development and we understand that as vets and vet nurses, it’s your responsibility to maintain and develop the knowledge and skills relevant to your professional practice. That’s why at Vets Now, you receive a generous CPD allowance and the support, coaching, and mentoring to make the most of every opportunity.

L&D opportunities:

• Generous CPD allowance
• Comprehensive induction
• Coaching and mentoring from experienced ECC clinicians
• Flexible training – online, onsite & day seminars
• Annual ECC Congress
• VECCS membership
• Support for Advanced Practitioner (ECC) qualification
• Cert VN ECC
• Leadership development

Our health and wellbeing:

Our health and wellbeing department works in partnership with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, through its mental health initiative Mind Matters, and the NHS, to make sure we are doing everything we can to keep you as healthy and happy as possible.

Our work together includes:

• Raising awareness of mental health.
• Providing managers with training on issues relevant to wellbeing.
• Coaching you on techniques such as mindfulness and sleep hygiene.

Our employees are our greatest asset which is why we offer first-class benefits and a rewards package that includes:

Your health and wellbeing

• Private medical insurance
• Membership of employee wellbeing programme
• Enhanced sick pay
• Enhanced maternity policy including 6 months full pay
• Family-friendly policies including paternity and adoption pay schemes
• Your work-life balance
• Access to Peppy app
• 7 weeks pro rata annual leave
• Your birthday as a paid day off
• Paid volunteering days

Your development:

• £1500 CPD allowance increasing annually plus 35 paid hours pro rata
• ECC certificate support – financial and paid study leave
• Over 300 hours of CPD via the Cutting Edge programme

Your professional memberships:

• RCVS fees
• VECCS membership
• VDS cover

Your additional benefits

• Vets Now For You – reward gateway giving discounts and cashback with 100’s of retailers
• UK Standard Pension contributions – 5% Employee/3% Employer
• Up to 50% discounted staff pet care
• Death in service of two times annual salary