Release of ONCORE‘s first ’on-demand’ courses

Why have we developed this style of course?

The COVID-19 pandemic has been truly awful for anyone on the frontline in the veterinary profession – keeping apace with guidelines, skeleton staff, decisions on which pets’ treatment is a priority, and the inability to communicate face-to-face with clients. Everyone working in the profession must be exhausted.

Interactive courses

As CPD providers, our job is to develop courses that provide you with the best quality learning we can – but as part of that, we also have to make it as accessible as possible. We have always been incredibly proud of the interactive, tutor-led courses that we offer (and still do), but previous feedback, and particularly the challenges of the pandemic highlighted to us that having ‘set-date’ courses can be difficult for some of you.

Our response is to create a selection of courses, which maintain the same quality of learning as always, developed by experienced veterinary professionals, and that can be accessed at any time from purchase and during a twelve-month period.

On-demand courses

We will also still continue to offer our interactive group courses for those of you that prefer this style of learning.

How are the courses structured?

Each topic will be different, and content will depend on how much needs to be covered in the course – but every course will be broken into modules with a presentation and/or video for each module, downloadable resources, exercises for you to perform in practice, and a quiz at the end of each module; plus a final quiz encompassing all topics.

Courses will also include the option to submit coursework which will be assessed by your tutor. The courses offer practical and evidence-based learning and will enable you to ensure your learning reaches practice.

Which courses are available so far?

So far we have developed:

Veterinary Practical Infection Control

This on-demand course aims to assist you with the key factors of infection control – from basic practice hygiene to clinical considerations. It strives to provide you with the tools to become the practice ‘infection control champion’ so that best veterinary practice standards can be achieved.

Tutored by Emma Gerrard, this is a comprehensive course that we envisage would offer approximately 20 hours CPD if fully completed, and costs £175

Find out more about the Practical Infection Control course here

Veterinary Dermatology Nursing

This course provides on-demand learning that will teach and refresh many of the principles of dermatology, including history-taking, sampling and analysing, and treatment options. The course provides presentations, quizzes and exercises to support and enhance your learning.

This course is tutored by Veterinary Nursing Dermatology Group manager, John Redbond, is split onto 6 modules, and we envisage would provide approximately 15 hours CPD if fully completed, and costs £150

Find out more about the Dermatology Nursing course here

Personal reflection

As an educator and as a veterinary nurse, I have always striven to ensure that our learning is as engaging, interactive and ‘outcomes-based’ as I possibly can, and have been so proud of all that we have achieved over the past years. I found it really hard to move away from the interactive style, and thought it would mean that our CPD just didn’t achieve the same quality of teaching – but having spent the past few months developing these courses, I’m incredibly excited at how they look and feel, the way they guide you through the material, and the superb quality of the course content provided by the tutors. Both John and Emma have been amazing to work with, and I can’t thank them enough for the effort and expertise they have put into their courses. I can’t wait to see the first people experience these courses, and come away with the equivalent tools to implement their knowledge, but having the flexibility to do this as and when they are able to.