In December 2023, the Board issued a revised version of Guideline 17 - Emergency services and specialist veterinary services. The guideline addresses concerns that some veterinary businesses are stating or implying that their employees are veterinary specialists, when they are not, which is an offence under the Veterinary Practice Act 1997.
All veterinary practitioners and businesses should review online and other advertising, signage and communications to ensure they are not committing an offence. The Board's recommendation is that general veterinary practitioners who wish to highlight their experience practising in particular areas of veterinary medicine or surgery should prominently state that they are not a veterinary specialist on relevant website pages and in other communications. Relevant issues are explained in the guideline, from which an extract is quoted below:
A veterinary specialist is a registered veterinary practitioner who has been endorsed by the Board as having an exceptionally high level of skill in a particular branch of veterinary medicine or surgery that is well above that of a general practitioner in the same discipline.
A veterinary specialist must have undergone extensive advanced supervised training, culminating in the passing of a rigorous set of examinations. Generally, veterinary specialists are endorsed by the Board based on recommendations made by the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC).
Vets who have been endorsed as veterinary specialists by the Board can be located by surname or specialisation on the Board’s website at Search for a Vet.
A veterinary practitioner must not claim to be qualified to practise as a veterinary specialist or use titles that may give the impression that they are a specialist if they have not been endorsed by the Board as a veterinary specialist in a particular branch of veterinary medicine or surgery.
The Board recognises that some general veterinary practitioners may have many years’ experience practising in particular areas of veterinary medicine or surgery. However, they should be careful not to mislead animal owners and members of the public that they are a veterinary specialist or have specialist-level skills in a particular branch of veterinary medicine or surgery if they are not endorsed as a specialist. Victorian veterinary practice legislation also prohibits false or misleading advertising.
A key question is, ‘Could anything in any publicly available information or communicated to animal owners or professional peers give the impression that a veterinary practitioner is a veterinary specialist?’. For example, it could be misleading if information about a veterinary practitioner:
- contains words ending in “ist”, e.g., dermatologist, oncologist, radiologist
- is associated with a scope of work such as a particular animal species or breed, or a particular condition, e.g., “alpaca vet”, “dachshund vet”, “skin vet”, “glaucoma vet” or “cancer vet”
- highlights a list of qualifications, publications and CPD or uses post-nominals (abbreviations of membership or qualifications) inappropriately.
Inappropriate use of post-nominals would include referring to a membership if a veterinary practitioner is no longer a financial member of an association (e.g., ANZCVS if no longer a member of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Surgeons) or using the letters MRCVS in Australia if membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was obtained solely through registration (not examination).