Advanced Practice Management and Leadership

This course in Advanced Practice Management and Leadership is aimed at the senior / executive veterinary leader / partner or manager.  A senior /executive manager is defined as someone who is privy to the business's financial performance in terms of profitability. If you are new to management we recommend you take Colourful CPD's Certificate in Veterinary Practice Management.

This course is currently offered as a certificate of completion as opposed to a CertNCS at the moment.  It will evolve into a CertNCS(VPE) in due course. 

This course is comprised of 6 modules. 

The first module introduces the premises upon which this course is built and how Veterinary Practice Managers can organise their systems and processes in order to achieve 4 core outcomes: clinical resolution, client satisfaction, financial resolution and colleague satisfaction.  This module explores, discusses, and explains the Key Performance Indicators that can be used to track these outcomes and exactly how they are calculated.  Crucially this module provides you with actual numbers so that you can benchmark your practice's performance against others. 

The second module looks at the resilience and confidence required to manage. This is not only relevant to developing one’s own confidence when tackling the many uncertainties and challenges management entails, this module will help you understanding the underlying psychology of the challenging behaviours veterinary practice managers have to deal with when their colleagues lack confidence and resilience.

Module 3 looks at how to define and track aspects of your practice’s clinical performance.  This module contains 6 webinars. The first looks at how to define and measure your practice’s Clinical Orientation. Whilst this is less relevant to a non-clinical manager, it is truly relevant to whether clients understand why clinical colleagues propose and charge for the services they do.  The second webinar looks at the protocols that managers need to be aware of in order to help their colleagues achieve good Preventative Healthcare outcomes.  The third webinar looks at the protocols that you need to co-ordinate in order to manage everyone's expectations when dealing with patients who are ill.  The fourth and fifth webinars look at what practice managers need to do to ensure that their non-clinical colleagues are considered competent in order to handle, acquire, store and dispense veterinary medicines as defined within the Veterinary Medicines Regulations and the RCVS Practice Standard Scheme. The sixth webinar covers stock control and the practicalities of how to conduct a stock take accurately and efficiently.

Module 4 looks at client satisfaction from the manager's point of view.  This includes macro and micro marketing as well as how to prevent and resolve complaints. The first webinar looks at macro-marketing, i.e. how to attract clients. This covers 35 variables that veterinary practices should consider to do this. The second webinar looks at micro-marketing, i.e. how veterinary practices can define, track, and drive the average spend per client per annum.   The final webinar discusses how to prevent and resolve the six most common complaints in veterinary practice.

Module 5 looks at the financial aspects of managing a veterinary practice.  The first webinar covers the principles and tactics of pricing and charging including mark-ups and margins.   The second webinar looks at the management accounts, including how to read and understand the profit and loss sheet and the balance sheet.  This webinar will also cover the 'differential diagnoses' of high cost of sales, high staff costs and overheads.  It finishes with a simple but very useful algorithm that all practices managers should know that helps them conceptualise, diagnose and decide which specific areas they need to address, and how, should they wish to improve their practice’s financial performance.

Module 6 is about Human Resources. The first webinar looks at recruitment in terms of how to compare applicants against the skills they either already possess or need to acquire; what information a good job description contains; how to screen clients, interview them and decide whether they really meet your requirements.  The second webinar explains how many of the day-to-day management processes that all practices should do enables a 'soft' approach to learning and development. The third webinar what to do when a colleague's behaviour is not as expected or desired and how to have a difficult conversation but in a constructive manner and how to decide if, when, and how to escalate your approach to a more formal disciplinary process.