Lights, Camera, Action! – Hayley Walters in the Spotlight

The JMICAWE was visited this week by a team from CEVA to film a short interview with Hayley Walters as she has been nominated for CEVA Welfare Nurse of the Year Award, further to her Golden Jubilee award last year for outstanding contribution to Veterinary Nursing.

 

Hayley Walters splits her time between JMICAWE, where her work has taken her around the world as she tries to improve the welfare of animals used by trainee vets, and the Small Animal Hospital at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies where she works as an anaesthesia nurse.

It may surprise some of you to learn that around the world, particularly in Asia, trainee vets are practising a multitude of procedures on live animals that don’t require the treatment. Some of these procedures include basic clinical skills such as blood taking, suturing and more invasive surgical procedures such as orthopaedic surgery which can cause serious lasting damage to an animal when performed repeatedly and often incorrectly. Hayley and Heather have presented to some of these veterinary schools using our manikins to show how these procedures can be taught and practised without using live animals, along with more general veterinary training in pain management and hospitalised patient care.

 

Hayley has also assisted Animals Asia on their Moon Bears project (which you may remember from a previous blog) and in Thailand with dogs being rescued from the dog meat trade amongst her international animal welfare work.

Domestically, Hayley works as a Veterinary Nurse specialising in anaesthesia, taking her own cases and also teaching students about anaesthesia and analgesia.

With all of this incredible work behind her, we certainly think she’s gone the extra mile to help improve the lives of animals around the world and it’s not difficult to see why Hayley has been nominated to receive the Welfare Nurse of the Year Award. The winner will be announced at the CEVA Welfare Awards on Wednesday 8^th April and we wish her all the best!

You can see Hayley in action for yourself by signing up to our FREE Animal Behaviour and Welfare MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) – at present we have over 19,500 people signed up from 160 countries around the world. A short article on the MOOC numbers, taken from the first time the course was run last summer, is available here;

http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/175/15/i.short

And if you’d like to join the MOOC yourself and contribute towards an improved understanding of Animal Behaviour and Welfare around the world, you can sign up for free by following this link;

https://www.coursera.org/course/animal

Please note that if you wish to use this course for your CPD that it is best to sign up to Signature Track so that your coursework can be tied to your learning identity.