MS310 – Emergency Veterinary Care: Making Decisions and Thriving Under Pressure
£497.00 (+VAT)
Emergency work isn’t just about what you know. It’s also about how you think under pressure. Whether emergencies are your daily job or an unavoidable part of first-opinion practice, the cognitive and emotional load can be immense. This mini series explores how pressure affects decision-making, communication and performance, and gives you practical tools to help you and your team move from simply surviving difficult shifts to truly thriving.
Emergency Veterinary Care: Making Decisions and Thriving Under Pressure
An online mini series for vets in small animal practice
A different kind of emergency CPD
Emergency work isn’t just about clinical knowledge. It’s also about how you think, decide and communicate under pressure.
Whether you work regularly in ECC, do occasional out-of-hours shifts, or manage emergencies in first-opinion practice, high-pressure situations are unavoidable. Multiple critical patients, time pressure and emotional load can quickly overwhelm even experienced vets.
This mini series focuses on the non-technical skills that underpin safe, effective emergency care helping you move from simply coping with difficult shifts to performing at your best.
Who this mini series is for
This course is designed specifically for vets in small animal practice.
It will be particularly valuable if you:
- Work in ECC or out-of-hours settings
- Regularly manage emergencies in first-opinion practice
- Lead or support teams during high-pressure shifts
- Want to improve decision-making, communication and performance under stress
- Are interested in patient safety, team wellbeing and sustainable practice
What this mini series is about (and what it isn’t)
This is not a clinical protocols course.
Instead, it focuses on how pressure affects:
- decision-making
- communication
- teamwork
- cognitive performance
- personal wellbeing
By understanding how stress narrows cognitive bandwidth and how to widen it again, you can improve patient safety, work more effectively with your team, and reduce the personal toll of emergency work.
What you’ll gain from the series
By the end of this mini series, you will:
- Recognise when stress is affecting your thinking and performance
- Understand how pressure impacts communication and team dynamics
- Feel more confident making decisions in time-critical situations
- Have practical tools to support yourself and others during difficult shifts
- Be better equipped to lead, brief and debrief teams including locum staff
- Develop strategies to improve learning and recovery after challenging cases
Course format
- Three online sessions (2 hours each)
- 8 hours of CPD, with downloadable, personalised cedrtificate.
- 12 months’ access to full session recordings
- Downloadable comprehensive course notes
- Self-assessment quizzes to release CPD certification (quizzes can be retaken as needed)
- Watch on any device, at a time that suits you
Programme overview
Session 1 – Thrive or Survive?
Understanding stress responses and performance under pressure
Session 2 – What did you say… or not say?
Communication, situational awareness and human factors
Session 3 – Decisions, Decisions
How decisions are made under pressure and why they are rarely “wrong”
Led by
Sara Jackson VetMB CertAVP(ECC) PhD MRCVS
An experienced emergency clinician and educator, with a strong focus on patient safety, human factors and decision-making in high-pressure clinical environments.
Why this course matters
Emergency work will always be demanding. But with the right understanding and tools, pressure doesn’t have to mean being overwhelmed.
This mini series gives you a practical, evidence-informed framework to help you and your team perform well, communicate clearly, and protect wellbeing when it matters most.