Who Owns Veterinary Continuing Education? Part 4 of 4: A veterinary CPD observatory (#492)

By this point in this four-part series, a picture has emerged:

• Part 1 asked who really owns veterinary continuing education when corporate logos dominate our conference programs.

• Part 2 argued that counting hours is a poor proxy for competence, and explored what outcome-focused CPD might look like.

• Part 3 looked at how corporate sponsorship can quietly narrow the spectrum of care, and how good CPD can reopen it.

Now comes the practical question:

If we’re serious about transparency, independence, and impact,

how do we watch what’s happening to our CPD system?

That’s where the idea of a Veterinary CPD Observatory comes in.

Whoa! What? More red tape and bureaucracy!

That’s the last thing this profession needs!

Not so fast.

Stay with me here.

Please read on to find out exactly what this approach might involve and why it might benefit everyone involved in delivering care to animals.

What Is a CPD Observatory?

Think of it less as a new bureaucracy and more as a watchful mirror.

It does not:

• Run all continuing education.

• Replace boards, colleges or conferences.

• Own CPD.

It does:

• Collect, organize, and analyze data about veterinary CPD,

  
  

• Make patterns visible (who funds what, which topics dominate, what’s missing), and

  
  

• Feed that information back to the profession, regulators, and the public.

  
  

It’s a transparency and learning hub, not an enforcement agency.

In human health, similar observatory models have been used for patient safety, prescribing, and healthcare quality. We can borrow that logic and adapt it to education.

The Core Functions of a Veterinary CPD Observatory

At a minimum, such a body would have five main jobs.

1. Map the CE/CPD Landscape

• Right now, veterinary CPD is scattered:

  
  

  • national and regional conferences,

  • online platforms and webinars,

  • lunch-and-learns in practice,

  • corporate roadshows,

  • specialist college events.

    
    

• The observatory’s first task is simply to map what exists:

  
  

  • What CPD activities are being offered?

  • On what topics?

  • To whom (GPs, specialists, nurses, managers)?

    
    

• In which regions and formats (online vs in-person)?

  
  

  That basic atlas alone would be more than we currently have.

2. Track Who Pays and Who Decides

• If we care about corporate influence, we need to be able to see it.

  
  

• For each education activity, the observatory would aim to capture:

  
  

  • Funding model: independent / pooled / single-sponsor / in-kind only.

  • Sponsor identity: pharma, diagnostics, pet food, corporate practice group, insurer, etc.

  • Who chose the topic and speakers: the sponsor, the provider, or a neutral scientific committee?

    
    

• Over time, we’d be able to answer questions like:

  
  

  • What percentage of small-animal CE hours in Country X are directly industry-funded?

  • Which topics are most heavily sponsored? Which are rarely sponsored?

  • How often are conflicts of interest declared, and in what form?

No guesswork. Actual data.

3. Monitor Content Patterns and Gaps

• The observatory wouldn’t judge individual lectures. It would look for patterns:

  
  

  • heavy focus on a few lucrative diseases, neglect of others,

  • strong emphasis on advanced diagnostics, little on spectrum of care,

  • plenty of new product updates, little on ethics, communication, or mental health.

• That helps us see where is education going because that’s where the evidence and need lie, and where is it going simply because that’s where the money is?

  
  

• It also highlights gaps we keep saying are important - welfare, end-of-life care, financial conversations, contextualized care - but that may get only a tiny share of CE hours.

4. Support Research on what works

• Right now, we know surprisingly little about which CPD activities actually change veterinary practice and improve animal outcomes.

  
  

• The observatory could:

  
  

  • facilitate studies linking types of CPD to changes in prescribing, complication rates, or client satisfaction,

  • encourage practice-based research (e.g., Does a local quality improvement project reduce inappropriate antibiotic use more than another lecture does?),

  • help standardize outcome measures so we can compare across settings.

This feeds back into better CPD design for everyone.

5. Provide Tools and Dashboards

• Raw data are overwhelming. The observatory’s job is to turn them into usable insight:

  
  

  • dashboards for veterinarians and nurses,

  • reports for regulators and specialty colleges,

  • summaries for professional associations and the public.

    
    

• Imagine being able to click on your country or region and see:

  
  

  • proportion of CE hours that are independent vs industry-funded,

  • topic distribution (medicine, surgery, welfare, communication, etc.),

  • representation of non-clinical fields (ethics, leadership, mental health),

  • trends over the last 5–10 years.

Sunlight, in a single page.

What Data Would It Collect?

To keep the system manageable, we’d start with simple, structured fields that CE providers can report.

For each CE/CPD activity:

• Basic details

  
  

  • Title

  • Provider/organizer

  • Date, location, format (online/in-person/hybrid)

  • Target audience (GP, specialist, nurse/tech, student, manager)

  • Species focus

    
    

• Topic category

  
  

  • Clinical (e.g., cardiology, neurology, dermatology, anesthesia)

  • Surgical

  • Welfare/ethics

  • Communication/client relations

  • Practice management/finance

  • Mental health/burnout

  • Spectrum of care / contextualized care

  • Research and evidence appraisal

    
    

• Funding and influence

  
  

  • Funding: independent / pooled fund / single corporate sponsor / multi-sponsor / in-kind only

  • Names of sponsors (if any)

  • Who selected topic and speakers: provider / sponsor / independent scientific committee

  • Any declared conflicts of interest (yes/no + short description)

    
    

• Accreditation and reach

  
  

  • Whether the activity offers CE/CPD credit (and from whom)

  • Number of registrants/attendees

  • Whether recordings are available later (equity of access)

Even that simple data set, collected consistently, would be transformative.

Governance: Independence or Bust

The credibility of any observatory stands or falls on governance and funding.

• Who Should Be at the Table?

  
  

  • A balanced board might include:

  • veterinarians from different sectors (independent practice, corporate, referral, rural, academia),

  • veterinary nurses/technicians,

  • perhaps a representative of animal owners/clients,

  • experts in education, statistics, and ethics,

  • observers from regulatory bodies or specialty colleges (non-voting or clearly fire walled).

No single group should dominate.

Especially not entities with a direct commercial interest in CE content.

• How Should It Be Funded?

  
  

  To stay credible, the observatory’s core funding should be:

  
  

  • primarily from professional bodies, philanthropic sources, and/or public funds,

  • transparent and capped (no single donor providing a large share of the budget)

  • clearly separated from any industry contributions.

    
    

• If industry money is accepted at all, it should:

  
  

  • go into pooled funds managed at arm’s length,

  • come with no say over governance, metrics, or reports,

• be fully disclosed in annual reports.

The point isn’t to demonize corporate players.

It's to dilute any single actor’s leverage.

• What About Conflicts of Interest?

  
  

  • Board members and staff should:

    
    

    • declare financial ties (past and present) to relevant corporations and providers,

    • recuse themselves from decisions where they have significant conflicts,

    • accept term limits and rotation to prevent capture.

In short: apply to ourselves the same conflict of interest standards we keep saying we want from others.

• How Would It Work in Practice?

• Step 1 - Voluntary, Low-Friction Registry

  
  

  • Start simple:

  • Invite major conferences, CE platforms, and professional associations to submit their program data using a standard template.

  • Offer them something in return: visibility, bench marking, and the ability to show they are CPD-transparent.

• In some countries, boards or colleges could strongly encourage providers seeking CE accreditation to participate.

• Over time, this could become a requirement for accreditation.

  
  

• Step 2 - Build the First Dashboards

  
  

  • With even a year or two of data, the observatory could:

    
    

    • publish an annual overview:

      • total number of activities and hours logged,

      • % with declared industry funding,

      • topic mix, species mix, format mix,

      • presence (or absence) of under-served areas (welfare, ethics, mental health, spectrum of care).

        
        

    • break down data by:

      • country or region,

      • type of provider (university, professional association, corporate group, independent),

      • funding model.

        
        

This isn’t about naming and shaming.

It’s about showing the shape of the ecosystem so everyone can see where it might need re-balancing.

• Step 3 - Deep Dives and Special Reports

  
  

  • As data accumulate, the observatory could issue focused reports, for example:

    • Corporate Sponsorship Patterns in Small-Animal CE, 202X–202Y

    • Where Is Spectrum of Care in Today’s Veterinary CPD?

    • Mental Health and Communication Training: Still the Poor Cousins?

    • Global Trends in Online vs In-Person Veterinary CPD.

• These reports become tools for:

  • professional bodies negotiating with sponsors,

  • boards revising CPD requirements,

  • universities and associations designing more balanced programs.

• Step 4 - Link CPD to Outcomes (Carefully)

  
  

  • Longer-term, the observatory could collaborate with clinics and hospitals that are willing to:

    • share anonymized outcome data (e.g., antibiotic usage, post-op complications, euthanasia decisions, client complaint themes),

    • link this data to patterns of CPD engagement (types of activities, topics, funding models).

No individual is named; the goal is patterns, not blame.

• Over time, we might begin to see:

  
  

  • whether practices that invest in certain kinds of CPD (e.g., QI projects, spectrum-of-care training, communication workshops) see improvements in outcomes that pure lecture-hour consumption doesn’t deliver,

  • whether heavily product-focused CE correlates with particular prescribing or testing patterns.

• That’s how the observatory could help shift the conversation from:

How many hours?

to

What kind of learning actually helps animals and the people who care for them?

International vs National: One Observatory or Many?

• There are at least two models:

• A Single International Hub

  
  

  • Pros: common standards, global comparisons, shared tools.

  • Cons: complex governance, uneven participation, risk of being too distant from local realities.

    
    

• National (or Regional) Nodes with Shared Standards

  
  

  • Each country (or region) sets up its own observatory node.

  • A light-touch international network agrees on minimum data standards and exchange formats.

• Nodes can publish their own reports and also contribute to global overviews.

• This second model feels more realistic:

  
  

  • easier to adapt to different legal and cultural contexts,

  • better positioned to interact with local boards and colleges,

  • still allows comparison and shared learning across borders.

Addressing the Objections

You can almost hear them already:

• This is more bureaucracy.

• It sounds anti-corporate.

• Who are they to judge our education?

• Won’t this be used to attack conferences or sponsors?

  
  

To follow are a few responses to these objections.

More Bureaucracy!

• Yes, there will be some reporting overhead.

• That’s why we start simple:

• Standard templates,

• Electronic submission, and

• Minimal fields at first.

• But the payoff is huge:

  
  

Finally knowing what’s actually happening,

instead of arguing from anecdotes.

Anti-Corporate!

• The observatory doesn’t ban corporate sponsorship.

• It:

  
  

  • Makes it visible,

  • Puts it in context, and

  • Helps everyone see where corporate input is balanced and where it’s overwhelming.

• Good corporate partners, who genuinely care about animal welfare and professional integrity, should welcome that.

Who Are They to Judge?

• Ideally, they are us:

  
  

  • Elected or appointed veterinarians and nurses,

  • Supported by experts in data and education, and

  • Answerable to the profession through transparent governance and open reporting.

    
    

The observatory doesn’t grade individual lectures.

It shines light on ecosystems and trends.

Weaponization?

• Any data can be misused.

• That’s why:

  
  

  • Methodology and limitations must be clearly explained,

  • Conclusions must be tempered and fair, and

  • Raw data should be anonymized where appropriate.

The aim is constructive accountability, not scandal-hunting.

What You Can Do Now

• Even if a formal Veterinary CPD Observatory is years away, you can start acting as your own mini-observatory:

  
  

  • Track your CPD sources

    
    

    • For each activity, note who funded it and how it framed the spectrum of care.

  
  

  • Notice patterns

    
    

    • Are you mainly consuming corporate-sponsored CE?

    • Are certain topics (ethics, welfare, communication) missing from your diet?

• Ask hard questions when you attend CE

  
  

  • What would this look like with half the budget?

  • What are the alternatives to this product or protocol?

  • How does this fit a spectrum-of-care approach in my community?

• If you’re involved in organizing CPD

• Keep a simple spreadsheet of your events, including funding sources and topic mix.

• Review it annually with an honest eye:

• Would we be comfortable showing this to our clients or to a new graduate trying to understand what our profession values?

That, in essence, is what a Veterinary CPD Observatory would do.

Just at scale.

A Closing Thought

At the heart of this four-part series is a simple, uncomfortable question:

If we don’t know who shapes our learning,

how can we claim to own our profession?

A Veterinary CPD Observatory is not a silver bullet.

It won’t erase financial pressures, fix workforce shortages, or magically resolve the tension between commerce and care.

But it would do something powerful.

It would replace:

Hunches with evidence,

Invisible influence with visible patterns, and

Passive drift with intentional choices.

It would give us, as a profession, a clearer view of the waters we are swimming in, so we can decide, with open eyes, where we want to go next.

It’s Time!

#bunyipsbooksbeyond