Strategic plans

Short term

The cost of delivering the veterinary curriculum is great concern across the veterinary school sector (https://www.vetschoolscouncil.ac.uk/news/veterinary-schools-council-launches-survey-to-understand-cost-of-hosting-student-placements/) and is the subject of a current survey.  New ways of delivering a cost effective education where every aspect of the veterinary syllabus is covered with sufficient first and second opinion cases means new mechanisms of delivery need to be explored.  Day one competencies are critical to our students being successful clinicians, but delivering sufficient clinical cases (first and second opinion) across every species is a challenge for every veterinary school.  This is not a unique problem to Cambridge, but is enhanced by the low number of undergraduate students we can take, because the colleges have a fixed number of undergraduate places.  This limits the number of academic staff it is financially possible  for us to hire.  Our small undergraduate cohort currently benefit from the integrated third year of our veterinary course where students specialise in one of the many opportunities provided by the wider university, for example in science, conservation, policy or management.  This is critical for the future career of our graduates to be fully trained veterinarians ideally placed for diverse careers not only in general, referral or academic clinical practice, but also in conservation, government or industry.

We are exploring the following options to solve these challenges:

1. Increase student numbers by developing a 4 year graduate course.  Unlike with undergraduate places many colleges have increased their capacity to take on graduate students meaning that this is a feasible prospect and one that runs successfully in Medicine.  The intake would be high-achieving science graduates to ensure the Cambridge course would continue to fulfil our aims.  We are particularly keen to offer transfer to successful NatSci IB graduates from Cambridge.
2. Achieve AVMA accreditation.  To attract the best students our course needs to achieve AVMA accreditation.  This parallels our RCVS and EAEVE accreditation.  We need to expand our case numbers, particularly at first opinion level.  This is achievable for small animals, but to expand equine and farm animal cases we are currently exploring options to partner with other clinical providers.  This will bolster our current clinical case load in this area, help recruit students with particular interests in developing careers with these species and aid staff retention by providing opportunities to further develop their clinical careers in diverse environments. 
3. Maintain and improve our departmental infrastructure. To sustain/achieve accreditation we need to maintain and improve our departmental infrastructure.  We have an ongoing program of maintaining and growing our infrastructure, by working with our charity partner CamVet, however  progressing our external partnerships will be important to achieve this.

Long term

The COVID-19 zoonotic pandemic, unsurprisingly, changed the world.  The benefits of a One Health approach to allow humans and animals to thrive together on the planet have been long discussed, but have not really been well delivered.  The Department of Veterinary Medicine has a strong research base steeped in One Health, particularly in global infectious diseases, and with substantial expertise in the important areas of antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic infections.  The undergraduate medical and veterinary students share many aspects of their preclinical training yet this is lost once the students reach their clinical years.  In a post- (and pre-) pandemic world the importance of One Health where veterinarians work closely with their medical colleagues is imperative, especially with climate change changing the infectious disease landscape in the UK and elsewhere.

The ageing infrastructure of the Department of Veterinary Medicine means the buildings are difficult to manage in an environmentally sustainable way, so a new veterinary school will, at some point, need to be delivered.  Our location on the West Cambridge site was ideal when the school was first built occupying farm land, but now the Department is located on what is increasingly a Physical Sciences campus.  A new clinical school for Medicine is being planned because of the similar ageing infrastructure of their buildings.  The facilities required to deliver basic teaching to the Medical and Veterinary students are largely similar and a potential cost-saving benefit could be achieved by combining these facilities on the Biomedical campus in the same building.  The Medical students rotate through different hospitals in East Anglia as well as Addenbrookes and if we achieve partnering relationships with other clinical providers we too will be using a similar model of clinical training.  Building a new hospital (perhaps on the old farm site at Babraham which has excellent transport links), to provide first and second opinion clinical cases predominantly in small animals could provide an equivalent of Addenbrookes Hospital for clinical training. A new One Health research building should be situated alongside the new veterinary hospital, to retain the strong One Health focus and basic science/clinical collaborations of the current faculty.   Were this model to be achieved, Cambridge would be the first genuine One Health Clinical School in the UK and potentially globally.  The financial savings made by combining some of the teaching facilities for medical and veterinary students with consolidation of the One Health research currently based at the West Cambridge campus onto Europe’s biggest biomedical campus would be an innovative and creative solution with exciting prospects for our students and staff.  The synergistic research links, many of which are currently managed by collaboration between the West and East campus, would also thrive.  Funding for this enterprise would be required.  The potential for philanthropic contributions, however, is high.  Freeing up the West Cambridge land to allow for expansion of the start-up technology hub space could also generate revenue such that there would be a significant off-set to the costs of a new hospital build, especially with the potential savings made by building a joint clinical teaching hub.  This could provide an exciting and unique option for the future of clinical training in Cambridge University.