For many GP vets, surgery courses can feel as if they’re aimed at people heading down a certificate or referral pathway. And if you’re not planning to specialise in surgery, it’s easy to wonder whether this is really the best use of your time.
The important thing is that good surgery CPD can help bridge the gap between “I'm fine with the routine stuff now” and “I can manage the common non-routine stuff, plan properly, and know when I need help.”
You are not alone if you are not aiming to do three TPLOs before lunch - personally I can't imagine anything worse! For many vets, the dream is much more practical. It’s being able to say:
That kind of confidence is not flashy, but it makes a big difference to your stress levels and happiness as a vet.
There is a middle ground in first-opinion surgery that can feel particularly uncomfortable...
On one side, there are the procedures most vets become reasonably familiar with early on: cat castrates, routine dog castrates, bitch spays, cat spays, straightforward mass removals, simple wound closures.
On the other side, there are the cases that clearly belong in referral practice, or at least with someone who has significant experience, postgraduate education, equipment and support.
And then there’s everything in between.
This might include:
Not all of these will be appropriate for every vet, every patient, or every practice. That’s the point. The answer is not “do more surgery because you’ve been on a course”, the answer is “understand more clearly what is involved, what support is needed, and where your own boundaries sit”.
I firmly believe that good surgery CPD should make vets more confident, but also more selective.
Being able to ask for help is important, but there is a difference between calling a colleague and saying:
“I’ve opened the abdomen and I’m not sure what I’m looking at,”
and calling to say:
“I’m considering enterotomy for this foreign body but want to talk through whether resection and anastomosis would be more appropriate as I think this could be non-viable tissue.”
Surgery CPD does not remove the need for backup. It can, however, make the backup more effective. This is one of the underrated benefits of “next step” surgery CPD - it does not just teach technique, when done well it also teaches surgical thinking.
The extremely routine stuff is usually not the problem for GP vets with some experience, but what do you do when it stops being routine?
The umbilical hernia with the trapped bowel?
The lump removal where there is less skin than expected?
The bleeding that is technically “not much” but somehow feels like a lot when it is happening in front of you.
This is where CPD can be particularly useful, because good courses do not just show the ideal version of a procedure. They should also cover the predictable problems:
For GP vets, complication avoidance is often more valuable than learning a brand-new operation. A better approach, better exposure, better instrumentation, better planning and better closure can make an enormous difference to cases you are already seeing - and your confidence and job enjoyment!
One of the best outcomes from surgery CPD may be deciding not to operate. That may sound like a strange selling point, but a vet who understands the procedure, possible complications, equipment requirements and aftercare is better placed to decide whether a case is appropriate for their practice.
That might mean going ahead. It might mean booking the case on a day with a more experienced colleague present, arranging additional imaging first, or referring to a certificate holder or specialist. In other words, having confidence not to do procedures is sometimes as important as having confidence doing procedures, and that's something that surgery CPD can bring.
When clients ask whether surgery is needed, what might go wrong, how much it will cost, and what happens during the surgery, it can be stressful if you aren't fully confident yourself. Even if you're more comfortable being a 'consulting vet', surgery CPD can help you understand and explain procedures more clearly.
Instead of vague reassurance, you can explain:
That honesty builds trust. It also protects the team from the awful situation where a case turns out to be much more complex than the client was led to expect.
Although this article is mainly aimed at vets considering surgery CPD, surgery is never just about the person holding the scalpel. A vet who is more prepared can brief the team better. Surgical CPD can help vets communicate more clearly with nurses, and in turn the anaesthesia and theatre flow improve too.
Maybe I keep coming back to stress because I personally find surgery very stressful, but I know I'm not alone in that. If you're a medic at heart, or a happy GP that hasn't got a deep surgery interest, you probably recognise the feeling of seeing a surgical case on the list that you aren't familiar with.
Surgery CPD will not remove that feeling entirely, but it helps. You'll be better able to identify why you're uncomfortable with the procedure (is it a lack of practice, a lack of correct equipment, or a lack of backup?) and even make a plan to improve it.
Confidence in surgery should not mean “I’ll have a go at anything”. It should mean knowing what you are doing, knowing what you do not know, and having a plan for both.
The most useful surgery CPD depends on what you want to change in practice.
If you are already comfortable with routine neutering and straightforward mass removals, you probably do not need another very basic soft tissue surgery course. You may be better looking for CPD that sits at the next level: common but less routine procedures, emergency decision-making, abdominal surgery, wound management, complication avoidance and practical technique refinement.
Before booking, it is worth asking what you actually want from the course.
Look for practical courses that include procedures such as cryptorchid surgery, cystotomy, gastrotomy, enterotomy, exploratory laparotomy, wound management or splenectomy, depending on your current level and practice caseload.
The useful bit is not just the procedure list - although ideally look for something that gives you some hands-on time - but the bits around it: approach, exposure, decision-making, complication management and aftercare.
Look for online or theoretical CPD that discusses stabilisation, triage, referral thresholds and what to do when you cannot refer immediately.
Then follow up with courses with lots of practical, hands-on time in small groups - the idea is to practice your theory before the case comes through the door.
Hands-on matters a lot here. Wet labs, cadaver-based teaching, small-group practical sessions and direct feedback are likely to be more useful than passive learning alone.
You may not want to specialise, but if you want to become the practice's 'go-to' surgical vet then a more structured programme makes sense. Modular CPD, mentored learning, assessment, case reflection and progression over time are likely to be more useful than isolated one-day courses.
Look for something that covers plenty of decision-making and human factors - like our Soft Tissue Surgery and Orthopaedic Surgery certificate programmes - they'll help you develop more than just your practical techniques.
That said, if a certificate isn't in your near future, you can never get too much wet lab time! Taking a short, practical CPD course - just a day or two - intensely focused on one or two techniques is always useful if you're a surgery-keen vet, wherever you are in your certificate journey.
Yes — if it matches the work you actually do, the work you want to do, or the work you are expected to do.
You do not need to be planning a surgery certificate to benefit from surgical CPD. You may simply want to feel more prepared for the cases that sit just beyond routine. You may want to stop relying quite so heavily on emergency phone calls to a colleague. You may want to make better decisions about what to do in-house and what to refer. You may just want to dread your ops days a little less (that's me!).