PgCert Taster Day

PgCert Taster Day

Take the Next Step Towards Advanced Surgical Practice

Thinking about completing a PgCert? Spend a hands-on practical day with us, experience our teaching approach and get honest answers about the programme before deciding whether it is right for you.

Our PgCert Taster Day has been designed for you if you are a vet who is actively considering starting a PgCert in Soft Tissue Surgery, Small Animal Surgery or Emergency Practice.

What you will gain

By the end of the day, you will have:

• Experienced the practical teaching style used on our PgCerts
• Taken part in hands-on wet lab sessions and developed key soft tissue surgery techniques that you can use immediately in your practice
• Met a PgCert tutor and asked any questions that you may have about the programmes
• Spoken to vets who have already completed a practical PgCert with CPD Solutions and heard about their experiences
• Gained a clearer picture of your time commitment and the programme structure
• Decided whether a CPD Solutions PgCert is likely to be the right next step for your professional development
• Your Taster Day Course fee will be deducted from your PgCert fee if you decide to register for a PgCert following the course

This new immersive hands-on day gives you a genuine insight into our 12 month practical PgCert courses, combining expert-led teaching with extensive small group wet-lab practical sessions. You’ll meet one of our PgCert tutors, experience our supportive teaching approach, and develop core surgical techniques that form the foundation of advanced soft tissue practice.

Whether your goal is to broaden the range of procedures you confidently perform in practice, improve your patient outcomes, or take the next step in your professional development, this taster day will show you how our postgraduate training can help you achieve it.

Experience the practical teaching
Under the guidance of PgCert tutor Nicola Kulendra, you will take part in supervised wet lab practical exercises covering areas such as:

• Feeding tube placement
• Basic skin reconstruction, including H-plasty and phalangeal fillet flaps
• Gastrotomy techniques
• Gastric dilatation and volvulus simulation and gastropexy techniques
• Surgical decision-making and key gastrointestinal principles

It is an opportunity to experience the small-group, supportive and clinically relevant teaching style used throughout the CPD Solutions practical PgCert programmes in Soft Tissue Surgery, Surgery and Emergency Practice.

Ask someone who has already done it!
You will have the opportunity to chat with vets who have completed one of our practical PgCert programmes. They will share their experience of balancing the programme with clinical work, completing the reflective essays, preparing case material and staying on track throughout the year. They can also tell you how their PgCert enhanced their practical and decision making skills and transformed their clinical practice.

This is your opportunity to ask any questions you have that may not be answered in our brochures. There are no stupid questions – our PgCert Taster Days are designed to support you through your clinical development journey and provide all the help you need to make the right decision for you at this stage of your career.

Is This Experience Day for You?
This course is ideal for you if you are a veterinary surgeon who:

• Is considering enrolling on a Soft Tissue Surgery, Surgery or Emergency Practice Certificate in the near future
• Wishes to develop greater confidence in your small animal soft tissue surgery and decision-making
• Enjoys practical, hands-on learning in small groups rather than online streaming sessions and lecture days
• Is looking to expand your surgical caseload and clinical capability

Discover what postgraduate surgical training can do for your confidence, your patients and your future. Join us for a practical day that could be the first step towards transforming your surgical career.

Course Tutor : Nicola Kulendra BVetMed CertVDI DipECVS MRCVS Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Surgery, RCVS Specialist in Small Animal Surgery and Tutor on the CPD Solutions PgCert in Soft Tissue Surgery

What Vets Say About out PgCert in Soft Tissue Surgery

“I’d like to thank you for all the organisation that you have put in to this. The course is excellent.  I got so much out of the three days and everyone else was buzzing with excitement about what they’d learned.” Johanna Headley MRCVS

“This course has reinforced my core surgical skills and given me the confidence to approach more complex procedures independently. It has also helped improve my knowledge regarding surgical disorders and improved my perioperative management. I feel that my skills have improved considerably in a short period of time. Fantastic staff – very professional and helpful throughout, seemed genuinely invested in my development as a surgeon.” Jamie Croucher MRCVS

“Reality based approach! Very relevant to what I see in practice. A really enjoyable course, down to earth tutors who are very approachable and very kind. I have learnt so much that I can put into practice straight away. Staff and support was fantastic, faultless, easily contactable and very helpful at all times.” Ailsa Woodson MRCVS

“Can I just report how much I enjoyed the practical days? I think I was expecting it to be good, but it was so much better than I thought it would be. Thanks for all your organisation, and thanks to the tutors for making it so friendly and welcoming.” Lynn Wood MRCVS

“Amazing 9 days of extensive practical training allowing a large variety of experience, practising techniques. Most skills are almost immediately applicable to patient management.” Sophie Cloney MRCVS

“The tutors are wonderful and explained everything very well, offering a lot of support and help when needed.”  Ioana Muresanu MRCVS

“Excellent sessions. Good mix of self-directed learning from guide, 1-2-1 discussions with tutors and discussion of issues not in guide. Surprisingly useful to cover basics as well!” Gareth Parry MRCVS

“Really appreciated tutors with clear understanding of general practice limitations/necessities. Smart, clean venue. Lovely team.” Sophie Cloney MRCVS

“Excellent experience, learned so much I can use in practice straight away. Tutors were amazing, so knowledgeable and friendly and learned so much from them.” Laura Hamilton MRCVS

What Vets Say About out PgCert in Surgery

“The course was incredibly well organised, provided excellent practical and theory sessions as well as access to multiple learning resources. The tutors were very knowledgeable and approachable. This course has definitely enabled me to enhance my surgical skills and confidence. I highly recommend this PgCert.” Marina Papa MRCVS

“Thank you kindly for the super course – very pleased to see how far it has taken me in my professional development.” Sally Potter MRCVS

“Thoroughly enjoyed the practical sessions learning to reflect not just at essay time but day-to-day! Excellent content and relevance to first opinion practice. Very well organised. Good facilities. Brilliant staff.” Liam O’Connor MRCVS

“Amazing course, I would recommend to everyone wanting to massively advance their skills and knowledge!” Emily Copp MRCVS

“Learned loads and all staff were amazing and helpful.” Gary Kelly MRCVS

“Very practical, excellent all round. Love the reflective aspect, helps a lot more to appreciate best practice better.” Michelle Frayne MRCVS

“I have really enjoyed the course. The content has been so useful, with a large amount of practical content and the opportunity to perform all the procedures in the wet lab which has been invaluable. All the speakers were great and so helpful and patient, and spent a really good amount of time with each person giving one to one help during the practicals.” Selina Rumbold MRCVS

“Great balance of theory, practicals, research and reflection-helped me develop skills beyond just surgery and helps me to critically evaluate and review my decisions in all aspects of cases. Really accelerated my learning/improvement where this had previously stagnated a little. Very clear and logical approach and delivery.” Laura Adams MRCVS.

“I completely revised our peri-operative protocol of our BOAS surgeries. This has very significantly improved my approach and the approach of my entire practice to our BOAS cases. As we have so many brachycephalic dogs that need help, this is a very exciting development and for this I owe a huge debt of gratitude! I feel very passionately that I would like all my colleagues to benefit from the process of critical reflection and its positive effects on what we are and do for the profession.”Leon Ringelmann MRCVS

“As someone who graduated nearly 20yrs ago, this course has been nothing short of transformative. Really helped me refresh and deepen clinical knowledge, challenged me to reflect more critically on my practice and reignited my passion for surgery. The structure of programme, the quality of teaching and support provided throughout has been outstanding. This is huge step forward in my personal development. This is a big step in achieving RCVS Advanced Practitioner status.” Kishor Mahind MRCVS

“My expectations were satisfied, more than happy, worth the money, thoroughly recommend, [Staff and venue was] best of the best. Already recommended to multiple colleagues.”  Matej Zupanc MRCVS

“Well organised sessions, good selection of procedures to try. Venue is clean, well organised, staff very friendly and helpful. Excellent and will continue to use CPD Solutions for future CPD.” Vikki Moran MRCVS

What Vets Say About out PgCert in Emergency Practice

“Excellent. It has allowed me to approach problems in an improved way and improved my knowledge immensely and given me new confidence.” Richard Todd MRCVS

“Very useful practical review of POCUS especially, and found the case review practicals very helpful in terms of actually approaching a case and putting techniques together. Content well pitched and well selected – all things that lent themselves better to in-person teaching rather than webinars. Very good. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, both clinical skills and ‘soft’ skills such as communication, reflection etc. Have found all resources very accessible and interesting. Module tutors have been amazing!” Katie McKinnon MRCVS

“Found this to be the best method of learning I have tried.” Stephen Arundell MRCVS

“Practical sessions interesting and informative, plenty of time to complete tasks and all questions. Extras available to do if tasks completed early. Really good! Will be able to use lots of things in practice to increase my standard of care. Everyone was lovely and helpful. Interesting and informative, very relatable to practice.” Emma Perry MRCVS

“Reflecting upon my own cases through literature searching for essays during this course and learning to appraise existing evidence bases for treatment protocols we use day-to-day in our clinic has been invaluable, providing me with skills that I will continue to use for the rest of my career.” Lynne Faulconbridge MRCVS

“My clinical practice has dramatically improved during the course of this programme. The attendance courses and wet labs were a great opportunity to get hands on experience.” Marialena Avratoglou MRCVS

“Brilliant and very applicable to general practice.” Georgie Mason MRCVS

“Very good. Really loved the disaster situations. Did not expect them to be so good, but they really were brilliant. POCUS = excellent. Cytology review = Great” Alan Sweeney MRCVS

“Well organised and resourced. Great to get tips and advice from experienced vets. All staff were both professional and friendly.” Pete Roulston MRCVS

“Tutors and demonstrators were very helpful. Discussions around the practicals and more generally were very informative. I enjoy the reflective learning style. CPD Solutions are very supportive.” Leon Ringelmann MRCVS

“Wet lab experience very valuable, ability to ask questions without worrying how stupid they seem is great! Good course for those of us who learn by doing!” Vicky Sands MRCVS

“The tutors are excellent. They really took the time to explain, were very patient with me, showed me things sometimes multiple times. This ensured I would leave these three days confident in the procedures we were meant to learn. Love the practical hands on stuff that we’re doing. Really going to make a difference in my practice.” Nicquet Goldson MRCVS

“Absolutely blown away by the professionalism of the tutors with quality lecture and practicals. The tutors were approachable and friendly as well and conducted such amazing sessions with no judgement of our individual varied skill and knowledge levels.” Shun Jin Tang

“Very informative. Hands on is the best way to learn. Techniques discussed and corrected in a safe environment. Improved as a vet. Very much improved intellectual function as well.” Mark Gordon MRCVS

Any questions? Call us now on 0151 328 0444 or email [email protected]