Towards a flexible and personalised development of veterinarians and veterinary nurses working in a companion animal referral care setting.

In the Netherlands, the demand for veterinarians and veterinary nurses (VNs) working within referral care is rapidly growing and currently exceeds the amount of available board-certified specialists. Simultaneously, a transparent structure to guide training and development and to assess quality of non-specialist veterinarians and VNs working in a referral setting is lacking. In response, we developed learning pathways guided by an entrustable professional activity (EPA) framework and programmatic assessment to support personalised development and competence of veterinarians and VNs working in referral settings.